So one can only gain brains by the Referral or Promotional program? The re is something about "20 brains for free", but I don't get how it wroks, it seems it doesn't work any more...

Thom27: We also used to be able to purchase them, but that stopped a while ago. Fencer said he had other ideas for the "Brain" program, at some point.

Thom27: http://brainking.cz/en/Brains

How can a player with 0 brains get some, to enter tournaments with entry fee?

rod03801: I'm pretty sure the site checks for timeouts every 10 minutes. That would be consistent with the time that these two games ended: 16:00:01 and 15:50:01 respectively. So to be sure to win on time in a fast-paced game when your opponent has overstepped the time, you would have to wait until the site's clock shows xx:x9:50 or something and then make your move. Not an ideal way to play fast-paced games, but then again, it's not the site's main focus.

Atrotos: I took a quick look at your 2 games against that person.

Really, with the Fischer clock, you EACH have one hour of play. Your clock runs while the turn is on your page, and your opponent's clock runs when its on their turn. (Which you probably knew, except your post said "1 hour for the whole game")

The site checks for timeouts every few minutes (unless that has changed) so, perhaps he/she moved right before the site checked. I know I have seen plenty of games get to negative 5 minutes or more before timing out.

is this site's time control for real???

i played a horde chess game with Fischer time control of 1 hour for the whole game zero increment and my opponent run out of time for about 40 moves in a row but he didn't lose.

when his time run out his clock shown 0 mins or -0 mins but this continued happening all the time and he never lost on time. he had time problems from the beginning and i adapted my play to play lower quality moves for gaining time and putting time pressure on him.

that didn't work since he can lose by time running out it seems. go figure.

i saw this site as a good chance to escape from all the chess i was playing with all these variants but its great flaw in time control disappointed me.

my opponent finally lost on time as it seems and see this moment i'm writing this.

Fencer: By the way, is it possible to "auto-remove" the auto-vacation feature if a user does not login for more than 30 days (I ask this because they are already marked in fellowships, so it is definitely possible to filter by last login date).
It is kind of annoying to have to wait 2 months for someone to timeout, just because the game timed out in january 1st or 2nd, and the user gained auto-vacation (wheter (s)he already had them or not). Besides if someone does not login because, for example, he had a surgery, or something like that, when (s)he returns to the site there are no more vacation left for the rest of the year...

rod03801: ah ha....thanks...I dont read his news

Bernice: This is part of what Fencer said on December 10th, about the new system:
http://brainking.com/en/News

All vacation will be automatic, which also means that the calendar would be removed from Settings page (it should disable all attempts of cheating by periodical setting/unsetting of scheduled vacation days, as we could see in the past). Users of all membership levels will be allowed to activate/deactivate automatic vacation anytime.

Im trying to set holidays, when I click on calendar all I get is weekends...has this all changed?

coan.net: Yes, that sounds reasonable. It will be changed this way soon.

okjb: I'm not sure all that has changed, but I think time when a game is due is still done when opponent completes their move, and adjusts for weekend days a player has choosen.

But lets say a person has Sat & Sun as weekend - and a game is set to time out on Friday - if the auto-vacation kicks in on Friday, then when Sat & Sun comes along - it will still add hours, but without using weekend days.

I would guess the correct way for the system to handle that would be to when the weekend comes along, only add hours to those games that are to time out (not all games since the rest should have already been adjusted for the weekend) - then when the weekend is over and if vacations are still being used, then adjust all games and not just the times out games.

According to new vacation system if a player has a timeout in some game then 1 hour is added to all his games and this player loses 1 vacation hour. However, if this situation takes place in his holidays (usually Saturday and Sunday) then this player doesn't lose a vacation hour but 1 hour is added to all his games too. But usually days for vacations are already added to his thinking time just after his opponent's move. So, if the thinking time at least in one game is finished during player's holidays then he receives additional time up to 2 days. Thus, he has in all long time games 4 holidays instead of 2.

Usually the thinking time is not finishing during holidays. But it could finish in some game, for example, at 23:30 at Friday. The player does not make a move in this game and pays 1 vacation hour but he receives 2 additional days in ALL games. After it the finishing time in some other his games can be shifted to next holidays and so on. Thus, paying only 1 vacation hour a player can organize 4 holidays for himself instead of 2 for many months ahead.

I have found that some players had recognized it and started to use this situation already. This is important , for example, in high level pente tournaments where it is helpful to wait for moves of other players in other games before to make own move. So, Fencer must wait new proclamations from pente players.

alexlee: Round? Now that's a LOL. I'm happy when he finishes a point. With 21 as goal...
I'll have to remember to bequeath my password to my youngest grandchild :)

rabbitoid:
But that still means round 2 would not start this year either!

Good
That means that HE will have to play at least 52 moves this year. Not ideal, but certainly an improvement!

rabbitoid: That's it.

Fencer: So "I don't want to use automatic vacation" equals "I prefer to time out as soon as I overstep in a game".

rabbitoid: Exactly what is says. It is possible to turn it off on Settings / Calendar page (and since there is no calendar any more, the option will be moved to Settings / General soon).

Fencer: question: what does "using the automatic vacation" still mean?

El Cid: Example: mxyloreda

El Cid: Well, they both got an extra hour on their time for all their games (not counting games with red dots I presume). They also weren't penalized an hour on the profile, which I am guessing is because of their weekend days being as you said.

