Very interesting. Thanks for the info!

Cougar727: I assume you are talking about this pond: Hyper Mega Pond

If you notice, the person who dropped out this past round was a pawn. Once a member turns back into a pawn, they cannot play the ponds. So, their last bid as a member, is the forced bid, until they drop out as the lowest bid. People just looked for that, and knew that anything over 487 would be safe. So, many bid 488.

A WHAM BAMS A Pondside of Points!!! #94

http://brainking.com/cz/Pond?trnst=0&trt=0&u=8032

new ponds!

For Anyone With 10+ Pond wins only!

For anyone with 10 or more wins only please!

Pond: shame you dont know who else is playing 4

Your pond is finished. (winner: Vikings)

Kunoichi: I'd lift my hat to you if only rabbits wore one. I hope you won't ever be tempted by the dark side of the force...

Kunoichi: Fixing some I can understand, but some of them are things that we members have asked for for a long time now, including having ponds smaller than 16 people!

oh, that was me actually. I didn't know whether or not a chess type pond would actually effect people's chess ratings, and I didn't want to be responsible for you losing a bunch of points in chess since you were way higher rated than everyone else. How I did that is irrelevant now since that appears to be fixed.

It would a nice feature though if ponds could be unrated though. If I could have, I would have made all ponds for finding and reporting bugs unrated so we wouldn't have to worry about that to begin with.

Well, anyway, I tried all the bugs I found before, and it looks like all pond bugs are fixed now, as I can't find any more.

rabbitoid: Fencer must have felt bad for you and your chess rating? he can be very sneaky sometimes

Czuch: I'm no longer in the list of players

rabbitoid: what???? really?

oops, no, the pond is still there, but it seems it's ME who has done a disappearing act from it. Spooky

Czuch: Looks like the chess pond made a poof noise before pulling a disappearing act. Magic...

Fencer: What about the running games????

Fencer: I dont know why you would not let us create ponds with less than 16 people???
Ponds are only for paying members, why not give us what we want?

Fencer: Not since the past 5 minutes anyway!!!

joshi tm: Nobody can do that.

Why some players can define a very small pond and I can't?

Well, we have been asking fencer for the ability to make ponds with fewer players and some with faster time limits, so maybe he gave us the ability by not blocking them?

I would like to try one with 1 minute limits, lets say a quick 8 person pond?

I've found a bunch of stuff already that needs safegaurds and it's all reported in the bug tracker thing. Editting bounds for ponds and making ponds for other game types like Chess included.

Vikings: no special testing ability - just some interesting URL hacks and such which Fencer did not put safe guards in.

There use to be other similar bugs awhile back that allowed people to read private fellowships, pawn to get more then their allowed games, allowing tournaments created in other fellowships, plus other things which I helped track down a long time ago for Fencer to put a block on.... but I never spent much time to see what game hacks I could do - since most are obvious when done - except for possible a few new ones they found, which hopefully they sent the details to Fencer so they can block those.

rabbitoid: If you would have accepted your invite to the ponds plus fellowship, you would have already known all about the chess pond, including the fact that your chess rating would take a beating too

rabbitoid: she must have some other testing abilities, she has one pond for 3 players and another for a minimum of 4 players

concerning Kunoichi's Strange Test Pond...
have you noted that the BKR's posted are the ones for chess? aaaargh, I hope mine doesn't suffer too much when I go splash in this thing

Vikings: very funny. I don't know why I even bother

I think this pond will need a little advertising
Large Pond

Kunoichi: weird. how did you define a "pond type: chess"? the definition page still offers only the 3 usual types run, dark and rain.

Kunoichi: what are the rules and how are they implimented?

want to talk about this in the ponds fellowship?

Kunoichi's Strange Test Pond...

Started a chess pond... probably not supposed to be possible, so I wonder what would happen if we tried it.

Monkeys Fast Splish Splash 2 - El Cid

Kunoichi: It happens.

My personal opinion - for the first few rounds, to possible save 10-20 points - there is no point in bidding too low. That is if I think the low bids will be between 70-80, I will bid probable closer to 100. Again, 10-20 points in my opinion is not that important. Much more important to be around at the end. (That is in later rounds, there will be bids with over 1,000 between them - so what is 10-20 points? not much)

For new users, some general tips (everyone plays different so feel free to follow or ignore):

Check recent ponds - see what bids fell in the first few rounds - make sure you are higher then that.

Keep an eye out for players whose membership drops to pawn status. After they chance to a pawn, they can no longer bid - so their last bid will continue until they fall.

Keep an eye out for the lowest player. If they only have 1 point left, it is funny to still see people bid 1,000+, since they would just need to bid 2 to stay in.

The 500 point bonus can be good - BUT if you have to bid more then 500 points higher then what you normally bid - they it is not really very good. (Except for the times when your goal is to keep others from getting it.)

my first pond game that I try, in round one I pick 79 and I fall out of the pond when 3 others pick 80...
And then there were none...

I feel dumb... : (
Or does this usually happen to people on their first try?

rod03801: Only me.

I somehow removed a player from one of my fellowship ponds. (Had to be a clicking mistake of some sort, because it was definitely not intentional.. I have to BEG people to sign up for the pond, lol) They tried to sign back up to the pond, but it won't let them. Does anyone know how I can let that person back into the Pond? Or is this something only Fencer can do?

Everyone should check out the new feature that Fencer just implemented on the pond page, you might just be sup prized to see how many fellowship ponds are over due to start due to lack of players, I found one that only needed one player to start but was 586 days over due

congratulations to Bernice for winning the Save The Whale pond!!!  woooo hooooo

Any pond player interested in a ponds fellowship, here is your chance.....

To entice new members, we have a 6 month rook membership on the line in a fellowship pond.

Come join us before its too late!

PONDS PLUS

lol, an unrated pawns wins a pond, lol
http://brainking.com/en/Pond?bms=13&g=4000

BadBoy7: my advice is to pay attention to who those people are, learn their habits and then use that information to your benefit

BadBoy7: The higher you end up, the most ratings you will win. So if someone signs up, and then falls in by either not playing or something, the higher you end up and the better you do. Sometimes there is a tie and there is no winner - happens a lot with Rain Ponds, but rarely in the others.

players sign up for ponds then dont make moves or finish them and I lose points....cause it ends up no winner

Vikings: Yeah, after round 2 I figured something of the sort would happen. I really didn't think it would be a 17 way tie though! LOL