Fencer: I believe we must trust (and support) the plaisure of share and give. Besides, that's the spirit of christmas... :)

Fencer: Good to see you here...:} Merry Christmas to you and yours Fencer.

BGBedlam: Well, I didn't plan to create any action at all this year, so this one was started without any preparation or detailed rules. Ergo, I would like to keep it simple.
Maybe next time I will define more sophisticated rules, along with an automatic system that would prevent any possible exploits.
I guess that some people won't take it as a real membership promotion because of a "what's in it for me?" problem. It's their prerogative, of course. As I say, this is just a simple "let's try it and see where it goes" action, nothing more. For the time being, I would like to keep it as it is.

Fencer: I see that you're discouraging people swapping vouchers with each other Fencer, but is there anything wrong with this really. Maybe a limit of one voucher per friend would be sufficient. I the vouchers are going to be given away anyway. does it really matter if they go round in a circle?

I've updated the action description, regarding this issue.

Aganju: Yes, I know that no matter how good a system is, some people will always try to exploit it. However, until it becomes a large scale problem (and I hope it won't), everything can be solved on an individual basis.
But of course, if someone is given a friendly hint "please do not do it" and refuses to cooperate, his vouchers can be cancelled, passed to other people of my choice, etc. But it would be applied only if everything else fails.

Fencer: First of all, thanksfor putting the offer up!

Question is, as you are stating that the vouchers cannot be used for the buyer himself, you obviously don't want people to use that as a simple 'buy 1 year, get 2.5 years', but for *giving* to others - very nice also in the sense of Christmas. But now John could buy a year and give his vouchers to Jane, and Jane buys a year and gives her vouchers to John, basically circumventing the limit. Do you actively discourage that, meaning you will not assign the vouchers then? Or is that accepted?
I thought about not posting that to not give people ideas, but, realistically, many will come up with this. Easily.

Should be a flurry of prize tournaments upcoming I will be posting 3

Very well, it's been posted.

Fencer: what about a single 50% discount on the Brain Rook Forever membership? maybe for those who finances on the same time a 3 or 6 months abo for someone else?

Roberto Silva:I heard one logged on and surfed briefly in 2004 but it could just be one of those urban legends. She was said to have required institutionalization after her ordeal.

Gabriel Almeida: There are no girls on the internet. Those who claim to be one are actually undercover FBI agents.

Fencer: Indeed. Or people can send a pm to you, something like "I want to give 6 months to Gabriel Almeida (cof-cof), 6 months to a nice girl (I'm sure we have some in BK) and 6 months to... Gabriel Almeida, again!" :D

Gabriel Almeida: Vouchers sound good. I don't have time to code an automatic system for it, though, so they would be handled manually. It's not a big issue, I guess.

Fencer:here's something. Action "give a gift"! A member buy a membership (for example, 1 year rook membership) and receive  1 more to give to another member... 

Fencer: Black Rook for all kind of action

Hmmm. I don't know. What kind of action? Any suggestions?

Hi Fencer!

Fencer: I'm hoping you might run a sale on your brain rooks this Christmas.

Bernice: i noticed later in the description of your tournaments. nice!

crosseyed:naaah... It's fine that way! :)

crosseyed:

Gabriel Almeida: Seek help....

Hrqls:I ran tournaments with a prize of aussie paraphernalia - nothing to do with this fencer...I sent T/shirts, caps etc.....

a prize tourny. But the site would not go for a take turn. Like I would put up a prize one year if they would set for 2nd year. But as U can see I will not even re up my membership. If they will not put up then I will not put up. Plus I heard that they might be trying to sell the site. I think that is Y so many people don't play here anymore...

SL-Mark:no way! I took a picture of that board with my name highlighted! :)

Bwild: ah, Bernice sent the prizes by herself, not via the site, i see it now

Hrqls: you have to actually open tournys to see prizes...and no..you didnt win lol

Gabriel Almeida: Depends what S-B rules will be applied at the time the second round is created! Thom27 still has a chance if S-B Hrqls rules are applied!

furbster: thanks!!! :-)

furbster: hmm .. i need that magic SB spell again ... mathematically i will become 2nd in my second due to SB calculations .....

