Backgammon at gamecolony.com
yotony
Backgammon game can be played either in a friendly, social way or very
competitively. At gamecolony.com you can easily find a backgammon
opponent online day or night, at all different skill levels, in a
variety of types of competition. Free games are available as well as
various tournaments for cash prizes.
Backgammon is a game where skill factor (as opposed to luck) is
predominant. Especially in the longer run, skilled backgammon players
will win far more often. The skill factor further increases with the
multi-point matches for a higher number of points.
Do players "gamble" when they play in backgammon tournaments for cash
prizes?
According to the statutes of most US states, gambling is defined as:
risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance. See
here ( www.gamecolony.com/backgammon_game_skill.shtml ) how a US court
decided in favor of backgammon, ruling it to be a non-gambling game of
skill. That's why when players compete in backgammon tournaments or
games for cash prizes, they do not "gamble". Playing backgammon for
money can be described, more precisely, as "competitive entertainment"
rather than "gambling". In the longer run, the more skilled player is
bound to prevail and win more matches, tournaments and cash prizes!
gamecolony has a rating system and a ranking Ladder system for
backgammon and other games of skill. Participation in Ladder offers an
exciting way to compete with other players at gamecolony.com. For
example, every 1st of the month Top 10 Ladder players receive prizes in
Bonus $Tickets. Bonus $Tickets can be used to play and win cash prizes.
If you are new to competitive backgammon, it would be prudent to start
with low entry-fee tournaments or mini-tourneys that this site offers.
As skill in backgammon is of paramount importance, if you play against
more skilled players who tend to play for higher entry fees, you won't
be in their class and you will lose. If you're not comfortable playing
for money, you can always play for free here.
some players prefer to play more competitively and add some competitive
"spice" to a game of backgammon. For players who prefer competitive
entertainment for cash prizes, gamecolony has a special internal
currency -- called $Tickets. 1 $Ticket = $1 USD.
Players may cash-out their $Tickets at any time (rate: 1 $Ticket = $1
USD) or use them to win instant CA$H prizes in Tournaments and
Mini-Tourneys online.
How to make $ by recommending other players:
When you recommend friends to gamecolony.com, every time they
participate in Ticket-based events (such as Tournaments) you will
receive a 20% bonus! For players who recommend their friends to
GameColony.com has some bonuses when you sign up and make your first
deposit. Firstly, the starting deposit is only $5 so you can go try
your luck with little to lose, now if you deposit $20 you get an extra
$20 for free, again read all the conditions and rules applied to this
bonus.
Our Referral Policy
You can now earn Money (20% Recurring Referral Fees) that will be
deposited directly to your GameColony.com account just for referring
your friends to us!
Use the "refer-a-friend" button on our home page and enter the email
addresses of some of your friends. We'll send them an email with a link
to sign up. If they do, you'll get 20% of our profits that have
directly resulted from your referred friends participating in on our
fee-based Online Tournaments.
You can refer your friends by word of mouth. Tell them to type your
username under "Recommended by" in the signup form, and you will earn
20% Recurring Referral Fees when they sign up and start playing our
Fee-based Tournaments!
With our Referral program, you will be able to monitor your growing
profits in your online account statement.
Backgammon, Poker and Hollywood
Both backgammon and poker are the games filled with the thrill of
excitement and drama alike.
Compared to poker, backgammon is also a game where the player's skill
(as opposed to luck) is a more predominant factor that determines the
game's outcome. The players calculate their moves based on the
mathematical probabilities of each position.
Backgammon players tend to be much more passionate than poker players
which should make backgammon more suited for television as you would
rarely see any display of passion from poker players. Just as poker had
a tremendous increase in popularity in the last few years, backgammon
can also share the TV limelight and capture its fair share of the TV
audience. The passion of competitive backgammon and the players should
appeal to the TV viewers as much or more than poker.
Some of the greatest poker players who were also great backgammon
players include Paul Magriel, Erik Seidel, Gus Hansen, and even the
legendary Stu Ungar.
Stu Ungar, who is better known for his unmatched poker and gin-rummy
accomplishments, in 1984 made the finals of the Las Vegas backgammon
tournament losing to Leslie Stone. Tom McEvoy, who is a 1983 WSOP poker
champion, still plays competitive backgammon.
Backgammon was spreading like wildfire in the 70's with games played at
discos and restaurants. Celebrities like Hugh Hefner and the late Don
Adams were showing off at backgammon clubs. Don Adams played backgammon
at the Cavendish West club in West Hollywood, and he also played poker
at Hollywood Park Casino.
Tobey "Spiderman" Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio are among many current
Hollywood celebrities who enjoy competitive backgammon. Nicole Kidman
was heard asking for backgammon playing tips as she was interested in
how to improve her backgammon game
Backgammon can be played live on the Internet, on line. There are many
sites to play either for free or for money prizes. You can watch good
backgammon players at GameColony.com and learn from them to play for
free and later to play for cash prizes competitively.
