I don't see a reason to block cloaked users. You can't see what they are doing, they can't see what you are doing, there should be peace... You can send messages to them, so why not allow them to send too. IMHO it's very impolite to send a message to someone without giving him/her a chance to respond. I know what I am talking about, it happened to me too and it was not a good feeling.

OK, people of danoschek's kind might counter cloaked users could see what you are doing when they switch to guest mode, but hardly someone will really use this advantage May be guests shouldn't see users activities then and it would be really balanced.

may be team play could be useful then, 2 players from different time zones could share the pieces and play together

But solvaraj erararoj would be more nice

Me too, just checked esperanto, cute language
Possible feature request: ability to enter special language characters for foreign languages in a similar way like smiles
Though I will never use them, but some might

May be we could suggest for exhibitionists the opposite, a setting for everyone can see what are they doing, including a webcam

I see my idea about tournament creation was lost in space again, very common with these discussion boards without threads, only last few messages can cause usually a start of a discussion.

I think my idea wasnt that bad, of course a creator could have a simple version with few options like is it now available.

My idea would be very useful IMHO especially for PRIZE tournaments. Just think: Someone would like to help promotion of certain active pawns and offer a prize tournament with membership. But how to avoid multi nics and similar?
With this new idea pretty easy.
With a subtle set of criteria a nice group of qualified pawns would be selected.

For example: pawns who have more than 400 games, play moves in average faster than 3 days, are members more than 2 years.
And you could be pretty sure you catch worthy candidates.

Some votes?

Now sit down and listen.
I took shower and was thinking a bit from tournament creators point of view. I got some crazy ideas, those would make BrainKing even more unique Such unique system hardly ever any turn based site had!

To suit all tournament creators dreams or dreams of a player who wants to address a certain group of opponents, there could be a full set of conditions when defining waiting game or tournament. I bet HIT MAN would be glad to create a special tournament using these where people of certain kind defined by him could join only
These conditions could include almost anything what comes to your mind. Some examples:
- average time per move of that player in that game in all his completed games
- number of completed games in that type of game
- average BKR of opponents in that type of game
- win/loss percentage in that type of game
- rating range
These rules/conditions only need to be stored in waiting tournaments table and can be evaluated when a player wants to join a tournament.

Now someone could create a tournament for example: chess, 4 days per move, players with at least 200 completed games with rating 1500-1900 with average time per move in that game less than 2 days.

Now what do you think?
What does he smoke? Is he crazy?

Even more complex approach could be to include only players who played more than certain amount of games of certain type.

.. of course bug fixes should have higher priority than the rest. Very annoying bug when removing pieces from board setup. Just try to setup a board with slower connection, often one needs to reload missing pictures also, then this problem with removing more pieces than the one selected, makes the process very long and annoying. It's so hard to find the cause of this bug? There are more games influenced by this, all that need initial setup I believe. Then some other missing things in games with setup prior to actual game:
1) it would be useful to save together positions for different variants on same boards (like espionage variants, crazy/screen chess, battleboats variants)
2) it should be possible to rewind to initial position, not only to move 1

Sometimes when you move backward, you cannot make a move after going back forward without reentering the game. I experienced even a problem placing first piece, random placement and clear board helped I think.
Chess games: reversed notation when setting up black's position, always from white's sight.

Sure some of these are in bug reports, I just grouped more things about this group of games.

"Move and close game window" to decrease server traffic.

May be a check box "allow draw offers" could be useful for each started game, with default value yes. And perhaps some choice when declining draws could be "decline and ignore further draw offers" or something.

Kinda funny answer, I think he meant separate variant of checkers for beginners, what would you say about other flawed variants like Mahajarah chess, Open pente, Five in line etc. then? There are many such games here where experts say one side has forced win. Conclusion: if you don't like them, don't play them...

you mean average bkr of games from that group where (s)he has established or at least provisional bkr

Default setting of "Move" sorting criteria on main page could be "descending", I bet this is more useful than ascending.

Fencer: The setting "number of games shown on the main page" works, but also a setting "show only games where it's my move" would be useful with combination to that.

Just a small addition: favourite games would also save the server from some traffic. For example now I play at first those "favourite games" by clicking at first one of certain type with setting move and go to the next of this type. But when all moves in such games are done, main page reloads again and I process next favourite game this way. This would be prevented by an option of jumping to another favourite game type instead.
Even in current configuration it might be helpful to recognize there are no more moves for games of "this type", so instead of return to main page some page could appear with a choice what game to process next. But I like the idea with favourite games better.
If someone asks why someone would play games which are not his favourites, my answer: I mean there are kinds of games we like to play faster and kinds we like to play slower. Or when one is learning new game he can also play it slower and in spare time may be trying to get some ideas how to play this new kind of game.

May be a sorted "Favourite games" list definition for each player would be useful. Then to the filters could be added: show favourite games only, also sort by favourite games could be added
(for example if one makes a list: 1.backgammon 2.nackgammon 3.hyper backgammon, then if (s)he has some running games of these they would appear on the top in this defined order). And in combo boxes then could also appear "Go to the next game of favourite type" or something similar.

Also an alternative solution instead of filters for games could be a compressed list with + to unpack and - to pack like in discussion boards browser and I bet such one is planned to group messages in discussion boards into conversation threads by topic, too.
Don't worry I will stop here for now, I don't want to fill whole discussion board with my ideas

Thanks Fencer, no offence was meant with these words, instead I am very positively surprised with your fast reaction ... Just it really takes a lot of time to load the page and scroll down and I bet people with slower connection would be really pleased with such filters. By the way, some year ago or so I asked about missing image in off pieces in backgammon (I believe one when there is exactly one piece out). Well, I didnt browse through all those requests here, just wrote some things that hurt me most currently :) Sure I know about some requests already pending or declined (for example autopass would be one most preferred )

1) Some kind of filter for main page. Current situation is terrible, always to scroll down the whole page... a) filter to find games with online opponents, b) filter for certain (favourite games)
Everyone who has several hundreds games running knows exactly what I mean, I am really wondering why such basic thing is missing here.

2) more combo boxes with choices after buttons with decisions, f.e. definitely resign the game ... and go to the next game of this type etc, or play later ... and a combo box again
"Play later button" should move such game to the last preferred one of certain type at least, may be its hard to keep order of all games in database but there sure is some compromise.

3) missing smiles in some text boxes (for example definitely resign the game)

Thanks

I think the message a player provides when accepting a challenge could be visible in the upper area at move No.1, that would be useful if the opponent has "hide message archive" active.