thechosen0ne: ... my body has no new features since I first started using it... though I am still pretty ok with it (well, flying would be nice, really, or X-ray vision).
Why the assumption that everything needs to get 'better' continuously or be unworthy? Some things are just great as they are. Just generally.

Yes, BrainKing could use some polishing in some corners.

So... why don't we go and code a better variant? There is probably no copyright on it, and I doubt Fencer would care too much. If everyone that complained here in the last ten years writes a (correct) line of code for every complaint, it is probably more than halfway done.

Roberto Silva: Why? That is a general issue with the world.
I don't want to start a political discussion about today, but just for example, the Crusades were started because the Christian's felt that it is necessary to force their beliefs onto the non-believers. I am sure you can find current similar situations...

Half of the trouble in the world comes from people that think their ideas are so good that they have to force others to follow them. If not more.

Bernice: Yes! - It is August! We always repeat the topics!, monthly.
I think in September we need to repeat the discussion about slow players than hold up tournaments for years, and October's topic is Daylight Savings time and its sense or nonsense.

crosseyed: The problem is - and that has been discussed many times before - with the random number generator. It generates not-so-random numbers that follow patterns, and one of those patterns is that you get the same numbers many times in a row (and if that is not what you need, you end up passing very often).

One way to avoid that is (aside from not playing here, of course, which works perfectly fine) to not play such a game immediately. The not-so-random-numbers are dependent on the time, so if you wait an hour, you get different numbers. That is my personal theory/analysis, and has been discussed before too, and many people do not believe it. It works just fine for me (for example, in backgammon I sometimes decide to double in fast-played games based only on the fact that I can kind-of-predict my next roll - if the game moves fast enough)

Feel free to try it - waiting even 15 minutes is typically enough, and the risk is nil. And feel also free to ignore this as an absurd variant of paranoia...

furbster: Yes, that wrong/outdated for me to. That's on http://brainking.com/en/Statistics?p=1 I checked only on http://brainking.com/en/Statistics?p=0 But that may be actually wrong too..

furbster: it works for me? What do exactly mean is broken?

RGroszkiewicz: works perfectly normal for me.

Aganju: nope, I got a 6-6. What about 11 doubles in 19 rolls overall? That should be rare too, but I am too lazy to calculate the odds right now.

(Yes,that is an old discussion, I know)
Today I rolled 6 times 3-3 in the same game, the last five of them *consecutively*.
Fevga (ksenofont vs. Aganju)
(The game is ongoing, so no comments to the game please)
It's actually not too useful, as this is Fevga, and doubles often kill you. Five identical doubles in a row do a great job in forcing you to destroy your position...
Chance for this (3-3, 3-3, 3-3, 3-3, 3-3) are 1:60000000, so yes, that can happen. We'll see what I roll next...

maybe it timed out?

but games don't get lost anymore if you timeout. The 10-minute runs are overdue.

rod03801: I think he just forgot to switch it back on. He probably switched it off so it does not continuously kill the games he was typing into the database, and then forgot.
But that's all idle guesswork...

All my settings are suddenly gone, and BK reverted to the defaults. Was there a general reset or data loss?

Bernice: Math: Chances for a triple sequence of x-y, x-y, x-y is (1:18)^2 = 1:384 = 0.3% [first roll is anything, second roll has a chance of 1 in 18 to match (as you wouldn't see a difference between 1-5 and 5-1), third roll another 1 in 18].
That means that you should see that about every 384 sequences of three rolls. If you play only 10 games in parallel and make four moves in each per day, you should see that every 9.5 days.
It doesn't matter if the identical rolls are in the same game or different ones, as the assumption is that they are random anyway.

On the other hand, there were many discussions about the bad randomness on BrainKing (and no, we do not want to hear it all over again, please). But your experience is hardly uncommon.

Even *four* times the same roll in sequence should happen twice a year. And *five* times the same roll in sequence about once every 9 years.

Aganju: Looks like the game was reset to the move before the illegal system move. I'll assume Fencer fixed it, so thanks!