Online Poker players lack one important the skill element that
face-to-face poker offers: the players cannot read facial expressions,
body movements, etc. It seems that one of the skill elements in online
poker would be that of a statistician -- keeping tabs on what other
players did historically in various situations. In this regard, online
poker has less skill to offer than land-based poker.
The biggest disadvantage of online poker is that it is extremely
susceptible to player collusion -- despite all of the unnamed
'proprietary measures' that online poker sites claim to implement. A
bunch of 'friends' can collude by creating different player identities
with different paying methods, different IP addresses and use external
IM communications to share their cards and sand-bag their opponents in
high-stakes games. This is not rocket science & it's being done right
and left at most online poker sites today.
All online sites where four or more players (partners or not) play card
games, suffer from the same fatal flaw. Two-player online games for
money like online backgammon, gin-rummy, cribbage on the other hand,
are flourishing more & more on the Internet now as in addition to their
higher skill element they are totally collusion-proof.
Two-player card and board games offered by sites like should eventually
beat poker in popularity.
Piranha
1) unlike other sites where you get a bonus, there is a fee to pay for
deposits, something like an upfront rake in addition to a 10% rake
charged in the games
2) there is just one rating system for free and real money games all
together, meaning 99% of all players try to play free games and lose on
purpose in order to keep a low rating
I´ve played there for 2 days about a year ago (maybe some things have
changed in the meantime?) just enough to get back the upfront rake and
win a few cents and I´ve left because whats going on in the free games
there is just too far beyond ridiculous
yotony
Players can use 10 Bonus Tickets in their account as an entry fee for
arcade games -- Bonus Tickets Solitaire, FreeCell, Lines-Collapse,
BlackJack Rush, Pharaoh Treasure, Poker Rush, Pool Rush, Aqua Rush,
Pyramids, Darts & Mahjong tournaments.
Promotional rules state that the winnings in Bonus Tickets will be
converted to cash-equivalent $Tickets upon your 1st purchase.
restrictions apply. (
http://www.gamecolony.com/cgi-bin/pg.plx?v=promo )
gamecolony.com uses internal currency -- $Tickets.
1 $Ticket is equal to $1 USD
* You could use $Tickets to enter any gamecolony.com Tournament with a
Cash Prize. For example, if you had 15 $Tickets in your account, you
could use them to enter three 5-$Ticket Tournaments or one 15-$Ticket
Tournament.
You can convert $Tickets that are unused and/or those you have won into
Cash (1 $Ticket = $1 USD) -- the amount will be sent to you at your
request.
There are no cash-out fees!
To purchase Tickets, there's a very small transaction charge that
covers bank transacrtion charges. For example, It costs $10.95 to
purchase 10 $Tickets at gamecolony.com
Piranha
> covers bank transacrtion charges. For example, It costs $10.95 to
> purchase 10 $Tickets at gamecolony.com
and isn´t that an exact 9.5% upfront rake?
i donno, but "very small" is what GG or CG offer,
9,5% upfront plus 10% rake in moneygames gives a total rake of 19.5%,
it even exceeds the greedy companies like GE or partygammon, those at
least charge such high rakes only upon high rating difference
my respect for a unique idea though, I don´t think there is a 2nd
company on the web who request a fee for deposits, all others are able
to cover their bank transaction charges through their "normal" rake
the only fortune camecolony has, unlike other servers where it is more
or less hidden, the abuse of the rating system at gamecolony is
absolute obvious to anyone who plays just one single free game
^Jason `~`
arcade games -- Bonus Tickets Solitaire, FreeCell, Lines-Collapse,
BlackJack Rush, Pharaoh Treasure, Poker Rush, Pool Rush, Aqua Rush,
Pyramids, Darts & Mahjong tournaments.
This is a BACKGAMMON usenet group jackass!
BTW, I think the site is a big scam. I started an account there because they
said I was to get 10 free tickets (ie; $10) and then when I try to wager
them on backgammon I get a message saying "only vip members can play for
tickets"
yotony
substantial $ prizes to 10 top free Ladder winners - in backgammon &
other games.
So skillfull free players instead of pursuing meaningless numeric
ratings for bragging rights can show their true colors in gamecolony
Ladder competitions & win $tickets there!
$Tickets won in Ladder competitions are cash-equivalent and can be used
either in Backgammon or gin-rummy or cribbage, etc.
It may not be a bad idea, on occasion, to distract yourself from
backgammon -- try, for example Pyramids at gamecolony.com & see if you
could resist NOT playing it agan...
zetagi
BGBlitz?
Thanks.
Zetagi
yotony
called match format). Every backgammon program allows exporting from
that format but some require first saving the game record into a file
before exporting it.
A great free online web site with an extremely strong backgammon engine
for game and match analysis (and for playing practice games):
www.gammonlab.com
Try and analyse your backgammon matches at gammonlab.com
Grunty
> how to import saved (e-mailed) game to GNUBG or BGBlitz?
You just need to copy the game text from your email and paste it into a
notepad, then save it with the extension ".mat" . It's ready to be
imported into GNU, Snowie, whatever accepts the "mat" format.