Hmm.. I just found this. WSOP Runner-Up Invents Bad Beat Insurance.Pretty funny to me. Maybe Dannenmann is off his rocker.

lolol - What do you guys think?

I don't think that's patentable.

Sounds like a patent set up specifically to sue people who infringe it to me.

Also, im pretty sure you cant patent insurance, but could probably copyright it.

I wouldn't think so either, but check out at the bottom of the patent application page:

I thought Hellmouth already has the patent on this.

ivey actually owns the patent ur referring to.

I thought a patent had to be on something new. Poker insurance is offered all the time in Houston. I have posted about it on the Theory board. Hell, Doyle wrote about it in SS1.

i think its quite sad how much this guy is trying to extend his 15 minutes

Smells like he and his "haircut 100" poker crew need to pay for some poker losses. Didn't he try to patent those stupid little poker globes he uses as a card protector?

I am going to patent the flop

he patented insurance from the house. this three words make it new. now every casino that wants to offer it...

This is actually not a bad idea.

If the casinos can find a way to overcome technical problems:

1. calculating the exact right odds, which can be done using a small terminal on the table, or having a floor with a portable calculator

2. delays in play during the insurance buying.

If he can actually get this patented, and convince the big card rooms to take it in - he could make a few.

I just hope he built his business plan on % of the insurance policies and not someting else.

I insure nobody wants to insure Mike Matusow.

http://www.uspto.gov/go/pac/doc/general/#patent

Isn't Dannennman's idea nothing more than a mathetmatical formula? This would seem to suggest that it wouldn't be patentable.

Btw, just because he has applied for a patent doesnt make this patentable or even give a likelyhood of being accepted.

Im pretty sure if you paid the fee you could try and patent fire this afternoon.

I'm surprised sites that reveal cards in allin spots dont already sell this - seems like free revenue. Once the cards flip up, if you have a box checked you're given 3 seconds to buy insurance on your pot equity for some premium. I can't imagine this is patentable. I've emailed sites asking why they don't do this - even if they charged 10%+ premium on this, people would still use it. I'd never use it but I'd love to do the insuring myself as a third party but it's just not feasible give how fast the runout occurs.

Side note: However buying insurance in these spots could be interpreted as a pure gambling wager since the poker aspect of the hand is over. After you're all-in the insurance is simply a bet that you will lose. Thus any place that allows poker but not other forms of gambling might be prohibited from doing this.

As ridiculous as software patents.

Another way to slow online games down and bad players would get a better idea of hand strengths when the site tells them their equity after every single hand. Anyone with a brain would abandon any site that offered insurance which is a good reason why they wouldn't do it.

Card sharing collusion deliberate or accidental - "I folded an ace" could lead to them getting stung.

There are a couple of sites (Ongame and SportingBet from memory) that display the percentages of each hand when all-in in a tournament. I wish they wouldn't, but TBH it doesn't noticeably make anyone play better, there are still tons of fish.

I'd like to hear what former patent attorney Fossilman thinks about this.

Uwe Boll beat you to it.

For Ongame they also display on the cash games as well which I think is probably worse.

In order to be granted, a patent application must be considered both novel and unobvious. If anyone has patented this business method before or if it can be proved that this business method is already in the public domain (meaning somebody has written about it, implemented it in their casino, etc) then the application will fail the novelty test. If the USPTO examiner judges that the proposed idea would be obvious to someone sufficiently skilled in this field then the application will fail the unobviousness test.

The fact that Dannemann has filed an application means very little. It will be interesting to see if the application actually stands up. Interestingly enough, if someone like ShippityDooDah could convincingly document that he has proposed this idea to an online cardroom, that would very likely derail Dannenmann’s application.

I would buy it to eliminate tilt forever