In the pair of games Walter mentioned he is rated about 2400 and me about 2000. We have both played between 130 and 150 games.

In the first, I won and moved up 13 points. Walter moved down 8 points. So far so good.

In the second he won and moved up 8 points and I moved down 13 points.

This was a zero gain for both. I would expect to move up a bit after splitting the games. Of course it has worked out well for me when I split against lower players, so I'm not complaining, I just don't think the formula is a good one.

Elo is the rating system named after Prof. Arpad E. Elo, which the United States Chess Federation uses.

Walter - It also depends on how many games you have finished & how many games your oppenent has finished. In thery, the more games you have completed, the more "stable" your rating will be.

3 game Crowded rating - You should only get a rating after 4 games. By any chance did a game of crowded get timed out, then restored? (UPDATE: Yea, your game with "JustTina" which was timed out, giving you a rating - then it was restored, but the computer kept your rating viable instead of putting you back to "unrated".)

==============
I also some-what question some of the rankings - how in the new battleboat games for example, everyone's ratings started really low - even if you won all your games, you were still in the 1500-1700 range. Yet in Amazons, a few quickly jumped to the 2000+ range in no time at all. (Sorry, I can't check myself because I can't see what everyone's "unrated" rating is.) :-(

OK Fencer, I'll post it here then.

Is the ratings thing working correctly? I've noticed that it seems rather arbitrary with the points it gives and takes. If I'm 300 points ahead of my opponent, shouldn't he gain more than me if he wins? And lose less the me if he loses?
Also, I'm rated in Crowded Backgammon, even though I've only played 3 games. Mely is not listed on the provisional Dark Chess list even though he's played 9 games and has a rating of 2284.

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The 300 difference question comes from two game that "grenv" and I just finished.

Mely has replied to my query. He doesn't know why he's not listed. His theory is that he's won every game and ELO (I don't know what he means by ELO, but Electric Light Orchestra is probably not what he has in mind) doesn't recognize him for some reason. I replied that GothicInventor has won everygame and he's listed. So what gives?

Database knows everything, of course :-)

and the data base? ;)

Nobody except you knows how you voted.

I would think it would be anomymos (sp?) make so folks wouldnt be leery of participating.

polls - If you make that be "moderated" or ran by a person, i could run polls for you! (And I would not even ask about auto-passing!) :-)

Oh yes, polls. I'll do something with that.

and well worth the 3% I'm sure!
I was wondering if the "poll" link is being used?

Yesterday I was approved [at last!] for accepting credit/debit cards on Moneybookers. Supported cards are Visa, Mastercard, Delta / Visa Debit and Visa Electron.
If you don't have a PayPal account and want to pay with the mentioned cards directly, now you can :-)

Welcome Paige and Lauren! I also sent you both invites. If I can help in any way, feel free to ask.

Paige and Lauren,
I sent you both invites for backgammon. The invites should show up on your main page.

ok that's great, i'll let you pick one and then we'll just go for it! :o)

Thanks Paige I would like that :o)

hi lauren, i'm new on here too and having some trouble, if you get any helpful hints would you mind passing them on to a fellow novice? lol how about we learn together eh? fancy a game? paige

Hello,I'm new here and finding it hard navigating around the site,would anyone want to play a game and help me out a bit here? Pleeeeeeeease??

I never use em anymore ;)

Quick!! everyone clic an ad. Fencer needs "some cents" LMAO:)
sorry Fencer...too good to pass up;)

nothing wrong with having "some cents" LOL:)

Well, I don't get out much from BrainKing, so all these new sites are a novelty for me! :oD

What I meant harley was to not be able to "hide" an ad on one of those pages so I can go and click on it to help support this site.

But I don't like to keep the ads on my main pages so I have hid them. So what I request is have a page (like Support us, or the Store) where the ads always show without the option to hide them. (That way I can still go and click on them to help support the site, but not have them sitting in front of me all the time.)

Have another look, Stevie! Go on the jokes board and you get ads for lame joke sites! On the games you get ads that match your name! It must be a word association thing, I think its great!

I hate them full stop LOL

I don't think its a good idea to only have them on one page. I'm finding different ads on different pages, and some of them are great! (Like the chess shop!) I like to see what new ones appear every time I change page!

Google is strict on how you get people to click on ads, and if google finds out a site is giving incentives to clicking on an ad, Google will terminate the contract with brainking. (Which a "contest" to see who clicks it the most would most defently be a no-no.) If Fencer could, he would probable put a big "CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT OUR SITE", and also encourage all users to click on a banner once or twice a day - but again, google frowns on this.

Hey Fencer, is there any way that you can track the number of times we click on banners and display the number similar to who moves the most in one day.
It would be kind of interesting and give some people a goal and hence create more banner clicks therefore creating more money for the site which in turn flows back to benefits for us.

I like the idea that I can help support the site by clicking on the banner once a day or so - since it is a way I can help support this site without sending more cash (which I don't have.)

But I don't like having a banner sitting across the top of my page during the whole day that I play, so of course I clicked "hide" right away - so my problem now is if I want to click on an ad again, I will have to either go change the settings, or logout and back in as a guest. (which is too many steps for a lazy person like me!)

How about having a page like "Support us", or "Store" have the banner up all the time? That way I know I can quickly go into one of those pages and quickly click an ad to help support this site.

It's nice to live on the edge for a while!

I wonder if I'll be so sarcastic when my daughter is in her age :-D

Now the only problem I've got is that when cariad sees 'hide' she's going to grab her laptop and lock herself in a cupboard. :o)

"Hide" below banners should do it :-)

Hahaha!

Or without.

Ha ha! Well, I can try it. With some short explanation in Server News.

I've been thinking about changing my computer's name too. Gosh, look! An ad. How lucky! Now to change the name to Eric.

I must check it out, harley!

I was looking at the chess shop, Bumble! They've got some really great stuff in there, Simpsons chess sets, Alice in Wonderland, and boards, books - and they also do backgammon sets. I'd love to visit that shop.

Okay, so we've got the option to turn them on. Wouldn't it be better to have the option to turn them off?
I mean, having everyone's turned on to start with then they can go and turn them off if they want.

Wow, aren't hotels cheap in Prague? Check it out. NOW!

Well fencer is a clever boy harley! what do you expect!!! lol

I just turned the banner ads on, they're quite discreet, aren't they?! I thought they'd be great big ads right across the top of the page, flashing and blinking at you to click them! But they're neatly fitted in the page!

Yes, I plan to do it.

It has been talked about mrloupcity :-)
I think (though i will probably be corrected lol) that it is still in the plans, but each persons saved message box would have to have a size limit so not to take up to much database space.

be a save Message box. So that way my in box would not look so full. Just an idea for BK to think about I hope.
:o{P``````

Fencer that sounds like a gr8888t idea to help out Liquid, site , and u. lol
:o{P``````

I've added a new option to Settings page for paying members. Who wants, can turn banner displaying on [it's disabled by default for paying members and shown only to pawns and guests] :-)
And what's the purpose of having the banners here? All of them are of CPC type - it means that each time someone clicks on them [once or twice a day from the same computer], the advertiser pays some cents to us. Which can be used as an additional income to cover serverhousing fees, for example.

Actually, it's not that difficult to create something like Bugzilla. Of course, after more important things are done :-)

if Monkey cant pick the bugs..the Wolf can sniff them out!! :) j/k

LOL!