El Cid: I propose a simpler method... award vacation days each month instead of each year (proportionately of course), but only if that player has been online in the last month.

rabbitoid: No need to compromise. Autoplay is an option. If I turn it on, my moves are automated where possible. I don't see why the opponent should care one way or the other.

AlliumCepa: Hey, this is just a game playing site... lighten up a bit please.

Pedro Martínez: some people have an irony deficiency

AbigailII: Maybe the choice is to "Reveal" the ghost rider at the end of the turn before the opponent plays, thereby blocking. This could be used to block check for example. Subsequently moving the piece would give the option to become invisible again.

El Cid: Precisely. Thank you for completing the argument.

AbigailII: very legitimate in chess. For example, If you're winning by a point with a game to play you may decide to simplify quickly and get a draw. This is part of the game even at world championship level. What's wrong with that??

El Cid: Wouldn't be possible with a doubling cube if you think about it. :)

Even # of games isn't really a good option, since you can play for the draw late in a series if ahead, but not with this option.

How about speeding up tournaments by starting the next round as soon as the contestants are known, this would be far more effective IMO.

... are supposed to warn me if it's a gammon or backgammon position (so I don't give up double or triple points without realizing).

However, it also warns me if the game has been doubled, but it's not a gammon or backgammon position. I believe this is unnecessary... no?

may fill up with contestants if you allow pawns ;)

1 minute per move for example... you could even have tournaments - for example say 160 people sign up... 10 ponds of 16, top 3 in each through to semi finals... 2 ponds of 15... top 5 through to final of 10... or something like that. Whole thing could be over in a couple of hours.

rod03801: Number of games is a better way to do it for many games, such as chess... since it guarantees equal number of games of each color for each player, hence it is fairer. Still, it should end as soon as someone gets more than half (so 5.5 points in a 10 game match should end it).
Also, it allows a drawn match - which is good.. ***Not very nice comment removed by MM***

talen314: Really? The match should just end if there is no chance of one player winning. For example if there is a 5 game match, it should end as soon as someone wins 3 games... is that not the case? Can you give an example of a match that continues past the point where we know the outcome?

I notice performance is slow (about 30 second page refresh on Backgammon). Am i the only one? It's been like this all day and no other site doing this, eliminating my connection as the culprit.

AbigailII: Just because you use it properly doesn't mean others don't. Many of the tournaments that drag on interminably have auto vacation to blame. If the games were so important, wouldn't you remember to set vacation? How about restricting auto-vacation to 2x per year to catch the times when someone truly 'forgets'.

AbigailII: I think the solution to long tournaments is to not have *auto* vacation. This is an unnecessary accommodation to people who bite off more than they can chew.

Someone call me crazy, but shouldn't the equal second place getters share the 2nd *and* 3rd place amounts?

For example, In this tournament the 3rd place amount was essentially left out altogether because there was a tie for 2nd place - If nobody tells me my math is askew (we each got 8 brains) I'll log a bug in the bug tracker.. :)

Backgammon brains Tournament

Any chance the tournament sections could be ordered by points instead of Rating?

Why does Mancala continue when one player has 25 points or more? Surely that is the end of the game... ?? Can it be implemented this way?

rabbitoid: if that were true wouldn't section 5 of this tournament be finished?
The first doubling cube tournament

coan.net: you're right about dark ponds... that would be my choice. I think we should also have separate ratings for the 2 variants :)

rabbitoid:

I think a better rule would be that if someone doesn't play then force a maximum possible bet for that player - which would reduce their total to 0 next time giving everyone equal information.

Games really require everyone have equal information to be a good game and since there are different time zones and everyone has different ability to be online a different amount of time - there is not equal information in this regard, giving some people an unfair advantage.

coan.net: You guys can try to convince me all you like, but I think such a rule is silly and wrecks the game, not that i care since becoming a pawn myself, just an observation.

rod03801: Still a bug, just injected in the design phase :)

rod03801: seems like a programming bug.. if you start a game you should be allowed to finish.

joshi tm: I'm afraid I didn't parse that explanation, can you try to phrase differently?...

you are saying that pawns and non-pawns had different rules about what they are allowed to bet.. but that could be solved by just making the rules the same for everyone? Therefore I presume you meant something other than what you actually said?

joshi tm: Why would allowing pawns to play a pond constitute a "rule change"? Who cares who the entrants are, it's the same game with the same "rules". Good grief.

