Online betting is changing, rapidly. There was a time when online poker, (poker en linge to the French ) was the only game in town, enter online bingo, online backgammon, online slots, etc. If there's something you want to bet on, pretty good chance somebody's beat you to it. So, which online casinos are worth checking out, and which ones aren't? I'll get to the answer in a second but first let's cover some of the factors that should affect your decision:
Of course, you're playing to win, who isn't? But, what's more fun, playing with the same six guys all the time, or playing with a multinational crowd? Whether it's a German winning a million dollar poker tournament, or a Frenchman who won't be stopped at the roulette wheel (casino en linge is a rapidly growing market), the more the merrier.
- The bigger the room the safer it is. Sure, maybe that tiny room will offer some huge poker bonus, or maybe it's the first room you've ever played at and you've gotten used to it. But what happens six months from now? Is your poker money being held in a segregated account? Is the rake fair? Do you know if there's collusion in the games? Do you really want to play poker at a place where you don't even know if your money is safe?
- Bigger rooms have more games. So the little room you're at has some great kind of stud that you love, does that game ever run? What's the use of sitting at a crazy pineapple table if there's no one there to play poker with you? Sure, raking in pot after pot is awesome, but sometimes a man has to hit up the blackjack table and split some aces too.
- Want a big poker sign-up bonus? How about some slots freeplay? Bigger rooms have more bonuses. Not to mention the huge bad beat jackpots and progressive jackpots.
- Generally, the bigger the room, the better the rewards. Want a site that has great freerolls? How about some awesome player rewards? Or more types of casino slots than you can imagine? The big boys have the money to do it.
So, which site can do all of these things? Party Poker. Party's the largest site on the internet, they've got great bonuses, and their software is fantastic. It's the best online betting site around. You can even play bingo if you want!
Backgammon, the game of kings, is one of the many options available with the Party network. Since it is one of the most ancient games in the world, here's some info on the history of backgammon, courtesty of wikipedia:
The ancient Egyptian game senet resembled backgammon, with moves controlled by the roll of dice. However, the Royal Game of Ur, played in ancient Mesopotamia, is a more likely ancestor of modern day tables games. Excavations at the "Burnt City" in Iran have shown that a similar game existed there around 3000 BC. The artifacts include two dice and 60 checkers, and the set is believed to be 100 to 200 years older than the sets found in Ur.
The ancient Romans played a number of games remarkably similar to backgammon. Ludus duodecim scriptorum ("Game of twelve lines") used a board with three rows of 12 points each, and the checkers were moved across all three rows according to the roll of dice. Little specific text about the gameplay has survived.[4] Tabula, meaning "table" or "board", was a game mentioned in an epigram of Byzantine Emperor Zeno (AD 476–481). It was similar to modern backgammon in that the object of the game was to be the first to bear off all of one's checkers. Players threw three dice and moved their checkers in opposing directions on a board of 24 points.
Herr Goeli, from the 14th century Codex Manesse
In the 11th century Shahnameh, the Persian poet Ferdowsi credits Burzoe with the invention of the tables game nard in the 6th century. He describes an encounter between Burzoe and a Raja visiting from India. The Raja introduces the game of chess, and Burzoe demonstrates nard, played with dice made from ivory and teak. (Today, Nard is the name for the Persian version of backgammon, which has different initial positions and objectives.)
The jeux de tables, predecessors of modern backgammon, first appeared in France during the 11th century and became a favorite pastime of gamblers. In 1254, Louis IX issued a decree prohibiting his court officials and subjects from playing. Tables games were played in Germany in the 12th century, and had reached Iceland by the 13th century. The Alfonso X manuscript Libro de los juegos, completed in 1283, describes rules for a number of dice and tables games in addition to its extensive discussion of chess. By the 17th century, tables games had spread to Sweden. A wooden board and checkers were recovered from the wreck of the Vasa among the belongings of the ship's officers. Backgammon appears widely in paintings of this period, mainly those of Dutch and German painters (Van Ostade, Jan Steen, Bosch and others). One surviving artwork is "Cardsharps" by Caravaggio (The backgammon board is in the lower left.) Others are the Hell of Bosch and interior of an Inn by Jan Steen.
In the 16th century, Elizabethan laws and church regulations prohibited playing tables, but by the 18th century backgammon was popular among the English clergy. Edmund Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game of Back-Gammon in 1743; this described rules and strategy for the game and was bound together with a similar text on whist.
In English, the word "backgammon" is most likely derived from "back" and Middle English "gamen", meaning "game" or "play". The earliest use documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1650.
The most recent major development in backgammon was the addition of the doubling cube. It was first introduced in the 1920s in New York City among members of gaming clubs in the Lower East Side. The cube required players not only to select the best move in a given position, but also to estimate the probability of winning from that position, transforming backgammon into the expected value-driven game played in the 20th and 21st centuries.
