In the Spring of 1996 the folks at Tiffany Enterprises began a new venture, this web server. This was a challenging task and there were many areas to be mastered to accomplish this task. Soon after, it was decided to create traffic on the site to attract advertisers and web surfers alike by hosting several casino style games. This led to the creation of the games you see today, with several more on the drawing boards.
Initially, the games were an attraction to build site traffic, but the overwhelming popularity led us to think that just maybe, this could lead to a major new type of internet site, "An Online Casino". After much investigation and exploration of several other sites that called themselves "Internet Casinos", It was decided that there were several obstacles to overcome before this could happen. The least of these being whether it was even legal to setup such a site.
Anyway, The grand plan was put on hold at that point. Such things as the basic legality, the unwillingness of banking institutions to work with us for automated internet banking (or credit card processing), the lack of financial backing and a few other issuses such as the difficulty in setting up a secure SSL server so that the gaming would be in a secure environment, were the reasons for this decision. That does not mean that this will not happen some day but for now we have ventured down another path.
Which brings us to the first alternate plan, what we now refer to as Plan "B". Under this plan the idea was to solicit advertisers to pay for the server and a number of prizes that would be offered from time to time. Well, after several frustrating months of dealing with skiddish and wary businesses who have yet to grasp the power of this new interactive advertising medium called "The Web" this plan too was put on the back burner. Its time will come but until then, we decided to take a new strategy, in comes "Plan C".
Since our initial funding for this project was going to run out in a few months (which would put the whole web server project in hybernation), we decided to take our case to the multutudes, yes, you the great folks that are busy banging on those keyboards and sailing those meeses (is that the correct plural for mouse?) around those mouse pads and visiting our site and playing the casino games (for free we might add).
We knew that the games would be a lot more fun and interesting if there was something to play for. A little reward, a pot of gold at the end of the road so to speak, but how to accomplish this. And would the players even be interested in such an idea. Well, as it turns out you were. Thousands of you registered for the "future" prizes and now we were in an interesting position. Where the "H" were we going to come up with those promised prizes?
Advertisers were still very slim pickins', Time was running out, and none of our original obstacles for plans "A" or "B" were being resolved. So we decided that for a small yearly registration fee to play the games, we could keep the service running and we could get this whole prize thing off the dime and rolling. So a "double sawbuck" it is. This pays some of our bills and keeps the server running.
You now can decide to participate in some special monthly prize contests by joining our "Tiffany Gaming Club". Your yearly dues in this select club, entitle you to all the benefits of a registered player including email notification of special promotions on our site, access to our casino style internet games with all the rights and privledges of a registered player, and you get the chance to win cash and other prizes being offered. Sounds good? It does to us. Shouldn't be any legal issues here, Your dues are paying for the Tiffany Web Server and your access to it as a registered user. The prizes are a free benefit and reward for the best players of the games on the server.
So, how are the player rankings to be figured? Well we needed to make it fair to all. Some players with great internet connectivity can play a game every few seconds, and those with slower (probably proxy based) connections seem to wait forever at times to hit our server. Well, the answer was to base the player ranking on the "net" winnings of a player. This way, the total number of games makes little difference, It's how much ahead at the end of the month you are that determines you position in the pack. Kind of like a real trip to Vegas, It's what you take home at the end of the junket that counts.
Well, enough jabering, Let's get on with the games, GO FOR IT folks!