US Patent 7857696 System and method of pausing and restarting wagering games

A system and method permit pausing/saving a game and restarting/restoring a game. In one embodiment, a player may pause a wagering game and then restart or restore that game at a later time and at the same or a different gaming machine. Game state information may be stored on a machine readable medium and then later read from that medium. Alternatively, game state information may be stored remotely from a gaming machine, such as at a remote server. The remotely stored information may be identified by information associated with a machine readable medium issued to the player or other information provided by the player.