The system just made a ridiculous and illegal move for me:
Backgammon (Aganju vs. TerryS)
I never even got to play, my last move was Backgammon (Aganju vs. TerryS) where I close the homoe board completely, and that should be an easy win. Then the system plays a 'pass' for TerryS (or he did), and then it played a roll of 1 and 6 for me, not using the 6, and opening up the blocked 6. That is illegal, I had to move the 6 too somewhere.
What is going on?

El Cid: I understand what you mean, but it has the same effect - who cares how many vacation days he has left after all his games timed out.
My point is that if you think that people have to much vacation, the total vacation time should be reduced, not its usability.

The whole discussion comes back to the old point of 'some people drag the games out too long by using up all the time they have'. That has been discussed often here, and looking at vacation days is just another flavor of it. There is no solution, except not playing with people who do that, or not playing in tournaments that allow it. So take your pick.

El Cid: do you mean you want the vacation they have invalidated? Either they have it,or they don't. What you asked is basically to cut all vacation down to 30 days.
I could agree with that, but it would be a clearer statement that way.

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.

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: 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.

I'd rather play an opponent with moist fingers than a dice cheater...

moistfinger: Funny that this discussion comes back up over and over and over again, always with the same vehement arguing, and always with the same results (none). If you scroll down a while, you can read several dozen such discussions, each with several dozens of arguments made, so maybe we can not have it all again?
There is no solution, not here and not on any other gaming website.
Either do not join tournaments where the time settings are not according to your liking, or endure their duration; no other choices.

ketchuplover: for example. There is a dozen other such tools in the web (and each one gives a vastly different price...).

Thom27: Don't forget that it is their fault for accepting. I feel incorrectly blamed being at the other end of this- i often put out public game invites with such time limits, because I want to *play* not *wait* around, and - who is surprised- about half of my invites are taking by people in that situation, and then lost on time. What would you recommend me to do? Warn them at every move? Resign when I see it coming???

beach: absolutely fine for me (Florida)

happyjuggler0: I agree that this would be nice, but as a coder I know that it can become very complex in some situations to calculate that.
However, it would be not that difficult to implement the simpler cases, so it would catch 95 % of the situations, and let the remaining 5 % running a bit longer.
In other words, it doesn't have to be able to catch all mathematically decided situations, just most.

ThunderGr: When I played Chess in a club (last lifetime), we had the stairs as a strict sequence. All participants were listed in a sequence, and you could only challenge the player immediately above you. If you win, you switch places with him, if you lose, you cannot challenge for a set amount of time (maybe 2 weeks).
This worked out very well.

Marshmud: that's what my boss says all the time, but he must be talking about someone else... ;-)

Marshmud: I am a programmer but not in Java or C#, I only know languages that are probably not in use here, and I have no web-related experience, that's why I didn't answer. I am willing to help if you ever need help (as much as I can), and I am not interested on making money out of it - I'd love to be able improve the site :-)

Marshmud: are you looking for shareholders?

Walter Montego: I agree that Fisher Clock is the way to go.
However, I would prefer if it allows to use a bit of vacation, because it happens sometimes during the year that you cannot play for some days. For example, I do often international business travel, where I am on the road with colleagues for several days, often without internet access except late at night in the hotel. So, I play around 8 to 12 times a day all my moves in all games, for maybe 340 days a year, but there are maybe 5 periods of 3 - 5 days where I cannot play. I prefer an even tighter Fisher Clock than you proposed - for example initial 3 days, 6 to 12 hours bonus per move, max 3 days. That forces both players to move 2 to 4 times a day (I understand that this is not good for everybody), and I never even get near the timeout, except those periods described above, where I lose many games. So I wish there would be a way to have very tight Fisher Clocks with 10 days vacation per year, that would be perfect.

BGBedlam: I haven't been entering any new tournaments for six months now (except team tourneys), so my game count is down considerably. But I still see enough opportunities and have enough moves to make.
It's coming back to finding the group of people that want to play fast, and make tourneys within that group - that should fix this issue.

speachless: looks like you cannot have 40 pieces on the ace point... It gets automatically reduced to 16.
I can only agree with your issue, that is certainly a bug.
Regarding your question - technically, an administrator can do whatever at any time. However, typically they would want to do it now and not 5 moves later. I recommend you send a personal message to Fencer, and put the link to the current game (not two moves back) in it.

