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Backgammon the next big craze in online gambling?
 The
folks from PartyGaming believe backgammon will be
the next big thing. They should know!
These are the same folks who brought us PartyPoker,
still dominate half the online poker market, and
brought their company public, making it the single
biggest IPO to debut on the London Stock Exchange
last year.
PartyGaming Plc
announced the launch of its new backgammon product,
PartyGammon.com. Known as "the game of kings" and
requiring skills of timing and calculation,
backgammon is one of the world's most popular games
and one of its oldest, with variants dating back
more than 5,000 years.
"The launch of backgammon, a truly international
game of skill, is a natural evolutionary step in our
strategy to become the global gaming portal of
choice," said Mitch Garber, CEO of PartyGaming. "We
are very pleased to add it to our portfolio of
games."
PartyGammon.com offers games to play for free or for
cash for a variety of gammon versions, including
Hypergammon and Nackgammon. As with all the products
in the PartyGaming portfolio, customers can access
PartyGaming's 24/7 customer support for any
questions about getting started or using the
product. PartyGammon.com features cutting edge
technology and was developed entirely in-house.
What is Backgammon?
Backgammon is a board
game for two players. Each player has fifteen pieces
(checkers) which move between twenty-four triangles
(points) according to the roll of two dice. The
objective of the game is to be first to bear off,
that is, to move all fifteen checkers off the board.
The oldest recorded game in history, backgammon
traces its roots to the ancient Mesopotamian game
tabula, which appears in an epigram of Byzantine
Emperor Zeno (476–481 A.D.). Further archaeological
excavations have placed the possible date of origin
of backgammon to 3000 B.C.
Though the gameplay is quite basic—each player is
trying to move his checkers to his home board and
then bear them off before his opponent is able to do
so—backgammon incorporates strategy insofar as with
each dice roll, the player must choose between
multiple options for movement of the checkers.
Furthermore, the doubling cube, which raises the
stakes of the present game when a match consists of
multiple games, and rules like the Crawford Rule and
the Jacoby Rule, introduce more strategic
intricacies. Experts have also developed a
nomenclature to define commonly used general
strategies for play such as the running game and the
backgame.
As with chess, backgammon has been significantly
interfaced with computer technology. By 1979, Hans
Berliner's BKG 9.8 program had defeated a world
champion backgammon player, and since then neural
network and other approaches have improved the
playing quality of the virtual backgammon opponent.
The next big thing
or the next big fad?
Unlike poker however,
history suggests backgammon will be more the fad.
It is ever-popular in the Middle East and Asia, but
in the rest of the world it swings in and out of
fashion. The game enjoyed a bit of a revival
in the US during the 1920's and even more so during
the 1970's.
Paul Wardley of PCHome.com reports:
"Big-money tournaments
were set up, a world championship was established,
backgammon clubs sprouted up everywhere (there were
even backgammon restaurants) and a whole publishing
industry was founded to satisfy the demand for books
and magazines about the game.
"Although interest waned in the 1980s, it is on the
rise again and there’s talk of backgammon following
in the footsteps of poker as the next big gambling
craze.
"Celebrity players include Nicole Kidman and Tobey
Maguire, and many of the top poker stars are fans of
the game, including Gus Hansen, the Poker World Tour
champion.
"Such is the popularity of the online game that on
the leading backgammon servers, where you can play
for fun or real money, there are now monthly
tournaments with guaranteed prizes of $100,000.
"And the enthusiasm is international, so if you log
onto Play65 or Gammonempire at any time of the day
or night, you’ll find up to 10,000 people playing
simultaneously on thousands of tables. Somewhere in
the world it’s always backgammon time.
"Much of the renewed
interest in the game stems from its connection with
computing technology: not only because backgammon is
being packaged as a hot new form of online gaming or
because a PC is a tireless and always-available
opponent, but because backgammon has become one of
the success stories of research into artificial
intelligence (AI).
"Self-taught backgammon-playing computer programs
are so good that they have overturned many of the
assumptions previously held about how the game
should be played and which are the best moves,
especially in the opening phases of the game.
"Any player who trains by regularly playing against
a backgammon program, using moves suggested by the
program itself, can learn to play at levels that
were previously attained by only a few top players."
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Gambling911.com News
Wire
Originally published June 27, 2006 11:52 pm EDT
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