I’d never heard of Pogo.com until my former boss told me about it a couple of years ago.  At the time, he enjoyed playing a Scrabble-type word game on Pogo called Qwerty.  I visited Pogo, checked it out, and decided to buy a one-year subscription that made me a “Club Pogo” member.  

Pogo has a number of games that may be accessed for free, but a paid subscription entitles the user to play other games that are exclusively for Club Pogo members, such as Mahjong Garden, Canasta, and Jungle Gin, among others.   A Club Pogo member can also design a “Pogo Mini,” a likeness of themself that can be dressed in various outfits and situated in different scenarios that may be “purchased” with tokens won in the games (I have almost 5,000,000 tokens now, although I recently saw someone who had 97,000,000 tokens).

Club Pogo members may also win “badges” (and tokens) for challenges completed in various games.  Here’s one of my favorite badges, called the “Canasta Club” badge, which I won for winning 8 games of Canasta.  

Every Wednesday at 10:00 AM (Eastern Time), Pogo brings out two new weekly challenges for Club Pogo members, plus, the player may select one personal challenge from badges not yet completed from previous weeks.  The completed badges are displayed in the player’s badge album, which may be viewed by other players.  Pogo also has special badges for various occasions, such as a New Year’s badge, a Halloween badge, a springtime badge, etc., and every so often they have a personal challenge marathon week, where the player can work on three personal challenges. 

Pogo also sells (for real $$$, not tokens), badge albums with a theme, for example, 10 different badges for challenges with a time limit (one of the most difficult for me in this particular album involved removing 144 tiles in Mahjong Garden in 8 minutes or less), as well as “Mix and Match” badges that are larger and more colorful than the ordinary weekly badges.  Many of these are animated, which gives them even more flair.   Here’s one of my favorite Mix and Match badges, called the “Double Pair” badge, which I won for playing a double-2 tile 22 times in Dominoes.

I currently have 667 badges in my Pogo badge album.   I guess I’m what they call a “badge hound.”  The new weekly challenges start tomorrow morning.  I know what I’ll be doing in my spare time tomorrow – working towards even more badges!