It is a bit unintuitive how weekend days are accounted for though....

El Cid: Hmmm, you may be right. However, if that were the case, wouldn't all those games have something like 48 hours left instead of a few minutes?

It also occurs to me that they both might have already triggered a day's worth of vacation earlier on December 31, and we won't see hours lost for perhaps up to a day from now even disregarding weekend days.

happyjuggler0: Actually today is already saturday, so they should not lose any vacation since they have weekends set to saturday and sunday

I Am The Best: I see two players who in the next 10-20 minutes should lose an hour on their 35 days vacation time, assuming they don't log in soon and move. You could watch their profile and see if they lose an hour or a day in vacation time, and also how it is enumerated, i.e. in all hours or something like 34 days 23 hours.

art.sonia
LinusC

I Am The Best: Patience grasshopper.

I Am The Best: i still do not see how this will affect you has you have NO games on the go
unless you mean from your other accounts

coan.net: Thank you BBW, that is exactly the answer we are looking for

and i spy Lines of Action as well

MadMonkey: There you go! (I'll try to add a couple more for January here soon.)

NOW HURRY - Only 12 days until start! (of course it will start next year if you want to wait awhile...)

Pedro Martínez: Ah... always good to click on "show thread" I guess.

rod03801: http://brainking.com/cz/Board?bc=1&plla=1097564

MadMonkey: Exactly what kind of answer are you looking for? It was advertised for almost a week that there would be down time. I'm not sure anyone but you can answer why your internet went down before that and you timed out on games. I'm sure that can't possibly be "staff's" fault. I see you have zero vacation days?

MadMonkey: Well thanks for the replies (how many brainking staff have we got ???) so i will answer myself .....

We are not interested so don't ask again !!! anyone want to take over a Fellowship ?

Roberto Silva: Thank you, you are the only one to understand what I was getting at....

I know it was advertised that there was going to be downtime, my point was that when I checked with "downforeveryoneorjustme" it told me it was my fault. sheesh.

Gabriel Almeida: It was a planned downtime, but it appears the work took longer than expected. I assume they put up the BK page when they realized that the site was going to be down longer thant the hour predicted.

Gabriel Almeida: Either way, the fact that the page with that message was showing might explain why the "downforeveryoneorjustme" site found no problem connecting here. It could connect and receive a webpage, just not the one we're used to seeing (but the program can't know that).

Gabriel Almeida: It was a planned down-time and advance notice was given that game times would be suspended for 24 hrs: http://brainking.com/en/News

rod03801: Exactly! That's why I haven't stranged when I first tried to acess BK and the browser wrote something like "page not found"... but the point of pedestrian is interesting: after half an hour, this "page not found" was changed for a "common BK page" with the sentence "the site is currently down. Its owners had been advised,..."... so, it was an expected failure, or it was a "surprise"?

Actually, there was a message at the top of the main page, for close to a week at least, warning of the site being down for some sort of upgrade at their hosting facility or whatever.

pedestrian: not always... in the first half hour, no message was written, and we couldn't simply access Brainking. But ater that... I may agree with you. However, I don't understand anything about that "technical stuffs"... :)

Bernice: There was a message displayed on brainking.com saying something like "the site is currently down". So I guess that technically speaking it wasn't really down, since it could show this message.

Bernice: That is odd, i always use that for any site,like i did last night and it told me it was down for everyone

What annoys me is that i had no internet yesterday, and timed out on 80 games, then just as i get a connection, i make 2 moves and the site goes down, and time outs are suspended

Next time BK goes down it is of no use using this link

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

I went onto there and it told me it was my fault, not Brainking, so it is of no use what-so-ever.

furbster: You already have a black rook, so why do you need it?

Fencer: darn i just need two more code colours to achieve the bonus conquerer achievement. Not even for just a day ;o)

happyjuggler0:

Didn't realise I clicked send damn trackpad, I will try to tell the whole story!

First I had counted on at least able to get wifi in the airport while in transit (to try and save the fischer time game that I couldn't protect while midair) but all the time was spent having to queue for border security for a nation I wasn't even visiting.
Then when I got online I couldn't access my account. When I got my password issues sorted out I got an http error message when accessing brainking until today (I had to access the site[once I realised it wasn't down again] via a really unrealiable proxy connection that took 10 MINUTES TO MAKE A MOVE AT LOGIK (even when I knew what guess I wanted to do within seconds!!!! This was prior to the resolution of the 504 error I was getting on only this site)!!
What was annoying was losing winning or equal position in a prize tourney and games which I was very high rated in and concentrated on saving (If I had 800 timeout in none-prize none rating crippling games I would have considered it a reasonable outcome in the circumstances). Those important timeouts were during the period I was communicating with fencer to sort out my access. Ironically several games were also timeouts with only one legal move!!

Several times I've been denied access to prize tournaments because of not having a rating and when I was knight I had to enter every tournament I could to try and get a rating causing a backlog of games.
Didn't realise I had vacation as I was discovering the marvel of fischer time where I could lose just 90 minutes odd after an opponent had moved! Guess that the disadvantage of the automatic vacation had I know I would have saved many game had I known I was saving games that were lost anyway by using vacation
The stupid thing was about denying unrated players the ability to play a tournament is that you make sockpuppetry or resigning on mass the optimal strategy to gain a rating quickly (though not the efriendly/ethical thing to do).

Are we having any new Team Tournaments set for the New Year ?