  In the mid 90's in the infancy of my on-line travels, I started playing spades at a site called MPLAYER SPADES.
Launched in 1996, mplayer.com was rated the top Internet games and entertainment service by such leading industry publications
as PC Gamer, Yahoo!, Internet Life and GameSpot. mplayer.com offered the best and broadest range of online games to appeal
to all types of games fans.
It was the cutting edge of interactive, on-line gaming. MPLAYER had voice chat so if you had a microphone you could
carry on a conversation with those at the table with like setups. It was quite nice for those of us who use the 2 finger approach
to typing. Also available in the game rooms before launch, was host sponcered URL's and a whiteboard that all could use. Many
critisized the performance of MPLAYER, but given the features they offered and that dialup at that time could be shakey itself
the price seemed small.
Rumors in late 2000 of a impending MPLAYER sale shocked and angered many players. And in January 2001 GameSpy Arcade
online gaming environment acquired MPLAYER and split the 1000's of players between the acquiring GameSpy and several other
online gaming sites.
 Bitter at losing my favorite game site and knowing after several tries that i did not like the feel of gamespy, I went
in search of a new site. 2 brief stops at a couple of sites that were spin-offs of mplayer 1 base in europe and 1 based in
an arab state left me wanting due to a lack of players and no rankings. In February of 2001 I heard about Hardwood and its
been my spades home ever since.
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