Nowadays, most compies run their servers on zulu or universal time (formerly called Greenwich Mean Time), without any DST. Thats makes administrating it easier.
That has nothing to do with the issue here - different people have weeked at different times. Nothing can be done about that, because the earth is round, not flat.
the server could consider everone's time zone, but that has ugly side effects: I have still weekend while you haven't, so you lose games against me on time while I don't have to even move at all. Friday night it's reversed of course. Also people could cheat another 'weekend day' out by setting their time zone to the earlest one (australia?) on Friday, so their weekend starts early, and on Sun change it to the latest zone (Hawaii or whatever).
All ugly, so not good.

DST is *not* about saving energy, that idea was abandoned in the sixties (just an urban legend now).
It is about saving lives, and improving quality of life!
A) saving lives: after the DST switch, some people now have to drive in the dark, which results in more accidents, which results in more dead. In the evening, the result is the reverse. More people drive in the evening than in the morning, so the net effect is some lives saved per day.
B) Quality of life: even though everybody complains when DST starts (and again when it ends), generally people enjoy an hour more of sunlight in the evening.
Read wikipedia for more.

thisbeme: the 'weekend' logic is applied according to server time, and does not care at all what your time zone or time zone setting is.
When Monday starts in Czech republik, weekend is over.
You just have to be more careful with walking on the edge. But I remember that this part of it was discussed before with you...

Artful Dodger: So - I would buy for example 10 rooks now, my membership would show 'valid till 2037' (with the top bonus)? And then I could take the prices from that 'storage' when I make a tourney? Or I could just be a member till 2037...

Who has done that before and knows how it works?
Can I and how would I buy 'memberships' to use for tournament prices, before I make the tournaments (kind of 'in spare')?
I would - for example - like to buy and pay two rook memberships now (of course, _with_ the easter egg bonus) and keep them somewhere 'stored' until I make a tournament maybe next month, and then use them as prices.

Is that possible? Or do I have to make the tournament first, add the price, buy it, and then they are stuck with that tournament?

(V): It's not yet released! You can _pre-purchase_ it and they show a date where it _could_ be it will be released...
Until you have it, it's nextware.

alexlee: no, 4104. The other 37 are on his opponent's moves...

cd power: I hope mine time out first, so I get some rating points... I have nearly 300 games with him waiting...

Purple: It wouldn't matter much in normal games, but if you try to make 14000 moves in day, it makes a significant difference.

rednaz23: I saw that a huge number of their games were Ludo, which doesn't always require too much thinking (to state it lightly).
Still, you have to sit all day and get rectangular eyes...

rednaz23: Unbelievable.
I thought I am crazy, but I never made it much over 1000.
14000 moves in a day means moving every 6 seconds for 24 hours, no breaks...

norrsken: I feel with you.
I have started to review the participant list of such tourneys before I join. Many names I know by heart, as I play 50 moves against them ever day; but if there are unknowns, I check their record. Just click on their name, and see
- how many running games
- how many games that are threatening to time out soon
- how much vacation left
- # of moves made yesterday
- check any of their games that is on move 30 and see how long it is running.
together that makes a good enough picture, and even though there are exceptions, rather be save than sorry...

I don't get why some people find it interesting to have 3000 games running and not being able to keep up with it. You would think they learn it after a while, but it seems they don't. Just like Homer Simpson - bang! Aouw! bang! Aouw! bang! Aouw! bang! Aouw! bang! Aouw! bang! Aouw! ...

thisbeme: Sat/Sun is calculated according to the server's time zone, which is eastern europe. So the BK weekend is over at Sun 6 pm EST, or in PT even at Sun 3 pm. It starts already early on the other hand, though.

After exactly 190 days of playing BK, I just won my 1000th game (having accumulated 631 losses in the same period, which was the easier part)
:-)

Gabriel Almeida: I hope not (BK becoming a meeting site).
Looks like there are people out there that are dumb enough to answer these ads (or they would have given up on it).
Maybe we should have a BKR rating for this too? If you fall for it, 'you lose the game' and rating points; if you can control yourself to ignore it, you 'win' and go up?

rabbitoid: I got her note too... Hope her picture arrives soon... ;-)

Purple: I own a german bank account but I live in the US (which is uncommon but not illegal, I understand), and when I tried to connect that bank account to an PayPal ID, they asked me for a verifiable German residency address. As I couldn't provide one, they declared me a fraudster, and not only locked my eBay account too, but informed the police. Now they are not willing to discuss the case in anyway anymore.

firedragon764: I do have problems with PayPal and I hate them .
But that should not affect anyone else. I know at least two people that used it without issues for BK last week.