435152: Either your English is really bad, or you are a rude idiot.
I said I make ALL MY MOVES 4 - 6 times a day, that means i play all the moves I can make in all games , until none is remaining. And I think you sound like a rude idiot because you assume others 'cannot find the moves' like you obviously can. Before you state such offensive nonsense, you should check first. Obviously, the only thing yuo ever learned to play is Chinese chess, and that seems to make you qualified to talk about move speed in other games.

435152: I think you are not considering people that still have a work life or whatever - not everybody is online 16 hours a day and has time to play. I consider myself a very fast player, and I typically make all my moves 4 - 6 times a day, but still I could not finish a game within hours.

Hrqls: I think it would be cool if every player has a numebr showing in his profile that shows the average time -to-move for him. Easy to calculate for the database.
And then, of course, when you create a tournament, you can limit this value.

Being in a voluntary club and 'making a promise' is one thing, but why have humans patrol and policy this? So much easier if the computer does it.

beach: I generally agree. Everyone is free to join in a game or tournament, and if you do so and not read or understand the time settings, it is your fault, and you should not blame others for it.
Yes, I do not like to have 100 or so games hanging around from 2012 and earlier, which move every 29.9 days only, but if it really bothers me, I should not have joined them to begin with. It is like in real life - if you buy a broken car that is advertised as such, you got a broken car, so nobody to blame except yourself.

Regarding beach's point to the tournaments (which I find much more interesting and fruitful to discuss): I have the feeling that the tournament list has been taken over by an enormous amount of numbered the-same-all-over-again tournaments, that nobody ever signs up for. I often spent half an hour trying to find a tournament to join, but all of them are the same, and have only one or two players waiting. I think we should target quality before quantity, and then people would join again. But again, yes, I understand that a paying member bought the right to create a gazillion useless identical tournaments. So be it. I hope you get happy with it.

One side note: I would join a lot more Backgammon-variant tournaments, if they would not be created as one-pointers. Any serious backgammon player knows that the game needs the cube, and playing only one single game is too much random winning. So please, when you create backgammon type tournaments, use at least 5 points (or more), and allow the cube, and you will get more players.

Bernice: I guess Fencer could go into your accoutn and change things (without the password), but I doubt he would be interested to do that.
Could it be your opponent resigned? Or deleted his/her ID, and all games went with it?

Marshmud: I am surprised that any code was changed. Many people complain for years about Fencer not changing/adding/correcting anything at all - so is this what he would do first?
Could be, but I am surprised.

Marshmud: it could be that the setting 'a random position for each game' applies to that too, and results in 'a random game for each game'?

aaru: I see there: "Time left: aaru: 23 hours 33 mins". Maybe your time zone is set wrong so you see the clock from another time zone??

Pedro Martínez: for me, the difference shown is 18 hours plus some minutes. Be aware that the time zones of the two players are potentially different.

happyjuggler0: Which court would that be in?

Did you all see? BrainKing is getting an upgrade! New games? New features? New operating system patch?
I am afraid it is the latter only...

cd power: Actually, we should take this whole thread to the Backgammon Board; it is really not of 'common interest' to all BrainKing (-> http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=26)

cd power: you are right, it applies at move 27 (http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=6542931&i=53). at move 25, White could still move 2 -> 1(which it did). Black correctly followed the rule and opened, right when required (but maybe accidentally?).

Marshmud: If you would be blocking 10, 9, 8 in addition, then he had no move whatever he rolls, and you would be required to open anyone of 10,9,8,7,6,5.

crosseyed: There is another rule that says you cannot prime (completely block) your own starting board, meaning blocking spots 1 to 6 right in the quarter where you start. You can prime any other place on the board. This rule is actually enforced, even if you wanted only to move through the spot (which is incorrect I think), like when you have a double and you want to move through the sixth spot, temporarily blocking the section, and then move on.

cd power: the bug is well known for years, I was in the same situation. My opponent declared (when given that info) that 'the system does not enforce it so I don't care'

Carpe Diem: There is a selection "For games with a random start position generate" which has the (stupid) default "the same position with all opponents". As the start player is kind of the start position, leaving this default setting might just result in all games with the same player starting. I never tried, as I always chose the other setting.