Recently I renewed my subscription to GT. As I did so, I thought a good slogan for that would be “invest in fun!” Sometimes I am playing games when I ought to be doing more practical things, but GT is also a social activity, my version of having a beer at the neighborhood bar, (especially since I’m a teetotaler!). There are many times when I’m paying more attention to the conversation I’m having with my opponent, than to the game itself. That could also account for why the numbers in my defeated column is higher than wins. Yeah, that’s the reason!
I’ve continued to try several new games each year. This year so far I’ve tried Connect Six, which is just like Go-Moku, but you can place 2 marbles instead of one. Quarto, which sounded easy until I realized I need to prevent the other player lining up pieces, as well as lining up my own. I have a habit of forgetting someone else is aiming for the same goal as I am at the same time. And just this week I took the plunge to try Xiangqi,also called “Chinese chess”, after an unexpected invitation. The instructions seemed very clear, just a matter of learning how each piece moves, just like in regular chess. The graphics allow for Western symbols or Chinese characters, so I decided to go with the Western symbols while I learn & then switch to the authentic pieces & memorize the characters, once I know what I’m doing.
And though it’s not a new game, I started playing Chinese checkers here. There’s a two person version played on a diamond shaped board, which was very startling the first time. I am so used to the traditional star shaped playing field. That’s one of the few games I learned as a child, on a metal board from the 1960’s, with painted dragons curling around the edges. I still have it, too.
Last year I learned Fidchell, which has one of the most pleasing boards on the entire site, all Celtic knots and ancient sculptures. It’s a fun game, but not as popular as it was when it debuted.
This year, I’m looking forward to playing the newest GT game, Nine-men Morris, which is currently on the Beta site. I used to try out games there, but soon realized I forgot about the beta section & always timed out. So now I practice patience until the games move to the regular site. That particular game was mentioned in a book I read recently about the Dark Ages, evidently having been around for centuries, so it’s cool that it will soon be on GT.
So, there’s always new games to learn and people to meet here, a place that’s good for our hearts as well as our brains. (July 2017)

I continue to enjoy games and make friends here at GT. That's led to a sad realization,though. Within the last year, two GT pals have suddenly disappeared and no one knows what happened. One was having a lot of serious health problems and wasn't sure how long he had, but the other had been doing well for quite a few months. Though they were known and liked by a lot of people, no one had contact info for either of them, so there was no way to gain any further knowledge of what happened to them. Because of this, I would like to urge everyone who has been on GT for at least a year to make sure that someone you trust has your phone number or address or a way of contacting someone connected to you so that your friends on GT can learn if you're in the hospital, have a broken computer or if something else has happened. People care about you and you're important to them, even if the only place you've ever met is on opposite sides of a virtual game board. Computer friends are no less important than friends in real life, the connection is just as real. I like many of my computer friends more than some of my relatives and neighbors, we have more in common and know each other better.
Many people have spouses or siblings also playing on GT and they are usually mentioned on each others profile pages, which is a great way to give us someone to ask if they are missing. Maybe this is something Club owners & presidents might do for their members, to either collect contact info voluntarily and keep it privately or to urge each other to share the info with close GT friends?
Because nearly all of us has made an impression on at least some of our opponents or acquaintances here and when someone suddenly stops playing, we worry and wonder. We miss you. And if the worst has happened, that you are no longer on the planet with us, we want to mourn you and most of all, remember you.

