Aganju: First of all, it's the world cup.. but more importantly the matches are over in 90 minutes... here they can take 3 years!

Aganju: I think I'm OK with the words I used, but I do see your point.

In order to implement an online turn-based tournament properly, a site needs to advance rounds when the players who will advance are determined, regardless of whether or not there are 'meaningless' games remaining, especially when those 'meaningless' games can take a significant time to complete. This site doesn't do that.

I wish it did.

grenv: Three years is a bit low. I am in a tournament which has been running for almost SIX years (started 18th Nov 2005) and the first round is still not complete. There should be some way to progress this tournament, because six years is way too long for a whole tournament, let alone one round.

pgt: let's face it, 6 months is way too long for a tournament to last.

grenv:
Play Cloning Gammon for a prize.

rabbitoid: Right, so people joined 4 years ago hoping to get rook membership sometime in their life.

I guess 21 point games with 5 day moves should be a clue not to enter.

grenv: The thing to remember though, is when that tournament was created, the rules of Cloning Backgammon were slightly different. I don't remember the details, but there were more than one way to get multiple points in a game of a match. (Besides just doubling)
The rules were changed after that tourney started.

You are right, of course. At the time it seemed like a good idea.

rabbitoid: I searched for when the changes happened, on the Backgammon Discussion board.

Original rules : Backgammon (joshi tm, 2006-12-01 14:26:00)

Rule change : Backgammon (joshi tm, 2007-01-04 11:53:47)

HMM. Though it is interesting to add, the tourney started AFTER the post about the proposed change.

Of course by then, I'm sure so many had already signed up.

For a possible new category of achievement points, I nominate from plakoto "Your opponent's mother piece is pinned".

Adding this new achievement would help plakoto get more players.

In the same spirit of adding new players to a game, I also nominate for Ataxx and Assimilation the category of "win a game by a shutout", i.e. when your opponent has no pieces on the board.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

P.S. I suspect other players can find some other reasonable new "achievements" in relatively underplayed games here at BK in order to popularize those games too.

Is there any possibility of putting Anti Reversi 10x10 on this site?

My profile says I'm using the auto vacation and have 10 days left... but I don't think that's right since i'm a pawn. So my question is... do i get any vacation days that i need to set - and if so how?

grenv: Pawns get 10 vacation days a year.

You no longer have to set vacation days - if a game is set to time out (and you have auto-vacation turned on), then the game will have an hour time added back to it - and you will lose 1 hour of vacation time. (All games will have 1 hour added to it.. so if 3 games are about to time out, you only lose 1 hour.) - then that will continue to repeat until you are out of vacation time.

* The exception of course is games that don't have vacation days - or fixed weekends - those don't have time added & will time out.

coan.net: Thanks. so if you can't set vacation days, what would it mean to turn off auto vac? i guess you could be choosing to time out deliberately?

How about have a hyper Backgammon without the doubles... 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6.

Orlandu: I prefer then without the double rule as a seperate game.

Orlandu: I see a lot of 1-2's in your future! lol

But with all seriousness, I think it would be time to have another extra game added. The last game added was Massacre Chess before May 2009. That could be some tweaky variant but I also still miss the Classic Dots and Boxes game.

joshi tm: I always have a lot of game ideas. Two that I will share again, and which are variants and hopefully would not be too much programming are:

Logik-6: Logik-6 is the same game as the popular Logik game, but with 6 spaces instead of 5.

Ludo Express: Ludo Express is the same as regular Ludo, with the following changes: (1) Get out of the start with either 1 or 6, (2) Roll 2 dice each turn... double mean nothing special, (3) Each dice is separate - like Backgammon, you first make your move with one of your dice, and then the other - with the same or different piece.

Ludo is already a popular game, and quicker games are always popular - so making Ludo an ever quicker game would work very well.

Of course I have many other ORIGINAL game ideas, but these 2 are variants and I wouldn't think would be a ton of new programming.

coan.net: I would still like to see your "War" sort of game. (Group game, like ponds)

I inadvertently checked "include unrated players" on a recent game invitation. While I'm happy to play against unrated players, I thought it was bloody ridiculous to see that I will get 0 points for a win, -12 for a draw, and -24 for a loss. How on earth are unrated players meant to get to play against rated players. How about setting up some sort of rating system which is fair to players with an established rating, and which also gives new players an opportunity to move up the ratings reasonably quickly to reach their level,

I might even be prepared to accept 0 points for a loss in a game of skill, but in games like backgammon, which is maybe 70% skill and 30 % luck (I bet that gets some reaction) it seems a bit silly to award zero points for a win - why would anybody interested in ratings ever play against an unrated player?

pgt: If you're rated 400 (I think it's 400) BKR above an opponent, you'll gain zero points in a win, but lose plenty in a loss. Unrated players basically have a 'hidden' rating that starts at 1600. So if your rating is high enough, it doesn't make sense to play unrated players, but if your rating isn't that high, then playing against unrated players is fine.

