Nothing unusual :-)

i mean, waht side effects will that have to the site during the weekend? :-) If so, could you give us an estimate?

Does that mean, the site will be down the whole weekend?

Bastille Day should not be forgotten though ... :) ~*~

Fencer, if you're planning on making the independence days of all nations public holidays here at BK there won't be many regular days left in a year.

Maybe I've found out what's wrong at last. I'm gonna spend this whole weekend experimenting with my new ideas.

I logged into this site at 3pm my time approx...I had 7 games waiting...it is now 6.08pm and I have just played the 7th game....I know Fencer is sick of hearing these SLOW game complaints but yesterday I had REAl trouble and had to leave some game :(
You do a good job mate and we really appreciate it....this is just for your information....not a complaint :)

Thank You, and you have a nice weekend Fencer.

Ellie: Done.

CET says it's Independence Day since 4 hours ... :D

Best Oldish European Wishes to the
Brain-kings of a Young and Strong Nation ...

May soon a visionary president declare, she is the only one
capable of acchieving, the goal to get all industries too dangerous
for a biosphere, into orbital stations, yet before this century is over,
- not because it is easy but, because it is difficult ...
... - and, because she cAn ...

God Bless America ... ~*~

'

tomorrow is the 4th. of july, that is a holiday here in the states, is it going to be a site holiday. Happy 4th. to all.
thx.

I think a good suggestion would be to examine the rating system Dweebo uses at Dweebo's Stone games. The formula is similar, but would not have some of the odd results obtained with the current brain King formula.

Exceeds the ransom, has to raise the bar...Blaze sit still!

So, what would be a suggestion (or plurality thereof) to improve upon the rating system we have? There is no such thing as a perfect one, but if there are flaws, they could be thrashed over, perhaps even rectified.

I just don't think that a lot of time should be spent on it by the players. I mean, I am much more concerned with won-loss records than any rating, which is at best only a rough guide as to how good (or not) a player is. In contrast, numbers of games won and lost are factual, and although they do not necessarily address the strength (or weakness) of opposition, they are still unequivocal.

However, ratings are always fallible, no matter how good the system used. I purport that in most rating systems, about one-third of the players are overrated, about one-third underrated, and about one-third rated fairly close to where they should be. The variance in rating systems won't change that. The only thing which will make rating systems better is longevity; that is, a lot of the players in a certain game type playing a lot of games against the others in that group.

I know how it works.

If you are rated high and you win - you go up a couple of points. If you are rated high and lose - you go down A LOT of points! :-)

Possible a good rating system for skill type games like chess, but when you start adding more "luck" into games (like a little for Backgammon, and a lot more luck for Battleboats) - it may not bs the best rating system.

-- Which I'm not complaining about the current rating system, but it never hurts to look at different options.

Well, I would just like to point out that I am in the top 20 of three games and the top 30 of another. DmitriKing is the top rated player in four games. It's not that I haven't been able to do well here but I think it is a difficult system to sustain competition if no one can figure out its consequences.

Pioneer54, I partially agree with what you said, mostly in regard to the high number of games. But, just because people can improve their ratings by studying does NOT mean that a possibly flawed ratings system should not be changed. I am not saying that the rating system is definitely flawed, because maybe it isn't, but I think it could and should be improved. The fact that people can study and improve their ratings is no reason to have a weak rating system.

ALso, although it is hardly relevant, I dare say that my ratings in the 4 games I play (in which I am the top rated player) have not suffered any as a result of my spending 5 minutes complaining about the ratings system.

From time to time on here, I've noticed that people complain about their rating(s), the rating system, or one thing or another having to do with ratings. What a waste of time and energy! Ratings are cuious and interesting by nature; they are also a very inexact science no matter what formula is used. It has always been this way, and probably always will be. If those yammering about ratings would spend half that time studying and improving their play, their ratings would improve dramatically! So, why worry? Look up your rating if it makes you feel good, acknowledge it, then resolve to do something about it, or just forget it!

As for extremely high numbers of games per member, I suppose that is Fencer's province alone. Some of my opponents (even friends) fit this category, and I don't especially like waiting days for a response in a game, but as long as they make their time control, I cannot complain, although I have a tough time understanding how anybody can handle several hundred games simultaneously. There has to be a certain comfortable level of peak performance beyond which play diminishes.

