History 
 
  The Hit It Again concept died a stillborn death, but inspired me to come up with a new idea. Poker For Roulette was the result. Complete personal details, including the original inspiration for Hit It Again are contained on the history page there.
 
  I came up with the idea for Hit It Again in the Spring of 2010. I applied for and received a provisional patent, in July.
 
  Shortly thereafter, I contacted four major game distributors, with some details about the idea, as well as a rough schedule of my visit to Las Vegas coming up in mid September.
 
  One distributor very quickly turned it down. Another showed interest, but told me that a meeting could only be arranged after several people had looked at the documentation I sent. That distributor eventually turned it down - after I had visited Vegas and returned home.
 
  A third distributor initially liked the idea, but the person I needed to meet with would be out of town during the time I was there. I did meet, briefly, with that person's secretary.
 
  The fourth distributor liked the idea enough to invite me for a meeting, on the last weekday of my trip.
 
  On my first day in Las Vegas, I met with Dan Lubin, inventor of the EZ Pai Gow variant of Pai Gow Poker. His advice was that my idea of a side bet for Roulette was a good idea, but he wasn't sure that the Hit It Again idea was special enough to generate the interest I was looking for.
 
  On Thursday, the day before the game distributor meeting, I had a consultation meeting with a lawyer who is a specialist in casino game patents. His advice was similar to Dan's - that it wasn't unique enough to make it, and that it probably wasn't even patentable. The fact that he basically talked his way out of business from me, spoke volumes about how right he probably was. He suggested I go to the meeting anyway, and see what the game distributors say. At the very least, it will be educational.
 
  So on Friday, I met with the game distributors. They did the right thing by firing questions at me, challenging my concept and my knowledge. I do think I passed that part of the test. However, they pointed out several flaws in my idea - flaws that I knew about, but didn't think would be an issue.
 
  The small problems were that even at Level One, it doesn't pay off enough to generate excitement. Also, at Level One, the pay off is too stingy to create excitement. I pointed out that a player that merely bets on the last number can do as well, or better, than my bet, at least for the first two levels. The mere fact that a bettor cannot achieve the same final result due to table limits was not significant enough to warrant the game. As it was, that was the lynchpin that made my game feasable - or so I thought.
 
  On the surface, feeding $1 to win $20 an average of once in 38 spins, frankly, sucks. But this bet is nothing more that a pre-defined progression of pressing the bet, that can, on paper, exceed the table limits. But that's not enough to make it in the casino.
 
  A surprise to me, the biggest problem with the Hit It Again idea, was the large payout. At first I thought they were arguing the validity of the math. It turns out that they know something about the casino industry that I don't know. No surprise there, but once they explained it, it made perfect sense.
 
  Quite simply, casinos do not like to let go of a large sum of money all at once. And since my math showed that all players should receive the full value, it added an unknown variable - the number of players that would each get that large payout.
 
  Although disappointed, I did not feel rejected. They gave sound reasons why it wouldn't work, and why casinos wouldn't be interested. That probably saved me time, effort, and money by not moving forward.
 
  They also invited me to contact them again, if I come up with an idea that can overcome those prbolems. In essense, they helped to clarify what would work, and what the casinos would actually look for and be interested in.
 
  The next day, on the long plane ride home, all I could think of was the advice they gave me as they were rejecting the Hit It Again idea. By the time I got back home in New Jersey, I had come up with the concept for Poker For Roulette, and could barely wait to get to my computer and start running some numbers....