If you're more the academic, check out http://www.station.sony.com/jeopardy and www.station.sony.com/collegejeopardy. The regular jeopardy site lets you compete with other contestants through the Internet for T-shirts. By Stephanie R. Conner
Web Devil
Have you ever played the lottery? Using birthdays, anniversaries, significant numbers in your life or even the lucky numbers out of your fortune cookie, you play the odds. Bad odds. AND, it costs you a dollar.
Or, maybe you pay to play one of those scratcher games like Scratchers from the Arizona Lottery. Better odds but still probably not worth the buck.
What if you could play those odds for free?
You can online.
One way many of these web sites can afford to award prizes is through advertisement revenue. Others are satisfied with compiling a mailing list based on the information you give to enter their contests.
With the Academy Awards just around the corner, www.reel.com has set up a unique guess the winners game. A point system governs the game, and the point values are determined by the popularity of the choices. That is, those with the most votes have the lowest point values. These odds and values are updated every our.
With that strategy in mind, you play to win a trip for four to Hollywood, Calif. that includes the chance to sit outside the 2000 Academy Awards ceremony and watch the stars enter. Play now because the contest ends March 20, 1999.
If you're more the academic, check out http://www.station.sony.com/jeopardy and www.station.sony.com/collegejeopardy. The regular jeopardy site lets you compete with other contestants through the Internet for T-shirts.
Unless you're one of those students who signs up for every credit card available just for free T-shirts, you probably want to skip this one and go directly to the college jeopardy site. Registration on this site lets you individually compete with other college students across the country for Sony music systems, Discmans, Walkmans and T-shirts.
So, you like those lottery scratcher games, huh? Then log on to www.prizes.com for the chance to play Scratch-it-Rich, Token Express, Treasure Net, Lucky Bucks and Token Madness. Using your mouse, scratch off six squares in the attempt to match three for the value you uncover.
If you're more the traditional lottery player, CyberBlast lets you pick six numbers as the site computer randomly selects 20. If you match all six, you win. Seems like better odds than Powerball, doesn't it?
Business majors, you can test your knowledge of the Stock Market in Beat the Street. Prizes are awarded every Monday to the contestant who most closely guesses the NYSE trade volume and the week's Dow Jones Industrial Average closing.
For a chance to win software and other prizes from the site's sponsors, visit http://www.worldvillage.com for brain games as well as thoughtless contests.
In the works is a Bingo game. At http://www.Bingo.com, you can register now to win a trip to Hawaii. Then, you'll have to wait a few weeks to actually play Bingo. The site should be up around April 30. At that time, you can play Bingo online with other people across the country. The site advertises the first million-dollar jackpot.
What are the odds for winning one of these contests? It's hard to say, but you can't win if you don't play. And if it's free, why not play?