Well, the Summer Olympics are over and I won half of my games of Halma, which I was content with. The Winter ones are always something to look forward to, a bright spot in the cold weather months. I've already begun thinking of what games I want to play in them, maybe 2 different games this time?
This past week I actually won all of my games in a site-wide tournament, which I don't think has ever happened before.It was in Dice Pipes and suddenly on Friday I was seeing completely different ways to connect my pipes, which led to me finishing 3 games in my favor on Saturday, where I swept my division.I know I could get crushed as the division winner play each other, but I enjoyed the strange sense of victory that afternoon. It was so unusual. Is that what athletes feel all the time? No wonder they are so cool and confident. It was a weird, but happy experience, which will probably never be repeated. lol
My initial enthusiasm for Domination caused me to sign up for way too many games of it, many of which are ongoing. I seriously underestimated how long it took to properly make a move and sometimes my rushing through them lead to losing them in short order. It's really a game where the board must be studied & various options considered before making a move. I'm hoping that I don't hate the game by the time I get the numbers down to a manageable amount.
I have ventured into card games after someone accidentally sent me an invitation for Switch, which turned out to be easy to learn, yet having enough strategy not to be boring. Last week, I decided to try Mau Mau, which is very similar, though with different cards having "special powers". Eventually, I'd like to get brave enough to try the more traditional card games such as Whist or Hearts. Wasn't Whist popular in Victorian times?
Recently I returned to Reversi after years of not playing and it will be curious to see if the break refreshes my interest. I continue to flail in Camelot and it's so easy for people to sneak past me in Go Moku. I get distracted by the pretty marble colors while my opponents line theirs up in a row.
I really need to rein in sign ups, as I have the craft shows coming up in Nov. and Dec., so I'll need to be online less to prepare for them. But it's so hard to resist!

It's a year later and I'm preparing for my third Olympics, having been in the Winter ones and now the Summer ones are here again. I'm playing Halma again this time. In the Winter games, I just played Scrambled Eggs, which I was very new at and well, let's just draw a curtain over that pert.
One of my goals on GT is to try some new games each year. This year I'm learning Mahjong, a game I've wanted to play for ages and is very similar to American Rummikub, at first glance. But there are all sorts of finer points, which take much longer to learn, and that's what I'm working on now, with the help of some terrific teachers.
Another game I'm trying is Domination, which I'm really enjoying. Unfortunately, I've also become obsessed with it, so I want to play a million games of it, meaning I might get more than I bargained for. I've also tried the Euro variant, which is played the same, except the territories are smaller and just on 2 continents.It took me forever to figure out the mechanics of simply adding armies and attacking, but once I did, I wanted to play more, more, more! I really need to be careful, because I'm short and doesn't that lend itself to a Napoleon complex? Bad joke, I know, but I couldn't resist.
I'm also making another attempt at Camelot, whose graphics really appeal to me, but I've yet to grasp even the basic movements. They have all those horsey names, so you'd think I could understand them, but maybe the horse angle is distracting? Yes, I'm sure that's it, that's the reason I'm so awful at it.
And it's not the awfulness that bothers me, as I'm awful at Go Moku, but at least I understand how to play the game. Same with Chess. But it's disturbing that I can't even figure out which way my little soldiers are supposed to go. However, the single opponent I'm playing now is inclined to help novices, so I'm hoping that with their help, I can stop my stumbling about the field.
With those three new games, I should probably refrain from tackling any more for a few months. And then there is the Summer Olympics, which are a bit less intimidating this time around, but still feel quite important. I've certainly got enough challenges for the near future!

It's here. It's the night before. Tomorrow my division of the Summer Olympics starts. And I'm nervous, of course I'm nervous. Because I've been so intimidated by the idea of the Olympics, I only signed up for one game, Halma, so I didn't feel overwhelmed. I'm half decent in that game, meaning I don't lose ALL of the time. I'm probably going to be facing some much better players and while I won't even think about winning a medal, only hope that I don't lose every single game. Even if I do lose all of the games, I'll still have my profile token that I participated, so that's something.
When I told my sister a few weeks ago that I was going to be in the Olympics, she burst out laughing.Which is the proper response to someone as uncoordinated and out of shape as I am. She didn't really slow down laughing after I explained they were computer Olympics. She just doesn't understand.
I know that tomorrow when I get online there will be all the new games, important games, Olympic games to play. And I can't take forever to make my moves like I usually do. I have to make my little bridges and get my marbles to the other side and quickly.
I should've been training, lifting marbles to build up my strength, drinking Gatorade to build up my sporty attitude. Maybe getting some athletic shoes to replace the bedroom slippers I usually wear while playing?
But it's too late, there's no time, the starting gun will go off tomorrow and the race for the gold is on. I will accept the challenge and give it 110%. Go, go, go!

