Skill Games – Skill Gaming

Archive for June, 2009

A cracking golfing game currently in beta pulls out all of the stops to give even the Xboxes and PS2’s a run for their money. A free to play online golfing game played direct in your browser window. With a great social networking platform keeping in touch with your golfing buddies is a sinch. World Golf Tour at www.wgt.com is one of the best golfing games we’ve played with 3D realism, customisation of your character, golf clubs and accessories, definately worth playing.

World Golf Tour “EPlay” ratings:  5/5

Are you a thief?

How many of you affiliates have bypassed someone’s affiliate link and gone straight to the source?

I know in the past we have. DOH!! (A Homer moment)

The effect of this action alone is devastating to the affiliate industry as a whole. The companies that affiliates promote are rubbing their hands in glee on just this action. Affiliate marketing is an up and coming industry not only does it make great business sense for the main companies as they are saving a small fortune in advertising but it also allows the average person to make a small commission in inviting the prospect to the company’s website.

If you have been guilty of bypassing affiliate links think carefully about your actions and do not forget the law of Karma as it will bite you back. Affiliates these days are going to ever increasing lengths to protect their affiliate links and thus protect their commissions. The work involved in putting together a website or a blog for that matter is time consuming even more so when links have to be cloaked.

Fortunately, this does not apply to the majority of affiliates who we believe are good, honest, upstanding global citizens but the bad apples and every cart has bad apples are putting a dampener on a great industry. In the end it is only the “people” that lose out. The companies just get richer but a little faster than normal as they are saving on the advertising revenue.

We are living in a world it seems that the closer we all become due to the internet, and social networks, the further away we are to each other and that will produce even more of a fragmented and alienated society.

Personally our advice is not to make these companies any richer than they already are but to spread the wealth. Money is made round to go around.

GameDuell one of the largest gaming communities to date that features skill gaming where you are competing against an opponent for victory either for cash or just for the fun of it. Gameduell offers up some real classic games such as Yatzy, Pool, Tetris and Backgammon to name but a few. It is a free gaming platform and has around 10 million registered players with over 200,000 games played daily.

Upon registering, your account is credited with some “Geoffrey Dollars” 1,000.00 G£ of free practice money, which allows you to play as free players experiencing you to only half the fun and you have 6 months to spend it in. Once this has gone, you can email the customer support to request more but only twice. The depositing of a minimum of 10 pounds is sufficient for you to continue with this tenner your account is credited with an extra bonus and at the time of writing this was 25%. There is no obligation for you to use this money and can continue to play the free games. Personally a “tenner” is well worth it plus this is also a method of age verification since this site is for 18yrs plus.

[BLURB: German legislation differentiates between permitted skill games and legally restricted games of chance and their take on the matter is;

"In games of luck, a win or loss is not determined, in accordance with the terms of contract, as a substantial result of a participant's abilities, knowledge, or level of concentration but rather purely or primarily by chance, that is to say, the participant has little or no influence on the game results." (BGHST 9, 37 = NJW 56, 679) "In contrast, - unrestricted - skill games are considered games in which the average participant possesses at least a 50% chance of determining the result of the game by his own skill. The lack of skill on the part of particular participants is unimportant. Only the average is relevant so that the character of the game can be uniformly judged."

[I feel a poker soapbox moment coming on.]

What are the games like as a whole?

Pretty standard, having not having played all of them there are a few “The Wizard” likes. Pool, Darts, Backgammon, Yatzy, to name a few but when there are games like Match 4, (connect 4 over here) and no disrespect to connect 4 but the enthusiasm wanes after a while. The game interaction is good with chat box facilities although from a gaming perspective they just do not hold the attention long enough being spoilt with the 3D gaming arena.

GameDuell “EPlay” ratings:  2/5