There will always be a small number of people (in proportion) who are impatient with what the site offers, and when and how it offers it, and even if they could be placated at present they would find something else to get anxious about, so let them be on their merry way and concentrate on the resolute majority.

I agree with these opints. Players having 300 and 400 or even 700 games going is too much.

ALso, the rating systme is suspect. I took a look at the formula used, and it seems to base the rating on the number of games the opponents have played. But, the way I interpreted the website, it was not intended to work this way--the number of games played was used in determining ratings within a tournament, as I understood it, not over the lifetime of players. I could be wrong on this. But, Once a player is established, I think it ashould not mattewr hoew many games he has played. Dweebo's stone games uses this formula, and everyone knows how it works and knows how their rating will change after a game.

I have been playing on this site for about a couple of months or so now and I really do honestly appreciate the opportunity to play at somewhere other than IYT mainly due to the obvious attention to customer service that is exhibited among all the people on this site not just the official CS reps. Why have I not gotten a membership? Three interrelated reasons. 1) The unbelievable number of games that people can get involved with means that often the games with the top level people in a game's rankings take forever because they have so many games that are often difficult for them to work through in a day. I agree that part of it is my fault because I accepted games from them with 45 day move windows (which I have stopped doing) but I have seen some people with over 400 games. I think allowing that is detrimental to the site and 2) its performance. It is my uninformed opinion that the sit's performance is negatively affected by probably 5% of players due to these high number of games. Now, I am not a Java programmer but I am a web developer and I knwo that with hobby sites that is always the case, a core few usually use the majority of the resources on a site. In this case, I think it is extremely lopsided and does more for frustrating the rest of us than any server hardware. 3) The ranking system is so esoteric as to be indiscernable from magical incantation. ;-) I have no idea from game to game where I am going to come out in the rankings. sometimes playing peoepl higher than me does not affect my rating at all, sometimes I beat people lower than me and I gain huge advances in my ranking. If I don't understand how the ranking qworks thn I dont' knwo what I need to do to get ahead. It makes it very frustrating to compete when I dont' knwo hwo I get ranked, I can;t play fast enough to get ranked higher and I can't get on to get ranked at all. I will keep playing here because I like the people and I hate IYT just that much. I coudl suffer the performance issues and get amembership if I could be assured that the other two issues were resolved to everyone's benefit, not just mine. Thanks for letting me speak my peace. And, of course, I would love to help anyway I can. Have you considered offloading some of the more static or non-game stuff to another less server intensive language liek PHP or Perl?

Thanks for your offer Jason. But there is one problem - such server would have to be here in Prague, at our server rack, due to security reasons. Our main database server cannot be accessed "outside" to prevent hacking and data manipulating.
Moreover, I cannot guarantee that after adding another machine BrainKing will never crash again. I really plan to buy a new server and I hope that it will solve problem - but I am not [and I cannot be] absolutely sure. I have to test it but I cannot ask other people to buy the hardware just for "testing". It would not be fair to them.

is there a way someone could do something like a sub-host to improve the sites performance ? i have asked before but got no reply , if so i will buy a server to help from this end

Maybe some people think that 450 moves / day is a lot :)

At times and currently more often the resolving of the pages takes time; but its not ONLY on this site. Don´t know if you play at IYT, but there it used to be TERRIBLE, for days!!! You just have to be persistent in getting on here; when its touch to get on, I wait awhile until trying it again. When you have friends in here and games and issues you started off discussing, then you DO want to come back in and most of the time, I do succeed again within 30 minutes.

Good job, Fencer and goodluck in bugging all the bugs you can find! ;o))

fencer im not having a go at you .
just telling you how some people feel

Well, what should I say more? I could write server news each day and post something like "okay, I've tried this and that, it didn't help, so I'll use another way of bug tracking tomorrow, we will see" but is it worth occupying the place on the Main page?
I understand that some people are not very happy and I would like to wave a magic wand and say "LET THE SITE BE FIXED, NOW!". Unfortunatelly, it is not that easy, especially when you do it alone.

fencer people have stopped complaining about the access and are just putting up with it , but sadly i fear some people have had enough , people wont feel they can send mail to you because of what you wrote (" i have added new information to Technical info page. It is recommended for everyone to read it before complaining about anything").
even when the page is read it doesnt change anything some people arnt very happy .
as i have said before i like this site very much but the site acess is getting too much

well, I hope Fencer cAn spare a moment to comment ... :)

