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BGonline.org Forums
Attention Students and Federations
Posted By: Jack Mack In Response To: Attention Students and Federations (TraumaBG)
Date: Sunday, 11 September 2016, at 8:23 p.m.
Playing without the cube and rules geared for gambling will not get new players interested in the game directly, obviously because they won't know the difference. However, moving away from gambling will make it more harmless, respectable, worthy of sponsoring by reputable people and businesses.
Gambling is a real addictive disorder that ruins careers, families, lives! Ever heard of "gamblers anonymous"?
"Anonymous" because it's a shameful thing. Even though people may be intruiged enough to watch movies about them, society does not respect gamblers but instead looks down on them as parasited who don't produce/contribute anything good.
And finally, you are completely wrong about "the game at its highest level bing played for money".
There may be an unknown number of word-class palyers out there who never play at the "highest levels" simply because they may not want to mingle with gamblers and want to have nothing to do with playing for money.
The "classic backgammon" and its variations are indeed very popular in many countries around the world. The problem for these guys is not that "backgammon" is not popular enough but that those millions of people are not playing it for money and are not customers for what these guys are marketing...
Not to say that there isn't bias in Olympics, but if people had to pay entry fees to compete, it would become even more questionable who are the best athletes in the world.
What I see is a small number of backgammon gamblers who have created a world of their own, where they exalt the best gamblers among them, NOT the best backgammon players in the real world...
That in itself is not so bad but they do give backgammon a bad name, as a gambling inducing game to be avoided. :(
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