Since I've had more art shows than usual this summer, I've cut back on some of my GT activities. I've resigned my officer positions in 2 Clubs and I have been resisting tournaments for the most part. I've also neglected my blog too. I did find that GT has a few tournaments with long time outs, called Slow Poke Tournaments, which are just my speed.
My new game adventures have really taken off, with mixed results. Rummikub has become one of my favorites & I've even won a few games. I still haven't tried any of the other variants, but will eventually. Small Chess is new and lots of fun, though at times it feels like Pac Man with the constant gobbling of each other's pieces. It can go very fast and feels reckless, but isn't hard to learn, because everything works the same except for a smaller board & fewer pieces.
Right now, I'm trying to master Barricade, which is new to GT and played on a board with really nice graphics of a wooden board with inlaid Goldie silhouettes.I first tried Small Barricade & even developed a strategy. Then I signed up for regular Barricade & found that the main difference is that the vertical paths are the ones blocked by the Barricade pegs, making it trickier. However. if your move lands on on of the Barricade pegs, you can move it, supposedly to block your opponent, but in my case, more often myself, lol.
Someone had invited me to a game of Mobius Moguls, which I thought was similar to Monopoly, but I could never tell which direction I was supposed to be moving, much less any of the finer points, so I resigned in my hopelessness. Don't need that aggravation!
I also took the plunge of registering for the Summer Olympics, but more about that in the next entry!

Well, I've been playing the new games and thus have gotten answers for my questions in the previous post. In Marked Halma, I put the marked marble in the corner and waited for the confetti and bells to begin. But that's not the end of the game. Like regular Halma, all the marbles must be in place first before victory is declared, so it's not much different really, which makes it an easy variation to learn.
Dice Chess has more restrictive moves, determined by the number on the dice corresponding to which piece one can move and yet, I still managed to lose my first game of it in something like 4 moves.That brought back memories from when I first started playing online chess & was trounced regularly soon after games began. Thankfully, these days it takes me longer to lose. Except, evidently in Dice Chess.
I've become a bit obsessive about Rummikub and have many games going, so it's a crash course of learning. I'm now trying to notice if I can make a series of numbers(1,2,3,4) instead of just multiples(3,3,3). For some reason, it's hard for me to do both, but I'm trying to improve. Several opponents are being very helpful with tips and I think that's making a big difference.
A couple clubs that I belong to have a tradition of starting tournaments to mark a member's birthday, which I think is a great way to celebrate. Since my birthday was last weekend, one club started an Outbreak Ataxx tourney and another started a Rummikub one, both to honor my Big Day. It's a very festive thing to do and I'm sure I'm not the only one to appreciate it.

Apparently my quest for adventure arrived sooner than expected and I've tried several new games with varying success. GT introduced a number of new variants and games at the beginning of 2014 and two were close enough to familiar games that I felt confident enough to sign up for tournaments of them. So now I'm playing Dice Chess and Marked Halma. The latter is different in having the corner piece surrounded by a colored square and reminds me of that cartoon where someone sewed their shadow to their feet. What cartoon was that? Was it Mickey Mouse? The "marked' marble has to end up in the corner opposite, but I don't know if the game is determined by that single marble or if the rest have to be in their corner as well. Guess I will see!

Another completely new game I tried was Gami, a card game. I was awful at it! I didn't have a good grasp of the rules & even the parts I thought I understood, didn't work out, so the whole thing was a total failure. Perhaps I might try it again in the far distant future or maybe I'll just wince whenever I see the word "gami" from now on.

A far better experience is one I'm having with Rummikub.With some very helpful opponents, I've actually managed to get a grip on the rules and continue to refine my understanding of the strategy.There's no math involved, which I'm thankful for, it's just grouping cards according to their numbers and colors. It's quite fun and I'm really enjoying it.The variants seem too different at this time, but I'm hoping to eventually try some of the others. But it may be like dominoes, in which Fives and Threes has been the only kind I like and will play.

