March 2011

GoldToken's Monthly News

Enter GoldToken's Club Banner Contest! The winning banner will be given one full year to run! All entries will rotate with the other banners on top of player game sheets until April 3rd; the sooner you enter, the more exposure your banner will have. The entry deadline is March 29th. A site wide poll will be posted for voting on March 30th. To enter, post a new, never before seen 615x70 pixel club banner on the Club Presidents DB along with the club number.


All of GoldToken's players are special. But each year, we want to recognize those who stand out over and above the norm. GoldToken's Player Of The Year is not only a great player, but also one that is helpful, friendly, and makes playing here a joy. Each year, the top players of each game category who have not won in prior years will be selected in a special poll for the players vote. The poll for 2010's Player of the Year will run on Wednesday March 9th. Please vote for the most helpful and friendly player on the list!

to the creative graphic efforts of marcmandy, and Mecir's coding skills, Hex has arrived on GoldToken along with these exciting variants:

• Small Hex and Large Hex are variants played on a differently sized board
• Chameleon Hex is a variant where players can use pieces of either color
• Hex-Y is a variant played on a triangular board
• Havannah is a variant played on a hexagon-shaped board, with more diverse and complex goals
• Small Havannah and Tiny Havannah are smaller variants of Havannah

Three new discussion boards have recently been added:

• - for the writer in all of us.
• - for GoldToken's word lovers
• Profile Image Requests - where players can post requests for their desired GoldToken Profile Pictures

Save gas, park your car and play on GoldToken!

--Badger

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In this month's newsletter, we have:

• Birthdays & Special Announcements
• Player Appreciation
• 1st Stop Information
• marcmandy's CrossWords
• Olympic News
• Game Of The Month
• Best Recipe Contest
• Up Front & Personal
• Testimonial Of The Month
• Interesting Club Of The Month
• Club Announcements
• Tournament News

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Birthdays & Special Announcements

Birthday Wishes:

-- Happy Birthday to brown eyed girl on March 2nd!
-- Happy Birthday to Kiki on March 3rd! - From { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to grmrefr on March 4th!
-- Happy Birthday to Apex Predator RKO on March 5th!
-- Happy Birthday to marshagee on March 6th! - From The What's Cookin' Club & { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to Kat on March 6th! - From { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to catlover on March 7th! - From { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to darkest angel 70 on March 8th!
-- Happy Birthday to nasher on March 9th!
-- Happy Birthday to stormy rebel on March 9th! - From { Club } & { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to faith64 on March 11th!
-- Happy Birthday to FixitDave on March 11th!
-- Happy Birthday to DOTY on March 11th! - From { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to Jaybar on March 12th!
-- Happy Birthday to stones- A - rama on March 12th!
-- Happy birthday to IRISH on March 13th!
-- Happy Birthday to wldndn on March 14th! - From your sister Kat Happy Birthday Sis!! I love you!!
-- Happy Birthday to paganje on March 17th!
-- Happy Birthday to DEG on March 19th!
-- Happy Birthday to TaUrUsRoSe on March 21st! The Backgammon Tournament Club
-- Happy Birthday to KathyD on March 22nd!
-- Happy Birthday to Man of Steel on March 23rd! - From your wife B*Elanna,
-- Happy Birthday to Electric Dreams on March 23rd!
-- Happy Birthday to Summer Flame on March 24th!
-- Happy birthday to latenite on March 24th! From The MasterClass Club
-- Happy Birthday to djf88 on March 24th!
-- Happy Birthday to cowboy on March 24th! - From { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to mickeymouse on March 27th! - From { Club }, { Club }, The Friendship Club & { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to denboy on March 28th!
-- Happy Birthday to WereWolf on March 30th { Club }
-- Happy Birthday to Amanda on March 31st!

* If you would like to announce any birthdays, anniversaries or other special events coming up for next month, please send GoldToken Support a message before the 25th of this month, so we can give them a shout out in next month's newsletter! (Please keep all announcements upcoming and not belated. Announcements submitted after the newsletter is published, can not be put in after the fact, we're sorry!)

