> My subscription to gammonvillage recently expired and i was sad to
> learn they no longer ofer a silver subscription package. So now im
> left with the choice of forking out 50 bucks for the gold plan, doing
> nothing or trying out gammonline. My question is can anyone shed any
> light on the gammonline site? Features, articles, value for the money
> etc, etc. Any comments pro and con about either gammonvillage or
> gammonline are welcome. Thx in advance.
Both are superb, and both have different advantages IMHO. I think that
you honestly can't go wrong with either, and both, if possible, is
even better. Here is my opinion on their respective features:
Gammon Village - Gold Subscription
First of all, the Gold subscription is a super bargain at $50 a year.
The key difference is that it allows you access to *ALL* the old
articles, which means thousands of pages of instructive material for
beginners to advanced players (try seeing how much $50 gets you in
actual books by comparison) written by authors such as Bill Robertie,
Walter Trice, Steve Sax, Douglas Zare, etc. Furthermore, you get tons
of commented matches, not just by Snowie, but by the players
themselves often enough. You can peruse the other articles on past
events, but outside of the above, my favorites would be the numerous
interviews such as (some of my favorite) with Nack Ballard, Marty
Storer, John Slattery, and others.
It also has a number of BBS-style forums, but here I think the editors
became too ambitious, as there are no less than 5 different ones. The
problem is simply that there aren't enough people participating to
possibly make this interesting. As a consequence, some remain idle for
several months at a time.
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GammOnLine
Here too, there is little doubt that the $36 a year is a super
bargain, and here too, you get access to all the past articles from
1999 to the present day. The foremost contributor is editor-in-chief
Kit Woolsey himself, and the quality of the articles is
irreproachable. There are also numerous articles by others, completing
the theoretical circle. Furthermore, it comes with a Quiz of the Month
section in which positions are subjected to a panel of experts for
opinions.
One of the most interesting aspects of Gammonline, making it a daily
visit, is the OLM, Online Match *and* the forum. The Online match is a
match against Kit Woolsey himself, played one move a day. Each day you
get to see the play he made, the detailed comments on his own play,
and his comments on the play made by the readers. You see the roll, or
cube decision, and select your choice. the move or cube decision with
the greatest number of votes, is the one chosen. The next day you'll
see the move played, the number of votes each move received, and Kit's
detailed (sometimes pages) reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with
the readers' decision.
The forum is a BBS-style place for members, where the daily OLM move
is discussed by the members, not to mention a myriad of other
subjects. Regular contributors include the likes of Neil Kazaross,
Chuck Bower, Douglas Zare, Marty Storer, and numerous others. They are
very generous about sharing and teaching.
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Albert Silver
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