Mélusine: I thought about that, yes, and I actually know a family that does it. I meant that all three in combination give a pretty good indicator (and members of the family might even play each other a lot, which is absolutely ok). So maybe there are more indicators needed...

Justaminute: You forget the eternal premium members, 106 other Black Rooks and a Black Knight.

Justaminute: Good point! Although some paying members are no longer active.

pedestrian: To fill tournaments the number of paying members is, I would suggest, a better measure than active members. It is also a lot easier to keep track of. Currently rooks 432, Knights 55 and Bishops 20.

Aganju: I don't totally agree when you say that we can catch a multi nick with the comparison of the IP address, because it can happen that several members of a same family play with the same PC and don't cheat.
Example : one of the member of the family makes his moves and when he has finished, the other one logs on the site and plays, and each one has his own nick. It happens with teenagers who don't have enough money to get their own PC.

Don't forget the bk-"closet". Fencer deleted 106 'members', they continue to live in a parallel universe and may as well control the fate!

rod03801: "Of course those are the ones who probably have the most accounts. LOL"
I'd have to agree

pedestrian: Oh, I'm not one of the real "paranoids". There are a few people here that think every new person is someone else.

Of course those are the ones who probably have the most accounts. LOL

rod03801: Yes, that's my impression too. But how many are there? Out of the 2000 to 3000 active profiles, how many are here to play (board!) games, and how many are just hanging around? To estimate those numbers, I guess you would have to have access to the server and do what Aganju suggests.

Aganju: In my experience, a significant number of multi nics on this site, are here for other reasons than cheating. Many have mind games going on, rather than board games.

pedestrian: The multi-nick (or 'cheater') topic has been discussed a lot, also on other game sites.
On the server end, there are some pretty efficient ways to catch them:
1. IP address comparison.
2. Whenever a user logs on, store the IDs that logged off in the previous three minutes. After ten times, if the same ID is in the list too often, it's with high probability a multi nick.
3. Compare the lists from 1. and 2. with who plays whom. Same user IDs come up, there you go.

You can imagine that with some fiddling and tuning, this would be rather efficient. Unfortunately, you need to have server access, as the IP address for example is otherwise private data.

The next question would be - what do you do with multi-nicks? Delete them and lose all running games? Remove any positive rating efffects from playing between them?

Aganju: Yes, the number of active profiles is probably in the 2000-3000 range. 

pedestrian: Well, realistically, 'active' would mean to me logged on in the last weeks, not even a month, so we look at less than 3000 active users.
On the other hand, that's a lot of people to play with!

coan.net: Thanks, that's great - very helpful! Now we're getting somewhere :-)

You can go to the players list: http://brainking.com/en/PlayerList?a=ap

There, you can click on the headers and easily see how many people have logged into the site in the past XXX time frame

Aganju: Not looking at any particular time frame, actually. I'll more or less sign up for anything, unless the tournament is designed to take decades.

pedestrian: Which time frame are you looking at with that statement?
When I joined in July, I went into any tournament I could find. After a while, I had over 600 running games, so I slowed down considerably. Then, Adventure X and the Continental Championships started, which gave me 800 more games, so I even removed myself from some pending tournaments.
My point: can such large tournaments make the kind of impact you see?
Once I get back down under 500 games, I will start joining again, and maybe many others too?

Aganju: just shedding a little light through the darkness....but hey some DO care.

Thad: I get the feeling that the number of active members in slowly decreasing; it seems increasingly difficult to fill tournaments up. But I don't know, it's only a hunch. Maybe Fencer can enlighten us?

Bwild: OK, then it would at least give us an upper bound, no? And a better one than the 100,000 we have now. ;-)

Bwild: So what's your point?
Of course BK has not 100000 active distinct users. Nobody thought that.
You believe that FaceBook has 800000000 active distinct users??

Thad: there are those that repeatedly log in under different user names on a dailly basis. throws a big wrench in the numbers game....but hey....looks good on paper. lol

I'd be curious to know how many of the 100,000 users have logged in in the last week, month, and year (or maybe six months). Seems like that would give the best indicator of just how many users there are here.

Fencer: just sayin....

Bwild: Thank you for expressing your level of thinking. Now please come back when you have something meaningful to say.

One hundred thousand usersof which 400 are real people ..998,600 are multi nics! and only 4 bonuses left!

joshi tm: Thanks.
One hundred thousand users and only 4 bonuses left! I would not be surprised if they are gone before Christmas.

I see there are 100001 Brain King users now! Congratulations ;)

Tanein: 99999

rod03801: That's because there used to be a function "delete user" 10 years ago. A couple of deleted accounts caused this difference.

On the log in page, it says 99,997 registered players.
So, I thought that was neat, someone pretty soon, is going to be registered user # 100,000

However, when looking at the player list, as of right now, when I'm typing this, the most recent new user is user #100,103

I assumed it would match up. Just curious why it doesn't?

furbster: Hehe, yes.

Fencer: 5? hehe

furbster: 6 codes left.

RED CODE- the last 3 have been red actually!

Fencer: & one more -> JoshiTM's all open single game Eliminator 8 #5

Gabriel Almeida: A betting shop. How can bk be so out of date. I'd love to gain my membership by correct tips!

Fencer: Yeah... I got a tournament to win!

furbster: Looks like it was stuck a couple of years ago. I will check it.

whats happened here?
Adventure - I

rabbitoid: Why did you have to say this?

Fencer: Give a shout when it's down to 10 so we can all start to sing ten little indians

furbster: 12 left.

another 2 red codes down, there can't be many more left now!

Gabriel Almeida: there will be that many multi nics in a week...maybe more! lol

happyjuggler0: 106 more for the "big number"!

Gabriel Almeida: http://brainking.com/en/PlayerList?a=ap

In black letters a couple of lines above Fencer's name.

gogul: where can you (we) see it, gogul?

99892 registered players