Is poker a game of skill or a game of chance?

If the President of the United States can go on television picking March Madness brackets, including even the women’s NCAA bracket where he picked UConn, haven’t we admitted that picking games involves some skill or knowledge? Sure, there’s a ton of luck involved, but you don’t randomly pick #1 seeds to fall in the first round of the men’s bracket and you probably have to have UConn and Notre Dame in the Final Four for the women.

If that’s the case, does it really make sense that there’s a Federal law blocking New Jersey from adding sports betting to their casinos? Why does Las Vegas get to have all the fun along with the mob?

There’s little rhyme or reason as to why things are the way they are. How did we get to this place?

Meanwhile there are always new developments and trends in the world of gaming, to things like the Billion Dollar Bracket that got so much attention for Dan Gilbert and Warren Buffett to cool card game trends, like Omaha Hi poker is a growing trend online. Fantasy sports games keep evolving, and now you have daily fantasy games for cash and survival pools, but don’t try to pick a game against the spread!

As all of this stuff becomes a bigger part of everyday life, we realize that most of it is harmless fun. Instead of being grumps to stop people from enjoying themselves, why not put programs in place to help those who get all compulsive about it?

Meanwhile, the NCAA bracket marches on with tons of great games and exciting finishes. Nobody won a billion dollars, but there will be plenty of happy winners in pools around the country. And in Las Vegas, the casinos get rich, while the ones in New Jersey are empty. Pretty strange . . .

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/franky242

Gamers can be quite competitive, so anything that results in rewards of any kind could become pretty popular. Enter Microsoft’s reputation algorithm for XBox Live. The company wants better behavior on their system, so they’re going to try the carrot instead of the stick. The idea is that if you reward good behavior, that’s more effective in discouraging bad behavior.

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. In the heat of a live game, passions can get pretty heated, and frankly there a psychological and intimidation aspect to any good game, whether it’s a war game on XBox or Texas Holdem’ or other new poker games you can play in real time. Sometimes trash talk can rattle your opponent. Other times being quiet works as well, but that’s really up to the gamer.

Of course encouraging sportsmanship is a worthy goal, and I’m sure the behavior on these systems can get pretty bad. It must rival tthe comment section on YouTube and Reddit for depravity. But for many that’s a huge part of the fun.

Frank Savage, partner and development lead at Microsoft, says they are still in the brainstorming phase for Xbox Live’s reputation system, so who knows how this will play out. And I do like the rewards idea better than punishment for the reasons outlined above, though blocking and muting will still likely be part of the overall system. And of course you need those tools. The best gamers can find ways to intimidate without being offensive.

And this is the real lesson here. These are “games” and should be treated that way. If you can jab your opponent and get him off his or her game without being offensive and thus getting muted or blocked, then you’re a much more effective gamer. This applies in real life as well with games like pool, ping pong etc.

So take stock of this and up your game.

Ever since the early 1970’s merchandising with movies has been a massive market that has seen the cash roll in for the film’s backers. After a decade of t-shirts, lunchboxes and action figures, the early 80’s saw the first movie – video game tie-in as Hollywood looked to take advantage of the fledging home console market to bring in more cash. One of the first tie-ins was the 1982 movie/game E.T. The Extraterrestrial on the Atari and it was such a very poor effort it was cited as one cause of the video game industry crash. There have been many instances of poorly licensed games over the last 30 years, but there are also plenty of gems too and we list our favourite movie tie in video games here.

Chronicles of Riddick – Escape from Butcher Bay

The character Richard B. Riddick was created in the film Pitch Black, a low budget film released in 2000, and by 2004 a sequel, the titular Chronicles of Riddick, was being made and although the second movie did not do as well as expected, the spin off game Escape from Butcher Bay had the exact opposite story. The game was developed by Starbreeze Studios, published by Vivendi Games and is a first person action/stealth game, similar to Half Life or Splinter Cell, set before the first of the Riddick films.