Thad: Exactly!

Thad: I think the unrated starting point is 1300, not 1600.
You can see your 'unrated' rating under Statistics/Top Players/choose the game, at the very end of the page your rating is always shown.

Aganju: 1300 is correct

1300. I wasn't sure about that number.

I think the real problem for pgt and others including me is that the BRK formula which works fine for chess does not work well for other games. I wish there were different formulae for different games based on their skill vs luck factor and other factors. Or is there a better one-size-fits-all formula that could be used?

Maybe a small but useful change, in order to vitalize the poker-section of this site:

A red number in the very left column, like the number that shows how many games have to be played - this number may show how many people are currently on the tables...

I spend some minutes from time to time to check out if some of us are playing poker or waiting - just to realize there was nobody. Then i leave this section and forget the idea...

diogenysos: I'm with you on that...even a friends category so you can place frequent players..

Bwild: yep. its a shame that the poker section seems to be asleep nowadays...

Does the pond automatically go to the next round, when all players have made their move?

Or do the players have to wait until the regular "deadline" is over?

diogenysos: follows the deadline

Could you add a button "Freeze" to temporary stop of refreshing game pages?

southland: You can do that yourself, go to your settings page http://brainking.com/en/Settings
it is listed under "Other parameters"

It's 4 click to stop and 4 click to return refreshing.
It's not usefull.

It's not usability

ever asked to have the cancel button put above the move button? If so I apologize. If not then I humbly offer that as a suggestion. Thank you and goodnight.

ketchuplover: I asked to have it right-justified once and was unceremoniously told no.

ketchuplover: why is there a cancel button when you can just click the browser's back button (or any other link on the page)

Sometimes one doesn't see the errors of their ways until just after clicking on the move button.

grenv: The cancel button is essential to me. Sometimes you need to undo a move and keep thinking about the turn.

does anyone know the game

Lino

1. No Doubles
2. Doubles that send you back rather than foward.
3. you get doubles - your opponent get to make the moves forward or backwords.
3. Instead of 3 pieces, you have 6
Just a thought.

The rating system is crap! I would love to accept some game with low ranked players, but why should I lose 58 points to lose, or gain one point to win a game of Backgammon? It is utterly ridiculous!. Surely this can be fixed. It;s not chess. How about some reasonable numbers so high ranked players can play with new member without losing HUGE points when they have unlucky streak.

pgt: Then play unrated games.

Fencer, just had a very simple idea to start the year (sshhh don't say a word lol)

Often when i goto enter a Tournament which contains all games, i will only enter the same 40 games for example (ones i would call my Favourites). This can of course be a pain, tedious and often i may miss the odd one by mistake.

So i thought, how about some sort of favourite system ? Then when you goto enter a Tournament, a favourite button could show up somewhere on screen, you click it, and it selects all games you wish to enter (that are available in that Tournament).

So, how to set all this up ??? AND it came to me.....we already have it.....use the Game Filter page from settings. Either:

a) a new section could be created there

OR

b) use the top section 'Select games which you want to show up at the Waiting Games page' as your Favourites as well. (which presumably are your favourites)

Of course, this is just an idea to simplify the signing up process, and the way i see it.

Yourself & others may have a better idea

MadMonkey: I already described exactly this about four months ago, below. After joining BK, I had the same experience, and still I would like to be able to select quickly 'my set' of games in a tournament.

Aganju: Really ? Must have been one of my sleepy days

It would certainly save a lot of time. I just entered a few Tournaments, and it was a pain making sure i entered the correct games in each one

Really, if Fencer was keen on the idea, if he did use the ones in Settings (Game filter), it should be quite simple

MadMonkey: Actually, that would be quite easy to do.

Fencer: can not believe its taken 10 years to come up with it .............(aawww 10 years, something else is coming to mind)

I was wondering if we could propose a common tournament format. A standard single elimination with a losers bracket. So essentially its not single elim its a two loss tournament.