All right, you can create your own games with doubling cube now, just use the new option "x points match with doubling cube" when you create a game.
It is not officially released because I didn't update the rules yet, and it's not possible to create tournaments with a doubling cube at the moment. But you can play :-)

WhiteTower: Tavli, sure. There is a small problem with Plakoto because pieces of both colours can be placed on the same position, which requires to create many new pictures for these combinations. But from a programmer's point of view, the model should be easy to implement.

Fencer: (I want to add more of them later)

Does this include Greek Backgammon, as per a certain perennial request? ;)

Fencer: *nod* thanks :) on another site there was a seperate list for every match option of backgammon .. i dont like that :)

i cant wait to play with the cube :)
(and discover there is much more to it than i thought to know ;))

Hrqls: No separated BKR. All backgammon variants will be extended by an option of doubling cube games. It's better to keep it simple instead of making each backgammon variant (I want to add more of them later) twice.

Fencer: great! we can play the real games then :)

how will the bkr be ? using the backgammon bkr or will there be a separate bkr for cube matches ?

Thank you everyone :-) I think it's been already tested enough, so I can release it later today.

Fencer: yes please! i want to test it :)

If you still need more, Fencer, I definitely want to help out!

Fencer: Please include me in the test!

yes please, i'd love a game with teh cube

i'd love to!

I'll be glad to test, and i will play quickly.

Fencer: Coool. Count me in.

Carl: Wait for an invitation.

Fencer: I'll test it with you.What do i do next?

Fencer: Here, here...:)

BIG BAD WOLF: I meant "any volunteers who are not already testing since yesterday".

Fencer:

Fencer: I'd love to test it. So glad to see the cube!!

Any volunteers who would test this option with me? I don't want to release it until at least several games are played and most of the situations checked.

playBunny: He was banned from the site a long time ago due to several reasons.

Fencer: Who's LongJohn?

wayney had been banned from the site several months ago. Time has come to do the same with BrainKing04 [both of them are LongJohn, of course].

frolind: lol *nod* .. i had to look 1 move back as well to fully realize it :)

Sorry, mixed the colors up. Now that's a suspicious resignation...

Hrqls: It was wayneys turn with 2 checkers on his 1-point and nothing else. It's a 100 % win for wayney.

playBunny: ah i didnt know about wayney .. i think brainking04 is quite suspicious as well

Hrqls: Black (wayney) resigned because he was a cheat. He was kicked out of BrainKing for rating manipulation.

BrainKing04's involvement is suspicious, especially with regard to his games with bigboss. Five games, all resigned by bigboss before the first move.

Reversi 8x8
10th Oct
29th July a
29th July b
23rd July
21st July

why did black resign in this game?

there are also some reversi games for BrainKing04 in which the opponents resigned

but why did white (brainking04 himself) resign in this game?

Pythagoras: That would be really helpful if you write the description.

Jellyfish .MAT format is the best of cource! For specification of it, don't try, i have looked in the past for one, without success.....
But it's very easy to understand the way it works, which is very simple, by looking some games. I will try to write the description of .MAT format if you are lazy.......

I've looked around for precise definitions, but couldn't find any. But the jellyfish match format (*.mat) is very human readable, and could be learned by example. On http://www.nbgf.no/matches/ we have some matches in mat format. If anything is unclear, the matches are also available in html format with board images. If you need more, I'll send you some. If there is any situations unaccounted for, I'll send you some with those situations. gnubg is good for testing. And also for playing matches and exporting them in mat format for more examples.

frolind: I don't know any formats. Someone must give me a description.

Fencer: Great! What format?

frolind: Yes.

Are there any plans of making finished games available for download in a format recogniced by gnubg?

Backgammon Tournament.

Click Here

lukulus: This is in effect for individual games I believe. This site calculates after each game, since tournaments can take years and it would render ratings meaningless if the site waited for the end to calculate.

OK, I will try again:)

There was mentioned chess rating isnt good for backgammon. Chess rating is calculated after tournament. And winner (or whatever else w/ same ammount of points) cant lose his rating. Say, there is tournament where is playing player A w/ rating 2100 and thre other players w/ ratings around (B, C and D) 1900. Player A must earn 75% of points to save his rating. Say players ABC beat player D and rest of games are draw. Then player A has 2pts, so he is losing rating. But due to rule mentioned above he is losing nothing.

I suggest implement this rule to protect higher rated players.

lukulus: Me neither.

Also in Hypergammon the top rating is 2200, and 60% of the players rated (about 300) are above 1900.

lukulus: I didn't understand that at all.

And one more thing: In chess tournaments winner and players with same ammount of points as winner dont loose rating. So, in case BKR will be counted on the end of tournament (or section) this rule will be aplicable and higher rated players can play much more tournaments.

lukulus: Oops, I forgot write it is in Hyperbackgammon

lukulus: Funny! I just counted 192!

I would like mentioned when was BKR racalculated there were less than 15 people with BKR higher than 2100. Now there is 25 such players...

As evidenced by there being 400 players (about half) above 2000 in backgammon now, yet I'm at around 20th place with 2200.

In chess there is about 700 points between 10th and the player half way down.

This indicates that backgammon is indeed partly influenced by luck.

Hypergammon is even more bunched, considering the number of games played.

The rating system, while not the best, is not as bad as all that. Remember that the ratings have bunched up as a result of the luck in the game, and as such the expected winning %age between players of differing ratings should be accurate.

In other words if a player is still rated low with this system, they must be terrible indeed and you should lose points if they beat you.

alanback: Yes, I've begun to do that with some of my regular opponents - we even play 10 wins matches. (It would still be better with the cube and a decent rating system though )