The backgammon world is excited with the recent discovery that the doubling cube was invented by Russian royalty scion known as Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich.

 Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia is the inventor of the doubling cube

Up until now it was argued that the doubling cube was introduced to the backgammon world around the 1920s (though the basic concept of doubling was familiar from the game of golf). Now, more than 80 years after the invention changed modern backgammon and turned it into a faster, strategier and much more exciting game, Frank Frigo, the 1994 World Backgammon Champion spread the word and his collectors copy of 1930 The New Yorker, according to which Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia is the inventor of the doubling cube.                                                                              

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia died in 1941, and most of the people surrounded the 1920 backgammon circuit are probably no longer with us, so no can approve or disapprove the accuracy of this claim. Anyway, let’s find out more on the guy who supposably invented the doubling cube: 

• Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was born in 1891 to the Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia and Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark. His grandfather was Alexander II of Russia.
• In 1916 he was involved in the murder of Rasputin, a controversial Russian mystic who was related to the Tsar family. Similar to the doubling cube story, his exact involvement in the assassination have not been solved yet. However, recent studies show that he was the one who shot Rasputin (after the poisoning did not work as fast as planned), yet the blame was laid on his partner Prince Felix Yusupov, to guarantee Dmitri rise to the throne.

Ra Ra Rasputin

• While Dmitri was away on the Persian front, his family was murdered by the Bolsheviks. He immigrated to London and never came back to his homeland, and obviously never reached to the throne.
• Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was known as a womanizer. His black list includes Russian ballerina Vera Karalli, the Duchess of Marlborough, Coco Chanel, and his Rasputin murder associate, Felix Yusupov.
• During his affair with French fashion designer Coco Chanel, the two had developed the Chanel No. 5 perfume, one of the world’s most popular perfumes till our days.
• Dmitri wed American heiress Audrey Emery and the couple raised one son in Florida.
• Living in America, Dmitri played an active part in the high society social life, where backgammon tournaments were a common leisure.

What Board Game Are You?

I am boggle, thus incredibly creative and resourceful, able to dig deep and think outside the box, a non linear thinker, don’t like following directions and draw constant inspiration from the strangest places.

Is there any backgammon out there?

And if so, what are the main characteristics of a backgammon person? He/she has to be analytical, patient yet quick minded with capability to plan things ahead and rescue themselves out of impasses. And they’ve got to love to play board games.

Thanks to Stello for the inspiration (who admits she’s more into backgammon although she’s as witty and clever as a game of scrabble) .

Play65 quiz had just come back from a short break last week, and it is already rolling. A new backgammon quiz was asked yesterday and submission forms are being sent nonstop. Before we go over this week, 23rd quiz, let’s give our curious, impatient readers the answer to last week’s quiz:

Play65 22nd backgammon quiz asked about the 6th Abu Dhabi International Backgammon Championships in 2004, in which one of the participants, a backgammon pro named Andreas Humke won a drawing and was asked to open a door to find the grand prize – apparently not a pair of diamond-studded dice, neither a $10,000 backgammon board and nor a trip around the world, but a brand new car. Same Humke had also lost the championship to Norwegian backgammon pro Arild Idsoe.

Play65 23rd quiz is asking about the Green Bay Packers, an American football team, whose players are known for their passion for backgammon. The question then is what percentage of the team plays backgammon? If you know the answer, press submit and get into the weekly $20 bonus draw.

Play56 is one of the most common typing errors when searching for Play65 online backgammon website. Other frequent mistakes include plai65, pley65, plai56 and plei56. Fortunately for us at Play65, today’s internet tools are programmed to do the thinking for us and to complete our sentences. So, if you’ll accidently type "plai65" in Google’s search field, you’ll be asked in return:

Play65 had recently added two more deposit methods for its real money players: instant banking and paysafecard. 

Instant banking is a new online payment method, in which, similar to the old wire transfer, the player contacts his/her bank to transfer a certain sum of money; yet dissimilar to wire transfer, when using instant banking as an online payment method, the transmission of money is made instantaneously. Instant banking works in Europe, Canada and Australia. 

Paysafecard is a pre-paid card sold in kiosks and retail stores, similar to the CashU card, already in use by Play65 members, except that CashU is only available in the Middle East, while Paysafecard is available all around Europe including Germany, Austria, Spain, Greece, Great Britain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Portugal, Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

So now, with Play65 new payment methods, online backgammon players can choose from a selection of 11 different deposit options.

Play65 Old Deposit Options

Credit Cards

 At the moment, Play65 accepts deposits from Visa, Diners and Mastercard. Play65 credit cards system is extremely safe, using the same SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology commonly used in banks. 