Film actor Vin Diesel reprised his role of Riddick for the game that sees the title character have the escape for the Butcher Bay maximum security facility using both brawn and brain, just as Riddick does in the movies. The game was released on the Xbox in June 2004 to critical acclaim with IGN giving it 8.5/10, GameZone 9.2/10 and Game Informer giving 9.5. It also won three awards in 2004 and 2005, including the Unsung Hero Game of the Year (Editors’ Award) at the Golden Joystick Awards. An expanded and updated version was released in 2008 with the game The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.

Star Wars: Battlefront

Battlefront is one of the great tie-ins with one of the great movie series’ as you take control of one character from one of the four main groups of protagonists from both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy of Star Wars movies and battle to eliminate your opponents. The game came out in 2004 to fine reviews receiving a Metacritic high rating of 82% for the PS2 version, while 1UP.com said “Battlefront manages to stand tall as a great game that does the best job we’ve yet seen of playing out the battles of the Star Wars movies.”

There are many other Star Wars games that could easily feature on this list, such as The Knights of the Old Republic – although not a direct movie tie in – as well as X-Wing and TIE Fighter where you commanded the space craft of the Rebels and the Empire, but Battlefront with it pitting you at the centre of some of the biggest Star Wars battles edges it for us.

The Dark Knight

While there was a planned video game for the release of this 2008 Christopher Nolan follow up to the rebooted Batman Begins movie from 2005, but the game for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 did not materialise and was cancelled. However, from the embers of this there was another type of game linked to the movie – an online slot machine created by Microgaming. In December 2012 a UK resident, Jon O. – a member of free bingo games site butlersbingo.com – turned a 30p spin into almost £6m! This online slot machine features cinematic spins, with video clips straight from the movie, while both Batman and The Joker appear at random to award prizes.

So many games are geared towards guys that it’s understandable that many girls and women might have trouble finding games they can relate to. In a recent article in Wired, Laura Hudson explains why “Left Behind” is the videogame that finally made her feel like a human being.

Although women make up nearly half of all gamers, only a fraction of videogame characters are female, and fewer still are playable. Maybe that’s why I felt so shocked when I played Left Behind, the newest chapter of the award-winning survival game The Last of Us.

“I don’t understand how this is even happening,” I said over and over again.

I was playing as Ellie, a 14-year-old girl who must venture out alone into a post-apocalyptic world of monsters and murderers armed with nothing but a pocket knife, desperately trying to find medicine for her badly injured friend Joel. But if battling mercenaries and zombies as a teenage girl weren’t interesting enough, the half of the game with no combat at all is more compelling. After flashing back in time, you spend your time walking around a mall with your best friend Riley, talking, playing games and trying to repair your friendship after a falling out.

It’s difficult enough to find a game where a woman is the main character. Finding one where you play as a woman and have positive, meaningful interactions with other women? It’s like spotting a goddamn unicorn.

I’ve spent my entire life playing videogames, and Left Behind is the most emotionally powerful experience I’ve ever had in the medium – and not just because it let me play as a girl. After all, I’ve played as girls before. In a real way, in my real life, I’ve been playing as a girl all this time.

Read the rest of her article for some great insight on a female’s perspective. This can be a great resource for anyone developing games with female characters.

With literally hundreds of online poker sites in the market today, it can be really tough to pick the right one. This is especially true when you consider that everybody wants something different. Some players value bonuses and promotions above anything else, while others just want a fish-friendly site where they don’t have to spend forever learning how to win texas holdem games.

So how do you find the best poker room for you individually? A great place to start is by looking at reviews of poker rooms. Dozens of sites across the net offer online poker reviews that explain the pros and cons of playing at each room.

What’s helpful is that these reviews are broken down into sections like software, bonuses, tournaments and competition level. This way, it’s easier to find what’s most important to you in a poker room.

Once again, be sure to check out online poker reviews when you’re trying to find a site that you’ll truly enjoy.