A lot of backgammon players might not know this, but there is a way to spice up your game without adding any new strategies or visiting any fancy casinos.  In fact, the answer lies primarily in spicing up your backgammon checkers.

 

 

Backgammon has been around for centuries, I’ve even heard since the ancient Egyptians, so you can bet in that amount of time there have been some pretty crazy backgammon boards created.  One of the things many internet backgammon sites have begun to do is offer players the chance to play on all sorts of different backgammon boards, new and old, from around the world that are uploaded for virtual play.  There are even some boards the sites create that are interactive and just plain fun.  For example, I played a board based off of a sea battle where the backgammon checkers were boats and when you hit an opponent they would have a fight and your opponent would get sunk.  Okey, a little cheesy, but it’s also a lot of fun and a great way to shake up typical play.

The coolest backgammon boards, though, are the ones that are based off of real life, ancient boards.  You’ll see amazing backgammon checkers and board designs that were actually used by backgammon players a thousand years ago; now that’s pretty cool.

It won’t take the place of the traditional backgammon boards we use today but none-the-less, playing these boards is a whole lot of fun and a great way to take a break for typical competitive play. If you’re interested in finding some sites where you can play backgammon online free, check out places like Play65 and see what’s out there.

South Africa has become the latest country try to ban online casinos, and the results have been fairly predictable. As a result of a dispute with the online casino Piggs Peak, South Africa has decided to shut down all online gaming. The dispute arose because Piggs Peak is not located in South Africa, nor to they cater exclusively to South African players, and thus do not feel that they are subject to South Africa’s gambling laws.

 

 

This put the South African government into the position of having to define how and when South African residents are allowed to play at online casinos. Although this is not being presented as a permanent solution, they have for the time banned all play at online casinos, choosing to go with the “I’m taking my ball and going home” method of governance. This leaves South Africans with no place to play slot machines in spite of the fact that this dispute had nothing to do with them. This doesn’t seem to bother their government though, and there doesn’t seem to be any rush to implement a new system. This is most likely due to a total lack of any South Africa based online casinos. Allowing residents to play means that money will be leaving the country, and this is never something that any government is exactly eager to encourage.

Fox Business News recently took on the issue of online gambling. A surprising move from the notoriously right-leaning news outlet, since most of the bigger opponents of online gambling are Republicans, and the bill to lift the UIGEA ban is one that has been proposed by a Democrat. This is a much more complicated issue than one of simple left and right though, and Fox News is right to handle it as such. Money is really the issue at stake in many ways.

Many fear that online casinos will take business away from the hugely profitable US land based casino business, which would mean more and more money going overseas, since the UK casino industry, like www.jackpotcity.com/uk/, stands to make the most money from the reopening of the US market, at fist anyway. There is another factor though, which has caused an unlikely alliance. There has, for several years been a pull within the Republican party toward the religious right, and this is a group which always opposes gambling in all forms. In the hopes of at least keeping gambling confined to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the religious right has teamed up with the powerful gambling lobby. This works well for both sides, since the casinos have the money and the religious leaders have the rhetoric. The plan hasn’t been working as well as they had hoped though, and the alliance formed in 2006 is starting to come apart.