GammonEmpire's final event is getting closer.

[webrunner]

It will be held on the 18th of November at 8 PM GMT.
There are big cash prizes for the winners!

You can either join the last satellite tournament on the 9th of November to win a free entry or register with a $10 buy-in
Click here for more info.

[Tomawaky]

Will it be a 1Pt game tournament as satellite ?

[GammonEmpire]

Hi

Final will be best out of three. all other games will be for one point. 

[Schigolch]

It will be held on the 18th of November at 8 PM GMT.
There are big cash prizes for the winners!

You can either join the last satellite tournament on the 9th of November to win a free entry or register with a $10 buy-in
Click here for more info.

On their website they say it will be held 12th November?

[vegasvic]

Time to change the name of this site to GammonEmpire .

MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

[spielberg]

Time to change the name of this site to GammonEmpire .

MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

GammonEmpire sponsor - we all get the benefit - what's the problem?

[GammonEmpire]

Hey Vegasvic

i want to support Spielberg's reply.

we are not forcing anyone to spend his money.

all we want to do is offer the fibsboard members the chance to play in other servers besides FIBS.

Have a great week

[socksey]

I think the point vegasvic is trying to make is that Fibs is a non-profit, no money, no advertising site, and I have had some qualms about this issue also relating to when fibsboard began advertising.  I can understand both sides. 

Creating a website takes a lot of time and devotion for nothing, not to mention all the time spent for monitoring the site, cleaning up the work of a prankster or more, and so forth, so I can well see webrunner's point in making it generate some money, little as it might be.   

On the other hand, Fibs has always remained a philanthropic/free site and for this reason, it seems to me that Fibsboard was created for Fibs members basically, should perhaps follow that trend as well.   

Therefore, I go back to the point someone else made.  You have choices you can make one way or another.    You can play on the Gammon Empire site or not.  You can participate here or not.      

Regarding adrians comment in another thread, "GE is still banning players who try to log in from Romania", Patti has done the same at times to prevent some bad players on Fibs and this was found to be unfair to the players from a country banned who were not the troublemakers........zakasax was one I personally hated to see get caught up in that problem not of his making.   

I have not taken the leap of gambling on the net either and don't feel secure doing it.  Maybe some time later when I see that things work out for other players, I may take the leap, but have no plans for doing it any time soon.   

socksey



"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." - Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign.


 

[GammonEmpire]

Hi All

Your comments are all appreciated. A person has the right to express his thoughts and feelings.

Webrunner is doing a great job in maintaining Fibsboard. In regards to advertising: Dozens of players already joined our tournaments and i think that fact expresses the feelings of most members. all Tournaments are freerolls and so gives the option of winning money to everyone regardless the fact if they are playing for money or not.

Now to The "Romanian" issue call it. We at GammonEmpire are putting a lot of efforts to accept all players interested in joining our backgammon room either for fun or for money.

There are some players from particular countries (Unfortunately, Romania is among them) who are committing frauds on a huge scale (i'm talking tens of thousands of dollars every month).
As GammonEmpire is a busineess we just can't afford it. We are teribally sorry for the inconvenience caused to innocent players.

[vegasvic]

G E who are you ? do you play on FIBS ?

Have you gone to gamesgrid and sell your product ? maybe try pogo, or msn or yahoo ... FIBS i think i speak for a lot of players has no place for this crap .

i think we are smart enough to find gambling sites if we want to gamble . This was suppose to be a fibs board . NOT GAMMON EMPIRE .

Why dont you change this sites name to gammonempire board , see how many people post .

i gave to this site because of my  belife in  FIBS , not some BLANK trying to fleece people on line . and make a couple of euros.



yeah you are not forcing anyone to play for money but this kind of thing has no place in FIBS.

GET IT ? Fibs was the first on site for no money and still is , its a community not a gambling HALL.

i am sorry to see you sell out WEBRUNNER 

[webrunner]

Hmmm.. i guess you are even more short-sighted then i thought.
I don't know why you are making a fuzz about this. You don't have to play there!

If you are going to drop flames like this everywhere i have to start removing them.

[vegasvic]

short-sighted? Flames?

I could start a thread for you and lets see what people think ?