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Player Appreciation

CATCHER211

A most talented photographer who has decided to go off and pursue her dreams! With deep appreciation for all you've done Rebecca, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You stepped in years ago during a time when help was needed the most and excelled at everything you took on. Your giving ways, loyalty, strong work ethic, helpfulness, devotion and heart of gold shines through in everything you do. You worked night and day for GoldToken and always put your heart and soul into it. We are forever grateful! The news of you stepping down as a Site Manager is bittersweet, as we're sad to see you go but we're extremely happy about the new adventures calling for you with your photography! We wish you the very best in all your endeavors and know that your talent will take you everywhere that you want to go! You are a very special person and we knew that from the start. We all thank you for your devotion in helping GoldToken and for being the amazing person that you are. We will deeply miss you from our teams and will never soon forget anything that you've done for all of us here in GoldToken. Your presence here always exudes your warm and friendly ways, and we will always look forward to seeing you in our games as time allows it! Good luck and best wishes with your website and your photography!

"Good friends are like stars. You don't always see them, but you know they are always there."

Love From: Badger, Matt and our entire Support & Administration teams.

To see Rebecca's photographs, check out her website at: http://rebeccaaldinger.com/index.html

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1st Stop Information

Have a question that you'd like an answer to?

Be sure to check the [ Info ] center located at http://goldtoken.com/games/info or from the link located on the bottom of your GoldToken pages. Answers to many common questions or problems can be found in the corresponding pages.

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Game Of The Month

March's game of the month is Trax! Join us in a fun Double Elimination Tournament by signing up today for The March 2011 Game Of The Month - Trax Tournament

Trax is a two-player abstract strategy game of loops and lines invented by GoldToken's own David Smith in 1980. The game is played with a set of identical square tiles, one side of the tile has red and white straight lines and the other red and white curves.

It sounds easy. Get a loop or line of your color from one side to the other, while attempting to stop your opponent from completing a loop in their color. Play and you will find this is anything but easy!

marcmandy's CrossWords

Brought to you by: marcmandy

Is an amiable gathering of word-type people trying to solve a crossword puzzle together.
When there is an active puzzle, roughly five clues per day are posted at random times to try to cover the 10 or so time zones involved that I know of. With the restriction that each player posts no more than 2 answers for new clues, at least three different people will have a shot at being the first to solve clues every day. The first person to get a word correctly gets credit for the word and is listed at the bottom of the puzzle.

I create the puzzles in Excel, and, as circumstances allow, post a progressively filled puzzle as screen captures with updates the following day so players can see the progress and make educated guesses or educated surmising as tho' they were filling out the puzzle themselves. I provide links to a printable blank puzzle or a printable current state of the puzzle so players can try to make sense of it as they go along.

I have two approximate sizes of puzzles that I create and I characterize them as small or large. It takes a while to create one so there's often a hiatus between puzzles.

We also have another puzzle creator on our discussion board, Dragon Jr, who, as it turns out, creates puzzles for publication. He has already created a couple of puzzles and has expressed interest in adding to our repertoire with cryptic crosswords and/or line crosswords.

The Board has a strong core of players but we've also been growing and welcome new players. Come take a peek and jump right in if it looks interesting! Simply reply to the most recent puzzle and clue posting and put in your answer.

and if you have dabbled in Crossword Creation and would like me to host your creation, send it along to me and I'll look it over!

marcmandy
Chief_cook_and *bottle_washer* and *Cross*eyed* Puzzle_Creator

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Olympic News

Brought to you by: *GoldToken's* Olympic *Presidents*

The Olympics are moving right along and this month we have club standings, player standings and some tournament results. Out of 111 Tournaments 16 are finished. Congratulations to everyone.

Current Leaders

Region with the most points: The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club
Player with the most points: DavidJ

Team Standings

The top five scoring teams so far are:

Club	Score
The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	63.5	Moved up 4 spots in the standings this month
{ Club }	49	Moved up 1 spot in the standings this month
The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Neptune Club	33	Dropped 2 spots in the standings this month
The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	30	First time in the top five
{ Club }	30	Dropped one spot in the standings this month
The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Minerva Club	29	Stayed the same in the standings this month

Player Standings

Top five scoring players so far are:

Player	Score	Club
DavidJ	32.5	{ Club }
Furbster	20	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club
Other Side of the Pillow	17.5	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club
Hamsarnie	15	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club
TrueIndian	15	{ Club }

Tournament Winners this month

The Giveaway Checkers Competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Minerva Club	dama1
SILVER	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	JimC
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Neptune Club	Ray of Light

The Double Trouble Four In a Row competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	{ Club }	DavidJ
SILVER	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	Other Side of the Pillow
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Ceres Club	Lorraine of the Renegades

The Quicksand Four In a Row competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	Other Side of the Pillow
SILVER	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Juno Club	1926
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Apollo Club	willemien

