Disruptive Backgammon Players

Dealing with the Disruptive Players

There are a very few players on the Zone who make life miserable for everyone else. There is one person in particular who has used the names MyDiceAreLoaded, AlejandraMyLove, RealBigDuck, and SixPointPrime, who likes to close the game to kibbitzers, stall, curse, and degrade his opponent until they quit. The question is – how do you get these people banned from the Zone?

The only way to do it is to collect evidence of their behavior. The purpose of this section is to explain how to do that. I am going to do this in a level of detail that should make this section usable even by people who are not at all computer-savvy. Please read through this to the end; hopefully it will all make sense.

First, the concepts of “Copy” and “Paste.” There is an area of your computer’s memory called the Clipboard. There are some commands that either let you copy something to the clipboard, or copy it from the clipboard to the application you are working with. This latter operation is called Paste.
In general, in most Windows applications, anytime you hold down the CNTL key and press C, it will copy what you’re working on to the clipboard. When you press CNTL/V, it will paste it from the clipboard.

You can copy and paste text, images, and a lot of other things. When dealing with the Zone, images are important. Here’s why. If you just create text and send it to the Zone, there’s no way they can know that you didn’t just make it up. That’s not to say that it is valueless, but it’s difficult to act on it. On the other hand, a board image or Zone Message image is almost impossible to falsify.
The method of copying images, however, is different. Rather than CNTL/C, you hold down ALT and press the Print Screen key. Don’t ask me why!

If you want to send something to someone, though, you need to put it in a file, save the file, and Email that file to someone. So we’ll explain how to do that in a moment.

Actions Against Annoying Players

There is one other thing you might want to save – the record of the game. If the person you’re playing is a cheat, their rating might be very high but they may play very poorly. It can sometimes be helpful to save the record of the dice rolls and moves.

OK, let’s put this all together. You’re in a game and someone is being a major pain. What do you do? You want to get everything on them.

1. First, you need a place to save your records. You can do this using either Microsoft Word or Wordpad. Word is a word processing program that many users have. Wordpad is part of the Windows package. To open Wordpad, hit the Start button, then Programs, Accessories, Wordpad.

2. Now, suppose you want to save the chat from the game in an image form. You must scroll to the chat you want to save. You can only save as much as you can see on the screen at one time. So get the screen image you want and click anywhere on the game board or chat area. Hold down ALT and press PRNTSCTN. Now switch to the Wordpad window, click in the document area, and press CNTL/V. You should see the board now.

It is important that after you do this, you move to the end of the document. I suggest you hold down CNTL and press END, then press ENTER. This will make sure that the next time you want to put something in here, you don’t overwrite what was there already.

3. Now, if you want to get more of the chat saved, go back to the game window and scroll down, and it all over again – ALT/PRNTSCRN, switch to Wordpad, CNTL/V, CNTL/END.

4. I suggest that you also capture all the game chat in text form. It’s not “proof” of anything, but it can’t hurt. To do this, go back to the game window and put the cursor in the area where the chat appears (not the box where you type a new line of chat). Click on the left mouse button, then click the right mouse button. Move the cursor to “Select All” and left-click. Now, right-click, move to “Copy” and left-click. All this chat is now copies to the Clipboard. Now, go to Wordpad and press CNTL/V. The chat will be pasted.

5. When you have everything you want, save the file. Just go File/Save and when it asks for the name, give it a name that is meaningful, like SixPointPrime Swearing.

Now you have what you need. The thing now is to write it up and send it to ZMaster@microsoft.com. To do this, just use your Email program to create a letter and then use whatever function it has to attach files. The one part I can’t help you with, if you’re really computer-illiterate, is finding the file you just created. It will be saved to whatever folder you had it designated to save to. Sometimes there will be a “FIND” function to find the file. I’d also appreciate a copy, if you want to send me one.

Well, that’s mostly what there is to it. If you like, get into a game with someone you like and experiment. Once you get the hand of it, you can do this whole process in just seconds. And thanks for your help in making the Zone a better place.

Practice Your Backgammon Game

As you might have guessed the best way to try these concepts and views is going an online gaming site and start playing for fun. Gammon Empire has a great backgammon school that helps learn more about these strategies as well as a stable software platform, which makes playing easy and fun. Here is a review of the Gammon Empire site.