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...

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?

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!

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?

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??

Hypercarefully!
Especially the first move!

Again I have reason to mistrust the randomness of dice roll. I just played 9 backgammon games in a row, and all 9 opponent had a 6-6 roll .
Nine in a row, without anything else in between. Does anyone believe this is pure chance? Two days ago, I had a streak of 5 such 6-6 rolls (didn't complain about that one, though).
Generally, I have the feeling if you play fast enough, you can get the same roll again in the next game, for about 10 to 15 seconds. So whenever I have a nice double roll, I hurry really up to play, as I can manage to 'roll' the same double in the next three or four games. Try it, if you don't believe it. And if a roll is bad, like 1-2, I typically wait ten secs until I press 'Send Move'.
I remember Fencer claims that the current server milliseconds are used for the randomizing; there could be an error in the code there, and it uses the single digit seconds instead? or some other error. Re-Randomizing for every roll is not a good solution anyway; there are much better ways to make good random numbers (my Minor topic in my masters degree was 'Random Number Generation'; it was a while ago, but I still remember some things).

fukuhara: In addition, you get the achievement only after payment was received and processed, so the list is 2-5 days behind.

Ok that makes sense. If you are willing to spend that kind of money for someone else.
How would you do that ? Write in the message how you want it handled? I did not see any fields for that.

I thought a while about ordering like 10 various memberships in one go, and stockpile them to use in tourneys I start from time to time. I wouldn't want to make a separate order every time for each tourney, as it is rather cumbersome to pay for me (the process, I mean). How could that work?

Aganju: Bought! I should now have 7+2*12 months more membership :-)

actually, the life time memberships should be half price instead of 100% longer. Most people don't have any use for twice lifetime...

RED CODE!

I don't understand how this works; let's say I still have 6 month of membership running, but I buy a new one now with the bonus. Do I not lose the still open six months, just to replace it with the bonus? If the bonus is 25%, I would actually lose on the whole thing?
More generally asked, what happenes if I buy membership while the current one is running? Anyone tried this?

I think I understand what he means. I also got a generous gift of 20 brains, and have entered 5 tournaments with them yet (I won 6 brains in one of them), so that leaves me with 1 brain, and four running tournaments. Or should I say ongoing tournaments; they are not running in any sense.
They are not even going well, but that is another topic.
But maybe around Christmas, one of them might end, and I might be able to join another one.

I asked that question before (and it resulted in the donation), but I'd really like to know - how do you get brains?
- you can win them (but only if you have some to risk)
- you can get them donated (thanks again, but that can't be the preferred way)
- you can buy other people memberships? not sure about that one?
- there is a page that claims you can get them for free if you complete some easy steps, but I could not find those easy steps (here it says 'By completing a simple process of easy tasks, you will be awarded with 20 Brains and you can start to explore all other possibilities with no actual investment. Please visit this page for details.'), but there is no simple process of easy tasks described?

Gabriel Almeida: colors? You mean politically flavored colors like gas-chamber green, or blood red? Or just normal like purple or pink? Or racially incorrect, like black? Oops. I learned the politically correct term is now 'of color', like 'a man of color' or 'a hole of color' (formerly called a 'black hole')...

warning, the above statement might contain sarcastic or humorous references

Pedro Martínez: You can't mention names here?? Johnny, Jim, Jack! Do I get shot now? ;-)

I see. I'd count that as 'bought' in the wider meaning - you paid money, well knowing you get brains for it. - I endorse the idea, don't misunderstand me. Just wanted to hear potential alternatives.

Aganju: not counting the one in your head

Pedro Martínez: So how did you get your first brain?