The GoldFences competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	Hamsarnie
SILVER	{ Club }	TrueIndian
BRONZE	{ Club }	kiwiyeti
BRONZE	{ Club }	funtobewith11

The ConnectaPipe competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	{ Club }	DavidJ
SILVER	{ Club }	funtobewith11
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Minerva Club	McGoo98

The Wrench It competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	{ Club }	TrueIndian
SILVER	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	Hamsarnie
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Minerva Club	McGoo98

The Drain Pipe competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	{ Club }	DavidJ
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Apollo Club	Straycat
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	Specialsteel

The Shake Your Bootie competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	Furbster
SILVER	{ Club }	nancy7
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	catpaws

The Lucky Trax competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	Furbster
SILVER	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	dawn1968
BRONZE	{ Club }	hoot
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	Jacob1987
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Pluto Club	Lz
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Vulcan Club	sweeteyes

The Xiphiastoo competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	corrie m
GOLD	{ Club }	M3
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Minerva Club	McGoo98

The Xiphias competition

MEDAL	CLUB WINNER	INDIVIDUAL WINNER
GOLD	{ Club }	M3
GOLD	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Jupiter Club	sallyp
BRONZE	{ Club }	jfromfl
BRONZE	The 2015 Winter Olympic Team Apollo Club	Sir Face of the GoldTable

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Best Recipe Contest

March's winner is: Easy Asian Beef Noodle
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Submitted by Gypsyfire

Easy Asian Beef Noodle

INGREDIENTS:

4oz uncooked angel hair pasta (capellini), broken in half
8oz fresh sugar snap peas
5 tsps vegetable oil
1lb boneless beef sirloin steak, cut into 1/4-inch strips
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup teriyaki baste and glaze (from 12-oz bottle)
4 medium green onions with tops, sliced (1/4 cup)
1/2 cup honey-roasted peanuts, chopped

DIRECTIONS:

Cook pasta as directed on package. Meanwhile, snip off stem ends of sugar snap peas and remove strings if desired. Drain pasta; cover to keep warm.
In 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat 3 teaspoons of the oil over medium-high heat. Stir-fry beef in oil about 2 to 3 minutes, until no longer pink. Remove from skillet; keep warm.
In same skillet, heat remaining 2 teaspoons oil over medium-high heat. Stir-fry peas and carrot in oil about 3 to 4 minutes, until crisp-tender. Stir in pasta, beef and teriyaki baste and glaze; toss until well blended.
Serve in bowls; sprinkle with onions and peanuts.





GoldToken's ** will receive a "one time" access to the entire list of site icons, and can select any one that is not currently being used by another player, regardless of membership level (Silver and Wood members can keep the icon for 1 year!). Please send a big to Gypsyfire!

March's recipe contest is: "Pancakes - sweet or savoury". The winner will be given a "one time" access to the entire list of site icons, and can select any one that is not currently being used by another player, regardless of membership level (Guests, Wood and Silver members can keep the icon for 1 year!). Rules:

• Entries must be posted by the recipe guardian/creator on the Cutting Board DB.
• Recipe must be original and have never been posted on the Cutting Board DB before.

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Up front & personal

Interview by: { Player: llwgirl }

This month we interviewed SandyPaws of Florida
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Hi, SandyPaws,
1. What brought you to GoldToken?
How did you happen to choose your GT name?.....

A friend, restivo46, invited me to try it. I'd never played turn-based games before, but they can be addicting, especially with the great people you meet here. SandyPaws has been a nickname for a long time, and I've used it on almost all my game sites.

2. What interest you most on GT?

I love the friends I've made on GT, and the games and tournaments have been great. It's hard to pick a favorite game, but the chat feature is set up so well that it's a pleasure to chat as well as play.

3.Do you belong to any of the clubs? How about the chat only clubs (birds, kitties, garden)?

I belong to several clubs, about equally divided between game and chat only clubs.

4.What State or Country do you reside in?
Do you live in the City or Country?
What in your State or Country do you think tourist should definitely see?

I live in Florida and am forced to work a block from the Gulf of Mexico. A hardship, but someone has to work here. When you come to Florida for Orlando and the theme parks, don't skip the beaches. (Gulf coast is best, of course!)

5.What hobbies to you have?
What other interest do you have?

My hobbies? I don't have time for anything but GT: I sign up for way too many tournaments In what time I can spare from such important activities, I read and walk along the beach.

6.Children?
Grandchildren?