The other exciting thing to happen has been my appearance in the newsletter, twice in the Feb. edition. I finally wrote my very belated testimonial and I also won the Caption Contest for the Jan. picture.I had put my caption down weeks ago and had actually forgotten about it, though I recall there was a lot of funny entries. So I was astonished when I won. That was a terrific surprise and really started off the month on a high note.

At last, craft shows and holiday activities are over(except for taking down & putting away the decorations), so I'll have more time to play games.Though I do need to get some painting and book reviews done too. lol I greatly enjoyed the many Christmas icons people had, some even told little stories, which I thought was very clever. I was a little disappointed that there aren't new year icons, but maybe there were time or idea constraints.
I don't make resolutions for the new year, because they cause way too much pressure on my already nervous disposition, but I always set a few art goals and I thought maybe I ought to set a couple goals for GT. For starters, I'd like to finally write that Nugget I've been thinking about for months, it won't be full of helpful hints, since I'm not very good at any of the games, but will be more of a humor piece. Or attempted humor, maybe? We will see. I'd also like to write some stuff for the newsletter, but other than the requested testimonial, I'm not sure what topic I could work on. It wouldn't be a regular thing(the pressure, again) but maybe a one off or something. I'll investigate the possibilities.
The other main goal is to learn at least 1 new game here at GT. Something very different than the ones I play now, just for the challenge. Perhaps a card game? I know this will take a bit of courage, since there's quite a few which are downright intimidating, but if there's one that seems easier to unravel, I'll take the plunge.
So those are things I'll look forward to in the new year, in addition to getting to know my fellow players better. There's so many nice people on this site and we talk about so many different things, I'm hoping that continues in the future. To everyone on GT, may you have a happy, victorious 2014!

That North American holiday, Thanksgiving, is next week and the original meaning of the day is to give thanks for the blessings in one's life. That usually gets lost in recipes, football games, parades, family tiffs and shopping plans.

My holiday is very, very low key compared to most people, so I really do reflect on the good things in my life. In the past, I've even made lists of things I'm grateful for, one for each year of my age. Of course, that number is going up as I get older.

This year, one of the things I'm most thankful for is this game site and the people I've met here.While I've only known them a few months,most of the people have been overly kind. I've had some wonderful conversations and learned new things and had some laughs. There's been times when I've had a bad day or not felt well and came here to distract myself and the friendly interaction has boosted my spirits and made the rest of the day go better.

Sometimes it seems like there's only bad news out in the world, filled with people who do awful things. But here at GT, there's an attitude of friendliness and a genuine sense of community. It's remarkable and very refreshing and gives one hope for humanity. Thank you for being you, Gold Token!

And Happy Turkey Day!

As anyone who knows me, knows I like icons. I often forget a player's name, but remember what icon they have. Halloween has brought oodles of new icons to this site & at least temporarily, I must try to remember people's actual names instead of the little animation alongside.

Even though I hate the spooky aspects of Halloween, I do like some parts of it, which now includes the icons here at GT. So far, I haven't seen any scary ones, thank goodness, so it's been a fun thing. It's amazing how many different ones there are!

There's a lot involving black cats, which I appreciate. And more than expected of bats, which are a favorite group of animals for me. The bats usually aren't zoologically accurate, but still amusing. One of the funniest so far is a cartoon vampire who opens his cape and poof! turns into a bat. The vampire isn't scary, he looks like a grumpy teenager, actually. And there's wide variety of witches too. One is riding her broom like a race car, which is appropriate, since she belongs to a NASCAR fan. And plenty of pumpkins, sometimes with a black cat perched atop.

It's been nice to reclaim some of the fun aspects of Halloween, which increasingly emphasizes the horror angle. But like so many other things on this site, GT takes a higher road and the silly and cute Halloween icons makes me smile instead.

My learning curve continues on GT. I am finally learning how to play dominoes properly after months of playing it without a clue. After a scoreless round or two of Fives and Threes, a kind opponent commiserated about my lack of scoring tiles and this lead to the discovery that the end of the tiles had to be divisible to earn points. Eureka! Until then, I had simply been matching the colors of the dots. I'm really not a bimbo. Really. And the irony is that I'd actually won a few games playing in this manner. But now I know there's math involved, which worries me, as I was terrible at math in school. But it's not like I have to find the square root of anything, it's just simple counting. I may even set a pocket calculator by the computer for backup if needed. Just in case, you understand.