Bernice: your profile shows 18 tournaments organized by you, and none of them prize tournaments?

in case i won any of your prize tournaments: thanks!!

Royal__Flush: This one started at the end of September! It's currently drawing an end to the first round!

Hypergammon blast for a rook!

Hrqls: I used to run them and paid massive money to send the prizes and never got so much as a thanks....never again :(

Royal__Flush: feel free to offer one ;-)

There used to be several prize tournaments offered each month by users. It's been a few months since even one has appeared. What does this say about changing user habits?

Aganju: Thanks for the explanation, I think I understood now.

rod03801: thanks a lot, i understand now :-)

speachless: 'Stronger' relates exclusively to the current tournament, and the number of wins the player had in it. So the SB is the sum of the points the opponents you beat had (plus half the drawn opponents). For example, if you have one point because you beat a player that has 4 points, and I have one point because I beat a player that has 5 points, SB considers me ahead - as I beat the 'stronger' player.
Remember that SB comes from live (chess) tournaments, where there is not neccesarily a BKR or any other rating available - people might have never played before publicly, or they might have multiple ratings in different systems.

It is an interesting idea though, to use BKR ratings instead of wins in the current tournament...

speachless: S-B has nothing to do with ratings. I may not be wording it quite right, but it is based on the points of each person's opponent's whom they won against.

I know what I mean...

But yes, those are obviously wrong, in that tournament.

Here is an example of a correct one : Championship world BK 2013
If you scroll down to section 3 of round 1. It was a section that needed the S-B. It correctly made Schoffi the winner. He beat players 3, 4 & 5. Their points added up to 6. Whereas eefke (who tied him in points) beat players 1, 3 & 5. Their points only added up to 4.
Nothing to do with either person's BKR.

happyjuggler0: in the SB FAQ there is written "...and is based on a theory that points earned with a stronger opponent are more valuable than with a weaker one."

--> so I think that the stronger opponent has a higher BKR-Rating, right? But on the specific tournament the BKR Rating of the players are actually the Rating they have today and not the BKR they had at the point when the Sections were ended.

So my question is, how could you calculate the SB today, if you are missing the BKR-Rating the system used to calculate the SB.

I still assume that the SB were calculated right at the point the section ended, cause if it were to 0 then, i ask myself why no one used to claim when the sections ended. Maybe the right calculated SB get missed over the years....?

happyjuggler0: i like the idea of the finals being replayed as they should have been ...

Roberto Silva: +1 :-)

Pedro Martínez: i guess luck played a bigger part in this one than in most backgammon type games ;-)

speachless: After I made my post about not doing math, I quickly checked out who the winners of each section "should have been". If I calculated correctly, then:

Section 1 was correct. (No S-B needed).
Section 2 looks correct for who advanced, but I may have miscalculated S-B. Edit: I was wrong. See the end of my post for details.
Section 3 was very wrong. milionovej kluk, Pedro Martínez, and cardinal all tied on matches won. They all beat players 4-6 with a perfect score. They all finished 1-1 vs each other. Therefore all three of them should have advanced.

Therefore the final section should have had 5 players instead of 3. To answer someone's possibly tongue in cheek question, I don't see how it could possibly make sense to replay the final section with all 5 players, even if Fencer were inclined to find a way to do it, which I doubt he would anyway.

If Pedro wanted to he could invite each of them (and only them) to a tournament with the same time controls, but really what would be the point?

Edit* Aganju looks right, I miscalculated and Hrlqs would not have advanced to roun 2. Instead TC would have advanced because he beat both of the other players who got 3 points.

speachless: no, you can easily recalculate it in the head, and it shows that Hrlqs would have been second place only.
Maybe - and that is just a wild guess - the other players were removed by management for whatever reason. But it seems a strange way to do that, setting there SB to zero.

Pedro Martínez: I think when the sections ended, the SB could have been calculated perfectly right, but over the years the saved SB turned to 0 by a bug. I assume this cause many of this tournament players have a 0 SB, if so : 1 of you would have noticed it and many of them would have claimed very loud for correction. But maybe I'm just wrong...

Roberto Silva: Yeah! Let's make it an 18 year tournament.

happyjuggler0: Does that mean round 2 will have to be reset and replayed?

Make that 12 years then...