When you came to fibs and spent some time and started this site, You were everybit the part of fibs community. We sure as hell do not see you much on FIBS anymore , is it because your job is done ?

Now its just a moneymaking operation for you and have others moderate and give their time for free.

Maybe we again need a web page that is totaly free of comercials and trying to lure people into gambling .l

What was it you said about my hunting ? when i said millions do it . your answer back was millions take drugs thoes that make it right?

Well webrunner millions gamble thoes that make it right ? OH by the way its not legal in my country to gamble online. so your little morality play is just that.

Maybe burper will read this or donz and creat a true webpage for fibs without the outside garbage that this site now has become.

you and delete all you like , i hope you start deleting all my post and pictures because they were given to this site because of FIBS > NOT GAMMONEMPIRE !!

START WITH PICTURE OF THE WEEK WHEN YOU HIT THE DELETE BUTTON !!

SINCERLY YOURS VIC !!!

dont tell my about sponsors FIBS has been running much longer then this site with ZERO comercials. or moneyplay .

[GammonEmpire]

I have to remind you that just becuase of webrunner you have a place to post your messages.

obviously you've been really hurt by someone or something if you are so mad.

what exacrly is the problem? no one is forcing you to play on any other backgammon server besides FIBS. webrunner has dedicated a lot of his time to create this forum, keeping it up to date, keeping in touch with all members. i haven't seen you do anything for the fibs community beside posting negative messages blaming the whole world. no one is selling his soul here. this forum is about backgammon. like humans, backgammon comes in difeerent sizes and shapes. here is a small lesson for life: accept different aspects of the game just as you would accept different kinds of people. we are all here for backgammon, not for negative attitudes.

have a great weekend

[burper]

GE, you are at a disadvantage here. Vic is speaking about a "fibs community" thing that I once believed in too.
Its' kind of a pay-it-forward concept. You give to the community what you have to offer, freely:


- marvin gave the original server code, and has more recently made a couple bugfixes.
- Patti has given her wonderful admin skills.
- Kit gives $$ for online costs.
- Many have written GUI clients, perhaps most notably fergy who set the standard with macfibs and contributed free software code for all future client writers in the form of FibsCookieMonster. Chuthltu also should be noted for his fine job with javafibs and because he contributed the design for the extended player profile which many clients now use. Others include:
    agerson (CocoaFIBS), rodr (ParlorPlay), TucsonAZ (3dfibs), A. J. Pyka (c4fibs), pat_gammon and jback (realfibs), John Fahey (winfibs), Keith Vetter (tkfibs), Robin Davies (fibs/w), and the guy that helped marvin with tinyfugue way, way back, Jesper (xibc),  inkedmn and jamessan (WTFibs), torstein (xfibs), Egon Beermat (EBBS/FIBS). jens hoefkens (Kbackgammon), staffanu (MobileFibs).
- Many have written playing bots and hosted them.
- Tomawaky created FibsLeaGammon and all those wonderful tourneys.
- Many have helped run the various FibsLeaGammon tournies.
- David Escoffery for running his annaual tourney on fibs.
- Kari_Grandi for his most excellent F3 tourney.
- MadMatt wrote TourneyBot and did admin for awhile.
- Many have served as TourneyBot admins.
- Snoopy ran free tournies on FIBS for many years.
- Some wrote other various bots for fibs, for recording matches (ls_one?) etc...
alef coordinated a fibs.com web page facelift, with a long list of other contributers:
    cyans' (the new logo), melpaul, cht, Raccoon, klic, juggler, Marcus Keighley, Zorba, bwe, zoetic, Enric, maman_eve, Gregorious, juanz, shahgammon, swede, Marijo, Mirori, principessa, maestro, Nediboy, doktor_, Spiderwoman, SoniX, Caissa, ufuk, verkin, Vladimir Marinov, along with other special thanks to's.
- alef contributed greatly with his T-shirt design contest, and getting them out there.
He still hosts the FIBS archives: http://www.alef.co.uk/fibs/archive/1999.html
- I forget who did the original T-shirt way back when...
- Evan McLean for a great job with a major update to the CLIP Spec.
- I contributed RepBot, FibsCompanion, FakeFIBS, and a good start toward a TourneyBot admin gui. I also contributed some changes to TourneyBot adding some features, and hosted the alternate TBot for awhile (so did juggler).
- avik has contributed to RepBot code and has hosted it for several years.
- pepster contributed the fibs2html open source code.
- Mike Quinn and  Stephen Turner for authoring the Guide to FIBS commands.
- I forget his name, but someone used to compile and post fibs stats regularly for many years.
- There have been a few other fibs-related web sites along the way (fibs bot page, love on fibs page etc...)
- Many have served as moderators on fibsboard. Socksey still does.
- vegasvic has contributed what he has: great photographic skill, as well as many insightful comments in several threads.
- Since readers will no doubt argue about the value of some of these anyway, I must include JokeBot. QuoteBot etc...
- Oh, what is that analysis thing inim runs sometimes?
- A bit less direct, but one could argue that all those that contributed to gnubg have helped FIBS via the various gnubg bots that have been run on fibs over the years.
- Stephen Turner list of FIBS player's home pages.
- Lars (sencay) Sözüer's Fibsters Around the World lists fibsters by country.
- Evangelia (Jasmin) Spanou and Stavros (zucchini) Mavroskoufis have a Greek Fibsters Gallery.
- Daniel (Raccoon) Murphy has a list of Danish players on FIBS.
- James (Ivan) Eibisch's FIBS Bot Page describes all known bots, past and present, standalone bg programs, miscellaneous bots, suspected bots and human-operated bots that play on FIBS. Complete with bot family tree and even a photo or two.
- Ivan's pages keep growing: a new addition is an "equity table bot."
- Parli italiano? See collections of links to helpful FIBS pages in Italian at http://alpha.science.unitn.it/~gobbo/INTERNET/servers.html and http://alpha.science.unitn.it/~gobbo/INTERNET/cmds.html.
- Kate (mccool) McCollough's Backgammon Page includes McCool's Fibs Photo Files, links to other fibster photo sites.
- sencay's European FIBS Party Newsletter has information about past and future FIBS gatherings in Europe, and photos from the 1st European FIBS Party (London, October '97),  and the 2nd European FIBS party (Trento, Italy, February 1998).
- Kevin (KevinB) Bastian's explanation of the FIBS rating system.
- James Eibisch has a Javascript FIBS ratings calculator.
- François Hochede's home page offers both an on-line Javascript and a downloadable Windows FIBS rating calculator.
- On FIBS, player "rat" has nothing to do but tell you how many points you're about to win or lose and the correct time of day, if you ask.


I've forgotten plenty of other contributions I am sure. None of those people get anything back, nor even ask.
None of them have helped defray their costs with a little advertising. None have tried to make money from fibsters,
who are for the most part free-loaders anyway. Me included.

I would be out of line if I did not acknowledge the time webrunner ran the non-commercial version of fibsboard. It was to include you in that long legacy of volunteers. Others may be suspicious of his motives, but I prefer to take it at face value, and believe he is just feeling his way along here.

Obviously, webrunner can do what he wants. He is young and has mouths to feed. Plenty of contributors have already have a living and find themselves in a position to give a little of the extra back to one of the hobbies and communities they participate in.

My only point here, is to help GE and webrunner see how the advertising, and how the GE connection is not in
keeping with the fibs community spirit.

Ask yourself this: webrunner apparently runs several other website forums, and has even run a bg-world
forum site. Why not make a separate gammon-empire-board.com ? Or change the name of this site to bg-world?
If you want to host a more general backgammon site, and support fibs by maintaining a subpage, or a sub-forum for fibsters, that would be more acceptable to some. E.g. the aussie site (play65?) that sometimes hosts tourneys for fibsters.

I think the answer is this: fibster-leaching. Hey, if you end up rich from it, the rest of us will look like idiots. GL
I just want to help you to understand some of the "feeling used" backlash you might get.
Consider it my contribution to you, for which I only ask you to consider buying stock in burper.com!!!!
Mention this thread and get $10 off!!!

I'm sure all the people on my list above appreciate you attempting to cash in on their efforts.