I don't mind one way or the other -
it just should not change every few days ... :D
there are ppl around getting really picky
if I claim an uncorrect amount of statues ... 0:) ~*~

I do not see where the infinite circle comes in. As I understand it, the process is relatively simple. whoever's defeated opponents won more games would have the higher placement. In this case, that seems not to have happened.

ok, teasing ... but I sense the mental moebius ... ;) ~*~

It isn't just based on your total wins and your wins against the people you're tied with! It's based on who you win against, and how many games they've won (and against who and how many points they've won (and against who and how many points they've won (and it's an infinite circle)))
:-)

something very interesting ...

now the result has changed ...
I made 1.5 to 0.5 in direct comparison
which should be over-ruling the SB value ...

for such a round, a best of five final
seems a better solution, btw targeted
anyway by the draw-courtesy ...

pehaps we could have a comment from Fencer ?

I was not doped, I swear ... :P and, letting me
take note of that decision was due after all, imho. ~*~

PS
I don't mind btw, as Erika is a great sportsman
and, I'll win an even stronger tourney-group of the
same gametype by 100 % unobjectably these days ... :D

I indeed have seen several questions about this asked by Mad Monkey the past couple of weeks. It´s sad, when someone suddenly disappears and doesn´t reply on any mail nor message. I have the same with a user which ID is PRAYER ~ he used to call himself 5655 and had loads and loads of games going, which almost ALL of them timed out.. For a while I pretty worried about him and send him messages; today I have seen him logging on, but never answered any message.. Sometimes people just want to get out; needs their rest or leave a place because of other personal situations. My thoughts are going out to all friends of these missing users AND to the users themselves. Hope all is well with them. I am glad this is a site, which observes these issues; so we are able to be there for eachother and act towards eachother in good fellowship!

Take care you all,
~*Radiant*~

Sounds like some fishy stuff goin on. I guess it doesn, thurt,if Fenser hears about any problems anyway. Since I'm on the subject, I too have had problems with a "server too busy" note when trying to get on, but have been fortunate to not time out of any games yet. Anyway, hope this helps. Good luck.

I doubt it - most games (aparantly including reversi) show the two players opposite boards (flipped). It must show it according to what the current player sees.

I was observing a game of reversi between othher players and when one of them moved and my screen reloaded, the whole board was reversed! Tha A-1 box, normally on the bottom left of the board, was now on the top right, has anyone else ever seen this? Is it a glitch in a program? Kinda freaky. Thanx for any help!

TT: She was last here on June 7th, all her games have timed out & she has no vacation days set. Various people have tried to e-mail her without response.

Do you know whats happened to her then ?

"Blaze" had not been seen in a while now

says who???

even enemies can l:):)k at eachother and smile :-)

Funny Feature, Fencer! ;o)

There is 'Andyhop' too; 'Dream' is definitely finished and 'Gimli' plays very little and keeps timing out.

None of these persons ever contacted me about access problems, so I would suppose that the problem lies elsewhere.

Has anyone got any idea about some missing players. Blaze had not been seen in a while now, Fred has games timing out and has Gone! in is profile now & who we know was a very active member & now Mary Jo had games timing out, again very strange for her - anyone any information please post it.
OR may it have something to do with site access problems ??

MM

Liquid is trying to find out what is wrong with our database server, please be patient.

I'm still having major problems with my games. Wrong turns, repeated moves. I've heard of one player's games being wiped out too.

what kind of nonsense is this? Why in the world was the game drawn, giving the players the 1/2 point?

Here is a recent tournament results that I found interesting - in the BBW presents: Small Keryo Pente

danoscheck had 8.5 points, and 41.75 S-B for first place.

Erika also had 8.5 points, and a HIGHER S-B rank of 43.25, but ended up in second.

Not too often you see someone with higher points get second! (Which I believe is because danoschek actually won more points in the games against Erika)

.... Anyway, just an interesting result I thought others might like to take a look at.

There was a small problem with our database server.

indeed some sporadic effects occured, for me too

a game with my opponent's turn of sudden on my list,
but it normalized a few refreshs later ... has happened since sunday ... ~*~

They seem to be the same games, right now it's a few Five in Line games. I've made the same move vs Qverido 3 times now.

Some of my games appear to be going backwards, i am repeating a move i had made earlier. Anyone else seeing this?