Got Game?

[susandennis]

One of the blogs I read sent me to the NYTimes which then got me to this article about online backgammon. I like backgammon. Years ago I dated a guy who made his living playing backgammon. So I thought, gee, that sounds like fun... playing on line with different people and then I bitch slapped myself back to reality.

I have a problem with online gaming. Nope. I am not a 14 year old white boy with joystick thumbs. I'm so much worse.

Years of family Yahzee and I Doubt It and Gin Rummy and Backgammon started me down the slippery slope. I picked up bridge in high school and in college discovered that fools, with cash, were willing to lay that cash on the line... I made beer money and more playing bridge - some of my best games and biggest hauls were to and from and during protest rallys - the 60's were a very confusing time.

When I got out of college I found tournament (duplicate) bridge which was great because I moved around the country a lot. Find a club - which was easy - and you've got a game. But, the problem with bridge is that you have to play with bridge players and a lot of them, a whole lot of them, are boring and/or obnoxious and just not the kind of people I want to spend time with so I abandoned bridge.

Until Sierra On Line. I cannot remember how I found Sierra On Line. Oh wait, yes I can. I read about a woman game maker - Roberta Williams who created Kings Quest. While looking into her and how a person of the female persuasion had blasted into this really tight boys club of personal computers, I found that she and her husband had started this company Sierra and they were looking at on line games and they needed beta testers.

Hello?!!! me! me! me! Pick Me!!! And they did! They had about 6 or 7 games on line and it worked with a real GUI client that they sent to you in the mail on diskette. You played via dialup. And bridge was one fo the games.

I was totally sucked in. I mainly played with one partner who was a Republican real estate attorney in LA who's screen name was Sweetie. For about 4 years, nearly every evening and all day on the weekends I was logged on playing bridge. Then they sold the company.

And I found OKbridge - it's a nice website now but then it was black and white command line stuff via a special Electronic Bulletin Board System kind of a thing. No GUI this time and the bridge was serious bridge - really top drawer stuff. The night of the OJ chase, I won a 7 NoTrump hand with those idiots playing on the TV in the background. No one else did as well with that hand and I jumped up the rankings. It was heady. And the participants were from around the world so it was as easy to get a game at 6 a.m. as it was at 6 p.m.

One night I found myself in a game with a guy from Japan and one from Sweden and one from the US. There was not a lot of chit chat in these games as they were serious play. But that night the guy from the US asked me where in the US I was and I said - Seattle... it took about 6 message swaps to learn he was in an office that I could actually SEE from my terrace! But he sucked as a player so, thankfully, I never ran into him again...

I cannot now remember what brought an end to OKBridge but I managed to get my life back and, so far, keep it. Nope, I don't need online Backgammon, thank you very much.

Comments

[pinkrose70.livejournal.com]

At least your fun was also profitable!

I think I've mentioned that my little 93-almost 94 year old neighbor-lady is a bridge player. Every Tuesday she gets all dressed up and bejeweled and meets her big Bridge group (120 or so) ..all Senior Citizens, and as she puts it, the games are serious
and "dog eat dog"
From what she's told me and from the sampling I saw one day after the weekly meet, our polling place is at the same Sr Bldg...most of the players are quite obnoxious, and very gossipy!
I overheard 3 "ladies" one carrying an oxygen tank to breathe, and 2 others bickering over some play.
My neighbor and her husband, when he was alive ..both took an early retirement and took a world-wide cruise and Bridge Directors...and played their way around the world!
(I have no idea how to even play)

[pinkrose70.livejournal.com]

(that should have been typed..."AS Bridge Directors")

[katbyte.livejournal.com]

I have belonged to OK Bridge for years. At least 4 or 5. Lately, I have not been playing at all. Bridge sucks around here. I miss big clubs where they had lots of players who were intermediates, like me, and interested in improving their game.

I guess I really like bridge for the challenges.

I pay my dues on OK bridge so I can play if I want to, but have not been playing at all lately. I agree about bridge players being a pain.

You can play on MSN for free too.

ACBL now has online bridge also, but IMHO OK Bridge is still the best site with the best players.

I am sure acbl will catch up soon though.

[susandennis]

That's twice in two days! Vastly differing preferances!!

I really do not even like any of the Makeover shows. I fast forward through QEFSG if I watch it at all.

A friend of mine never misses any TV poker and said that if I watched one show I'd be hooked. Wrong. I was so not hooked.

Maybe we are two different people after all????

[drood.livejournal.com]

See, I like playing backgammon at itsyourturn.com (http://www.itsyourturn.com), because that way you don't have to sit there for a half hour at a time when you feel as if you should be doing something else. You check into the site as you wish, make your moves, and then you're off on your merry way.

It's perfect for those of us who enjoy online games, but who don't necessarily want to spend hours at a time playing them.

[susandennis]

What in the world have I ever done to you???? Here I am in this fragile state and you offer up both a URL and rationale??!!!!

[drood.livejournal.com]

I'm evil, aren't I? I'm trying to lure people into playing with me!

[geordie.livejournal.com]

You remind me of a British anti drug campaign, but repeating the tag line wouldn't mean anything here.

I used to do Quake II, well the whole team did, two hours every lunch time. Two hours of deathly silence and incredible concentration. The management objected and we started coming in at 8:30 and leaving at 5:00, just like the contract said, after two weeks they decided they didn't care what we did at lunch times and we got back to 7am to 9pm days with two hour lunches. Everyone who used to go to the cafe (40 cents for lunch) started bringing sandwiches which were wolfed down in the two minutes it took to load Quake II on a 100MHz machine.

Then half of us quit and I haven't played seriously in six years.