Fencer: I see the page show, but only half the board displays, then the page slowly fills in the details. Actually it's faster today than yesterday.

Perhaps capturing the move in a text box would be a good option... instead of needing to refresh the page each move (i'm thinking of backgammon where i need to refresh the page 4 times if I roll a double, but if there was a text box i could type 24-20 24-20 18-14 18-14 or something like that it would be quicker)

Fencer: When I make a move the board takes a long time to refresh with the new position.

Seems to me the site has slowed down to a crawl recently. 5-10 second page refreshes even with the "lite" checkbox checked.

I therefore request "fewer" features.. can we eliminate whatever is slowing the site down?

Rainbow Road: There's already limited skill required, why remove a piece of it?

I think a simple change would be good:

Autovacation should not be allowed to happen if you've moved already on that day. However if you select a vacation day in advance you can still move if you want to.

i must say being a pawn all of a sudden is a pain. I am still in tournaments that started in 2004 (how is that possible?). Any chance we could change the rule to only include tournaments where the player has games going? This would still exclude me, but at least it would be in my control.

coan.net: How about if you don't move in Ponds, or click "resign" if that exists, then you automatically get the maximum number possible for that round (and zero next round). No problem with lack of information then.

jessica: Welcome to the the one half of one percentile of the world's population. I often wondered how to crack that club.

MadMonkey: don't like that the bishops are on the same color, should we switch knight and bishop on one side. As long as all kicks are done in one turn it might be pretty good.

AbigailII: Scrabble is all about strategy... which letters should I keep? Should i play the 50 point play and leave myself with crappy letters, or the 30 point play that gives me a better chance at the 7 letter word next time. Should I leave that triple word open because i get a good score doing it? etc etc

Eriisa: Nobody plays roulette for fun, only for money. Playing for money is not possible here.

coan.net: How about this: Random numbers assigned at the start of the game, and the winner is the one closest to 5.8. We'd get through the games quickly.

Fencer: A redirect in a banner ad isn't strictly speaking spyware and is not detected by any of my spyware programs.

Well it seems to me a good "feature" would be to get rid of the offending banners. It has now happened on 3 computers, all of which are clean, and only at this site (i.e. i get redirected from this site)

does anyone else get redirected to www.errorprotector.com from this site? I can't find a problem with my system and it only happens from brainking.

As a new pawn (previously and maybe future rook) i just noticed that I can't join a tournament because I'm already playing another tournament.

However...

I finished playing that tournament months ago and it is held up by incredibly slow players.

I suggest tournaments where pawns have finished don't count against them in this regard.

MadMonkey: I disagree. Back and Forward buttons in the browser have the same functionality for all sites, therefore making it easy to understand and use. Additional buttons don't add anything in my opinion.

Oh.. didn't notice my membership expiring. Last time I saw a reminder.
thanks

All of a sudden I can't read and write to boards in fellowships, is it just me, or is there a bug?

King Reza: That would seem to rid the smiley of some of its humor, why would we do that?

Never mind, i installed Firefox and it works fine. Seems Brainking is not yet compatible with IE on vista?

well, this link:
brainking . com/en/DoMove?g=2392153&rd=1

takes me to this:
brainking . com/en/ShowGame?g=2392153

which shows the board with the "roll dice" link. It looks to me as though the browser has picked up the correct link and tried to go there, what problems are you referring to?

Is there something wrong with the site? I can't roll the dice in some games and in others i've made the same move twice.

AbigailII: Ok, I kind of meant that without being clear. so i see further down in the thread you describe an algorithm that works for the simple case.
So if T=W+D/2 for the leader, and T(n)=W+D/2+U for the others for simplicity

So if you are searching to see if T > T(n) for all n

If it doesn't then you need to see if T=Tn for each value of n. If it does then you would just search through a tree to determine if any combination of results ends up with the leaders S-B score being less than the challengers. That's what I meant by being efficient. You don't need to take into account every possible outcome.