Artful Dodger: Here is an idea which might help: I set up tournaments typically with 2 days or so, but accumulating time up to 7 days. That means you need to make a move within two days in average, but if you play rather fast, you will accumulate 7 days of time, so if you have a business travel or such, you can let that run down.
The point is that you need to 'earn' that longer time by playing several moves faster than the limit of two days; you cannot use it for every move.
I think that should work ok, if everybody sets tourneys up that way. Maybe even 1 day per move, accumulating up to 7 days?

beach: I agree with what you wrote; these are games. However, some people are more competitive than others (and I'm in the first row here), and they can't help it when a player times out a lot of games. Not if he does against me - free BKR and wins - but if he does it in a difficult tournament: Imagine I squeeze a draw out of a strong player after a difficult game, which I'm proud of, and then he looses all other games on time. So the 'punishment' for me moving fast and playing well is that I get a draw, and all others get a 'win', so I'm one point behind in the competition. That has happened, and it does not go well with my mood... being less competitive would certainly ease the pain, but that's easier said than done - I am what I am.

Artful Dodger & others: From my experience, playing 500 games and staying ahead of things takes about 4-8 hours playing time a day. Every day.
Of course that depends a bit on how much you think about each move, but it doesn't get much faster than that.
I have managed to play 1400 games for a month or two, but it took its toll on my work live, and I got a yellow card from my wife. So now I'm working to get it down to less than 250, which will be nicely doable in the evening hours.

I think there should be a limit for everybody (no matter what membership level), for example to not be able to have more than 500 games running, until you have more than 400 running for a month without timeouts, etc. If you can handle, the limit goes up. If you time out, the limit goes down again.

But maybe it just takes a grown-up mind to control yourself. And a lot of players are not grown up, and behave like a kid in the candy store. We all know how that ends...

I think this is a good and effective proposal.
If a players times out on more than acertain amount of games, he gets limited in the number of games he can start. There are many possible thresholds, for example:
Tmed out in more than 20 games in 24 h => cannot join tournaments or games for 24 h
Or:
Every time you time out (a single game), you cannot join any other game or tournament until you have no more games where it is your move. - this would force that player to make a move in all games before he can start new ones. Maybe a bit too harsh.
Or:
- after any timeout, you can only start games or join tournaments if the number of games where it is your move is less than the number where it is your opponents move (so you need to move in half of your games)

There is an infinity of other ideas, most anything would do though. Just some limitation would help.

Marshmud, thisbeme: I can only agree. Starting an inordinate amount of games that you cannot handle shows bad judgement. That can happen to anybody, but continuing to do so shows carelessness and disrespect for others.
Although it does not violate any official rules on this site, it violates basic courtesy, and I would not want to play against such people anymore.

:-) and I caught it. Easy with the amount of time I spent here...

Was brainking down minutes ago? I got the message 'server could not be found' for a while, and it was not my network.

ketchuplover: I think you'd lose 95% of players immediately, and another 99% of potential new players - if I come to a website the first time, and they want money to start with, I just close the page. I don't pay money for things on the web, as there is always somewhere you can get it for free. I think most others would do so.

And having so few players suddenly results in the same people playing everwhere, which is boring, so more people leave. RIP.

Just my take of it.

rod03801: I did not get your point at first; now I did.
I don't think there is any such log right now.

rod03801: Go under My Profile on the left, in the center grey block is a line:
'Vacation days left: 31 days 8 hours - using the automatic vacation' or so.

while this topic is discussed:
I think basically all of them are only useful for a while, and then another one is better. I'm finding myself switching between them very often; so what I would really like is the setting:
'go to next game of this type, if none found go to game of similar type, if none found go to next game.'
that way I could go through my 150 moves without ever changing the setting, getting the games presented in a useful sequence, grouped by game type and game (first all Backgammon games, then all Nackgammon, etc.)

I understand that this is a bit more complex, but I could imagine that such a setting would be nice for a lot of people?

rod03801: I tried to use it recently, and would consider it useful.
But I can live without it.

MadMonkey, Fencer: 'next gam with no vacation' works fine, I used that a lot the last weels.

No, probably the timeout demon has crahed. It happens for everybody now.

Thad: But if you need a large display anway, the small processing component doesn't make any difference so you can keep it inside the screen. Can't loose it that way either.