This week also brought a million new games to my Game Sheet. Too many, way too many. I not only signed up for a club tournament which started on Monday, but I had forgotten that I also enrolled in a site wide tournament which began on Thursday. WHAT WAS I THINKING? Now I have twice as many games as I've ever had before and some of them are, yes, domino variations.Which now take longer to play because of all that counting. Thank heavens the games have several days time limits.

So while I may miss the method of just joining the pretty colored dots, it's great to see my score as more than zero for numerous rounds. I still may lose most of the time, but at least my brain will get a workout, now.

I passed the 100 mark within the last couple of days. That would be the 100 Wood Token mark, which means I've lost more than 100 games. With so much wood, I could have a big BBQ or have quite a few toasty fires in my fireplace, if I had one. Or a more positive use of them would be to build something. Probably not a house, but that's just a matter of time, I'm sure.

There is a nice handful of Silver tokens in my collection and more Gold ones than expected. I think of them as self-standing little medals. It's Gold Token Bling!

It's a good thing I enjoy playing the games themselves, or all those losses would bother me. But then, I'm not a very competitive person, so that helps too. I have sampled a number of games just from curiosity and even when I'm awful at them, view it as a learning experience. There's some that I don't completely understand that I've tried playing, like certain variations of checkers, that I might be better at if I had a firmer grasp of the rules. There's others that have poetic names, such as Dragon's Breath, that I haven't a clue about and others, like Camelot, which have terrific graphics. There are some games whose explanations are too intimidating, they set off alarms in the part of my brain which hates math.

There's certain ones like the Shake games and Dominoes that I never played before, but dived in and am actually improving at. I still don't completely understand how dominoes is scored, though I managed to figure out Double Twelves Fives and Threes. And for awhile, I was fixated on the cribbage board which accompanies that one.

The important thing is I'm having fun, learning things and meeting some very nice people. And that's a terrific way to stay inside, away from the humid heat of an Ohio summer.

My xanga blog never got many comments, so I was really surprised when I got a lot of response from my very first blog post on this site. One extremely generous person even gave me a coin. She didn't even know me, but gave me a coin with a little bee on it, which is very cheerful. Other people explained how to get icons next to names & various technical details. All that help was really startling and I was amazed at "the kindness of strangers".

Which brings me to the main point of this post; why are there so many nice people on this site? People chat during games, write private messages, comment on photos, comfort each other on the loss of a pet or person, it's really remarkable. So far I've not met anyone nasty or mean, there's an astonishing amount of genuine kindness here.

While I've seen a similar sense of community in private groups and an actor's message board, it seems unusual for a game site. After all, we are competing against each other, so you'd think that would bring out a more guarded and sharp-edged part of our personalities, but it doesn't. And I think when people join GT, they find the culture of kindness & thus learn the proper behavior. It's a lesson on how a community can affect our everyday actions and I can't help but wish that good feeling could spread to other places.

Since becoming a Silver member last week, I've been trying to find out more about the bells and whistles on the site. One of the things I've been curious about is how some people have so many Tokens, oftentimes rows and rows of them. I have been given 2 which were a happy surprise.

After digging around, I've learned that you can just buy Tokens! Or some of them at least, there's certain ones you can only win by playing in games and tournaments, etc. which is what I thought all of them were. But no, there's a whole bunch that can be bought with varying amounts of Golderoes. So now maybe I can add to my little collection? I especially like the one with a fox on and the Knight Templar.

I'd also like a little icon next to my name, which I've now learned can be requested on a certain page. But none of those available really strike my fancy. The complex ones are only for higher paying levels, but they do have one of the Outbreak characters for Silver members, but it's not my little red raspberry, unfortunately. I'm trying to work up the nerve to ask if it will be added in the future, but that may take at least a few days.

I could always get the Ohio flag, but I'd rather have something more personal than my location. lol