Simulation and synthesis of sports matches

Claim 2

A gaming system for simulating a sports match, the system comprising: a hierarchical event model defining a hierarchical organization for semantic events occurring in the sports match; an event synthesis engine that implements a probabilistic inference model that predicts future semantic events based on the semantic events in the hierarchical event model; and a gaming engine connected to receive the semantic events and the predicted future semantic events, the gaming engine rendering a simulation of the sports match based on the predicted future semantic events.

Claim 3

The system of claim 1 , wherein the event synthesis engine further comprises a dynamic Bayesian network.

Claim 4

The system of claim 1 , wherein the semantic events represent events occurring in the sports match that are meaningful to the outcome of the sports match.

Claim 5

The system of claim 3 , further including: an event detection and collection section configured to detect the semantically meaningful events from a live sports match and provide the semantically meaningful events to the hierarchical event model.

Claim 6

The system of claim 1 , wherein the probabilistic inference model is iteratively modified based on the predicted future semantic events.

Claim 9

The method of claim 6 , wherein the probabilistic reasoning techniques use Bayesian networks.

Claim 10

The method of claim 7 , wherein the probabilistic reasoning techniques incorporate information relating to pre-stored attributes of players in the sports match.

Claim 11

The method of claim 6 , further comprising detecting semantically meaningful events from a live sports match.

Claim 12

The method of claim 9 , wherein the detected semantically meaningful events represent events occurring in a sports match that are meaningful to the outcome of the sports match.

Claim 13

A computer readable medium containing computer instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to simulate a sports match by performing acts comprising: arranging semantic events occurring in the sports match in a hierarchical model; predicting future semantic events in the simulated sports match using probabilistic reasoning techniques based on the hierarchical model; and rendering a simulation of the sports match based on the predicted future semantic events.

Claim 14

A computer readable medium containing computer instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to simulate a sports match by performing acts comprising: arranging semantic events occurring in the sports match in a hierarchical model; predicting future semantic events in the simulated sports match using probabilistic reasoning techniques based on the hierarchical model; and rendering a simulation of the sports match based on the predicted future semantic events.

Claim 15

The computer readable medium of claim 11 , wherein the probabilistic reasoning techniques use Bayesian networks.

Claim 16

The computer readable medium of claim 12 , wherein the probabilistic reasoning techniques incorporate information relating to pre-stored attributes of players in the sports match.

Claim 17

The computer readable medium of claim 11 , further comprising computer instructions for performing the acts including: detecting the semantically meaningful events from a live sports match.

Claim 18

The computer readable medium of claim 14 , wherein the detected semantic events represent events occurring in the sports match that are meaningful to the outcome of the sports match.

Claim 19

A gaming system for simulating a sports match, the system comprising: hierarchical event model defining a hierarchical organization for all of the events occurring in the sports match, wherein the hierarchical event model can be represented as a graphic tree of events and branches of the graphic tree of events lead to sub-branches of the graphic tree of events that define events that may occur given a parent event; an event synthesis engine that implements a probabilistic inference model that predicts future semantic events based on the semantic events in the hierarchical event model; and a gaming engine connected to receive the semantic events and the predicted future semantic events, the gaming engine rendering a simulation of the sports match based on the predicted future semantic events.

Claim 20

A gaming system for simulating a sports match, the system comprising: hierarchical event model defining a hierarchical organization for all of the events occurring in the sports match, wherein the hierarchical event model can be represented as a graphic tree of events and branches of the graphic tree of events lead to sub-branches of the graphic tree of events that define events that may occur given a parent event; an event synthesis engine that implements a probabilistic inference model that predicts future semantic events based on the semantic events in the hierarchical event model; and a gaming engine connected to receive the semantic events and the predicted future semantic events, the gaming engine rendering a simulation of the sports match based on the predicted future semantic events.

Claim 21

The system of claim 16 , further including an event detection system to detect semantically meaningful events from a live sports match, wherein the semantic events represent events occurring in the sports match that are meaningful to the outcome of the sports match and provide the semantically meaningful events to the hierarchical event model.

Claim 24

The method of claim 18 , further including: detecting semantically meaningful events from a live sports match, wherein the semantic events represent events occurring in the sports match that are meaningful to the outcome of the sports match.