Issue 11 Contents

Editorial

Merry Christmas and Happy New Millenium!

It has been a busy year for Trax! As reported in the last issue, Trax has been released on the MSN Internet Gaming Zone. This has been a battle and a half, getting features requested. In the end, we have had to do things ourself where possible. The latest addition has been a rating system, based on a series of coloured badges. This is proving a great success in catching the interest of the more regular players. Along with the ratings, we now have some reliable statistics as well. We are averaging just over 40 unique players per day, although the biggest problem is that 60-70% of these players are one time visitors. In the 40 days since ratings came online, about 6000 games of Trax have been played. That is an average of 1 new game played every 10 minutes!

On the Zone, a new group of players is being established. The best of these are now becoming very strong, and would pose a significant challenge to even the better long-time players. One shining light - Carole Plante - has an article in this edition giving some of her thoughts about Trax.

Since the last newsletter, we have been running regular Tournaments in Trax. These started sporadically at first, and now run once a week. I would like to acknowledge here the contributions of Robyn who is also a Zone endorsed Tournament Host, and runs many of the tournaments. In November we took Trax tournaments to a new height with a 24 hour Trax party. Robyn and I were online for 24 hours, playing Trax and hosting 5 tournaments in all. The other articles in this issue of OnTrax are Robyn's report on the party, and a transcript of David's chat with the inventor.

Important events coming up are the Annual E-mail Tournament starting in February on Richard's PBeMServer. Also 2000 is a World Championship year so over the next couple of months you should be honing your skills for the Qualifier Tournaments which will be announced early in the new year.

In the meantime, have a festive Christmas, and hope to see you across the table some time!