I have one grown son who refuses to get married and give me grand kids. (All 20 to young 30 something's are invited to get in touch with me if you'd be interested in helping to solve that empty spot)

7.Do you work?
If so what kind of work do you do?
Do you enjoy your job?

I have a wonderful job as a ministry assistant in a small church on a lovely island. Work I love, great people, great location: what more could one ask for?

8.Any pets?

I don't exactly have a pet: I am caretaker of my deceased husband's service dog: a wonderful dog, but not exactly pet material and he always reminds me that I'm his slave: must have a tad of cat in that Australian Cattle dog body. Taz is 17 and has been missing his man for nearly two years.

Thank you for asking me.


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We would like to say to SandyPaws for letting us step into her personal life for a bit.

If there are any questions you would like to see asked in future interviews, please let us know.
Laura
laura lee

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Testimonial Of The Month

Brought to you by: *GoldToken* Players

Well I can't believe that I've been here more than seven years! Seven years ago, I was looking for a place to play backgammon online. There are many places you can play online, but GoldToken's approach “make a move when you want” is the best part of whole story. After some time I found out that GoldToken is the only place where I'm playing online. Nice interface, a lot of backgammon variants, tournaments, ladder, and the most important: a lot of good players, new friends, and I feel like I'm at home!!!

HAF

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My son came across this site and recommended it to me. I'm so glad he did! The players are all friendly and you can get help whenever you need it and very quickly too. I joined in August 2005 and have been playing every day since then. I like backgammon, 4 in a row, los ochos, grabble games, and most recently the rummikub games. I do play on other sites but GoldToken is by far my favorite.
Good Luck!

MrsN

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Interesting Club Of The Month

Interview by: { Player: llwgirl }

The Pork Chop Club owner porkpie1

1.Please Tell us a little about your club....
The Pork Chop Club is a very friendly club and has a real good family feel to it. We have great laughs and many fun games that the officers create.

How long has this club been on GT?... The club was created 3rd July 2004 and has remained strong right from the beginning.
About how many members do you have?....At the moment we have 85 members

2. Are you the original owner?
If so, what prompted you to start this club?......
Yes I am the original owner. About 6 months into starting the Pork Chop Club I asked Pepper if she would like to be my partner in running the club. I was very pleased when she said yes. So we both run the club.
I guess what prompted me to start the club was that I had a lot of fun game ideas in my head and the only way to get them going was to start a club.

3. What kind of games does your club play?
Or are you a "chat" only club?
What kind of discussions does your club get into?.....
We play most gammon games, shake it games, all of the card games. Well a real good variety of the GT games. We avoid Chess games. We have a good number of prize games going on from time to time. Members can win diary’s, teddy bears, calculators and key chains.
We have a chat DB that we get some great laughs on. Members share a joke or tell us news from their homes. We have a great family feel to our chat board.

4. Does your club do a lot of club vs. club ?.....
No we don’t play club v club games.

5. What do you think of the tourny ones.....
Or do you enjoy doing the wiki's?
The tourney ones are ok but they do take out the fun of editing pages yourself and actually taking part in making the changes to the game wikis. We set up tourney style games once a month, but personally i like editing wikis. Designing new games and trying to get the wikis to look like fun and a pleasure to play.

6. Do you have a lot of 'helpers' ?.....
yes we have a great team for our club, 6 in all plus *Pepper and myself. The officers come up with their own ideas and designs for games and they are just brilliant with what they come up with.*

7. What are your future plans for your club?.....
For the future i guess to try and keep games fun, come up with fresh game ideas. Increase the membership but most of all make the members feel like they are home when they play our games in the Pork Chop Club

That's our interview with the The Pork Chop Club
Steve porkpie1 for allowing us to interview you
Happy Gaming

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Club Announcements:

If you enjoy the game of Rummikub this is the club for you!!

The * Rummikub Games Only * Club

Only Rummikub Games will be played here.

Rummikub
Rummikub (100-point)
American Rummikub
American Rummikub (100-point)
Straight Rummikub
Straight Rummikub (100-point)
We offer : club to club, in house games, club vs club, non wiki, and site run club challenges.

Kat

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Do you need to learn how to play new GoldToken games?

Then its time to join this club.
{ Club }
We will not be doing any club vs club games
just the games that you want to learn how to play.

MM David littlefair XI

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Wanted

• Do you have a special story, poem or testimonial you would like to share? How about some club news, announcements or any other special events? Then don't delay, send GoldToken Support your submissions today! We look forward to hearing from you!

** (Please note: All submissions are added on a first come first serve basis.) **

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