E-Wallets

The popular electronic commerce system, which allows users to make fast and secure money payments online, is available on Play65 in several ways: PayPal (available worldwide; accepts Visa and wire transfer), MoneyBookers (worldwide; accepts Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Diners as well as many local payment systems), NETeller (available worldwide except the US, Turkey and Israel; accepts various credit cards and local bank transfers), Webmoney (specializes in the East European market) and Clickandbuy (popular mainly in Germany). 

Pre-Paid Cards

Cards such as CashU and the newly added Paysafecard are purchased by the user in advance for a certain sum of money and used for any online purchases using the private PIN appears on the card.

A very common payment method online and offline, where the customer has to visit the nearest post office, pay the desirable sum in cash, and then send Play65 cashier the receipt and the reference, and after these get to Play65 offices, the player’s balance is updated. 

Wire Transfer

(See above for the differences between standard Wire Transfer and the new Instant Banking payment method).

Play65 backgammon quiz is back after a short break, with a new question and a brand new winner.

On our last backgammon quiz update, we asked about the magazine that published a whole backgammon book by Lewis Deyong back in 1977. The correct answer is Playboy, which in addition of publishing backgammon books, the famous magazine used to organize backgammon tournaments in its infamous mansion.

The 21st backgammon quiz wondered about the name of the Costa Rica Backgammon Association. In the choice between "Dixie", "Nancy", "Kookla" and "Chica", a new Play65 member of Aberdeen, Scotland marked "Nancy" and got $20 bonus added to her online account.

Nancy

To win $20 bonus in this week’s backgammon quiz, you should, for starters, to mark the correct answer to the following question:

Pro player Andreas Humke was the winner of a drawing for what door prize at the 6th Abu Dhabi International Backgammon Championships in 2004? Is it a pair of diamond-studded dice, a $10,000 backgammon board, new car or a trip around the world?

and a successful business.

playing backgammon near the beach

While for most people playing backgammon on the beach is an ideal form of idleness (in a good sense, hopefully), for selected few, it is a source of inspiration and creation. The establishment of Wet Products Inc, a leading provider of outdoor games, beach, pool, and surf accessories with a $10 million turnover a year is rooted in a sunny, sandy backgammon games played in Los Angeles in the summer of 1980.

Billy, a business and psychology student at University of California, Los Angeles, was preoccupied with two pressing problems: his college thesis and the fact that no backgammon board was found suitable for the beach. By drawing the pattern of a backgammon board on torn pieces of a wetsuit, he solved both issues at once. Beachgammon, the improvised water, sand and sun proof backgammon board, started to grab the attention of the beach goers, so Billy, the creator, decided to base his college project on the product. The theoretical beach accessories company turned to be a real, lucrative business called Wet Products, producing and distributing everything a beach bum needs: from towels to sunscreens, kites, ukulele’s and water guns.

What’s your favorite location for a backgammon game? Some prefer to play backgammon online, from the comfort of their own homes, many others like to play backgammon on the beach. Some others take the "backgammon on the beach" cliché into extreme; they play backgammon underwater, and this is how it looks like:

The 1st Annual UW Backgammon World Championship took place last September at the Mediterranean Sea, in the South East coast of Mallorca, Spain with dozens of adventurous backgammon enthusiasts/scuba divers, and the registration to the 2nd annual event (scheduled to September 2009 at the same place) has already begin. 

As if the playing environment was not stressful enough, the tournament directors of the Underwater Backgammon World Championship added some extra rules to toughen the competition: each player was limited with only one tank, and only one opportunity to get buddy breathing from a single tank in the final. All the backgammon games were taken under the watching goggles of Erik, a backgammon referee of German. 

In addition, the backgammon players had to deal with issues unfamiliar to the over the board backgammon player (not to mention the online backgammon player) such as leveling the backgammon board without creating an underwater sand storm, finding the correct weight of the dice, and so on. Nevertheless, three extreme backgammon players stepped out with medals: Ilya of Greece, at the top followed by Lottie and Henrik, both of Sweden.

How much are you willing to pay to play online backgammon incognito, without dragging your reputation (if you have any) and the number that represents your level of skill, i.e. the rating points? 

Play65 newly launched dark room allows you to play online backgammon anonymously; instead of your famous or infamous username, a uniform "anonymous" will appear on the players’ names columns and the only exposed details would be the desired stake and limit, the game’s length, speed and score. Neither your rating points nor a flag that represents your homeland will be revealed. 

• It reduces the rakes, since no commission is taken for the differences in rating points
• It shortens the time it takes to select a game partner – you choose your opponent based on his/her suggested stake and limits.
• You can play against world famous backgammon players without even knowing who they are…