[webrunner]

OK, lets get something straight here. Yes, i do get payed for placing the banners on this site. It makes enough money to provide for the dedicated server and bandwidth. The money i keep spare i reserve for future hardware needs, and then, maybe i make a few hundred bucks a year. You all act like that is not allowed. Taken account of all the hours i put in to keep this server running and the forum up to date and new i get payed about USD 0.50 an hour. Yeah, i really make tons out of this

Besides that, don't give me that crap about fibs all being free. Lots of people make money out of fibs. There is Javafibs, a payed software client. Then there is Beggars Backgammon Terminal, also payed software. You mentioned Kit. How many customers do you think he gets for this http://www.gammonline.com/ via the fibs community?
3DFibs? Has a play65 affilliate banner in it.
Even Patti is putting her domain up for sale: www.gammon.com. After leaving some backgammon related content up there for years for building up page rank.
They all make a few bucks and put in a huge amount of effort, just like me. I tried to keep this running without ads and having sponsor memberships. I didn't see you guys donating. In fact i got only 5 donations in all these 6 years fibsboard is running. And they weren't substantial ones.
And then i didn't even mention the bots i hosted for over for years. I begged for someone to host them for me because they where costing me too much money, but i don't see you guys volunteering.
The power the computer consumed costs $180 a year, i also provided the hardware the bandwidth. I did that for four years, figure it out!

Yes, you are shortsighted!

And BTW, i do play on fibs, yes, but occasionally and mostly under another nick. When i log in as Webrunner i get messages all the time and some people make it a habit of insulting me and my family.

But you keep up your fantasy or little play, whatever. I am sure most people are sain enough to see how things really are.
And may i remind you Vic, that YOU asked me to host a place for your pic of the week? I had ads on fibsboard then already. It didn't seem to mind you back then?

I wanted to make Fibsboard a little broader. Dorbel has graciously added a view articles, i added some new features and thought i would add a little extra something with GE these tournaments. The fact that quite some people played tells me that this was appreciated.I didn't see any harm because there are more money making tournaments on fibs like the Fibs Spring Tournament and the Fibs Fall tournament.

What in gods name am i doing wrong?
I really don't get it...

[Zorba]

You're doing a good job IMO webrunner. If people don't like websites with commercial banners, fine. Just don't come here then.

The idea that you'd be getting rich over the back of all the efforts by other people over the past 14(?) years is laughable and I think you demonstrated it well, with the examples of other (slightly) commercial activities related to FIBS and showing people some of the costs you're facing and the general lack on voluntary contributions to pay for that.

That said, I hope the person posting here as "GammonEmpire" (perhaps a real name as well would be nicer) will not engage in personal discussions and keep it to GammonEmpire related stuff only. Just my opinion, but it just seems more appropriate to me.

Keep up the good work webrunner! 

[burper]

Chill brother. In what way did I act like it was not allowed? Power to you!
Maybe your response was mostly directed to Vic, so ok.

*My* only point, was in helping you understand some of the backlash you might get from some directions.
Fibsboard appears to be a labor of love for you rather than something you count on to put food on the table.
Others will certainly disagree. Noone is forcing them to read the GE stuff if they are not interested. Maybe
it would help to separate the announcements into Fibs announcements and GE announcements?

I acknowledge the corrections to my list. Not everything I noted was ad-free, and some was shareware.
We could argue various peoples' intentions all day, but I prefer not. Whatever yours really are, the truth
is that this place has been enjoyed by many. And I forgot about the bot hosting you did: thanks for that too.

I gave up "my little fantasy" a long time ago.

Now give up yours You must know better then I, from having run all these forums, that people will argue no matter what you do. For some people, its' probably the reason they come at all!

[webrunner]

Thanks Zorba for these positive words. 

Yes Burper, my reaction was mainly aimed at Vic, but partially also aimed at setting some things straight you implied in your post (wich i only edited to make the list more readable BTW).
I just want people to open their eyes and see how it all really is. 

I know some people will always try to make some noise etc. That is not a problem. I was more annoyed about the way Vic "talked" to GE, it just showed lack of manners.

Also, GE will only post on its own forums. It was me who put the announcements on the front page, just to reach a broader audience, mainly because it is new to fibsboard.

All the news i get submitted will come on the front page, as long as it is backgammon related. Everyone is free to submit topics.