It's not usability

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

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

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

diogenysos: follows the deadline

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?

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

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

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...

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?

Aganju: 1300 is correct

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.

Thad: Exactly!

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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:
Play Cloning Gammon for a prize.

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

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.

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.

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!

Would it be possible to get Bird's Chess? It would be nice if there was another alternative to 10x8 Chess. It's the best of the historical designs, and I am very curious to see if it is a playable game despite the unguarded pawn diagonal to the RN on the Queen side.

I wouldn't go so far to call the current implementation 'improper'.
Although I can certainly agree that it would be nice to have that feature, it is absolutely normal in real live matches to finsh group play before moving on (think about soccer world championship), and also it is not at all easy to calculate when a group is 'decided'; there are constellations where it would take significant effort. Of course a simple algorithm could probably catch 90+%, and that would do.

I would love to see tournament advancement implemented properly here at BrainKing.

happyjuggler0: oh yeah, i must have misread that somehow. Correct, this tournament should move on. There is no excuse for staying in round 1.

grenv: In section 14 one player has won all of his games. It is mathematically over.

happyjuggler0: you're right in principle of course, but in this case section 14 is undecided.

It certainly would not be difficult to calculate that a section is over prior to all games being played though.

Happy Birthday tenuki!

A minor change in the rules for someone getting a "yellow line" in their tournament section would allow round 2 to continue while at the same time allowing the slower players to continue their games. Do this and everyone is happy....

P.S. I am not involved in the tournament. I accidentally stumbled upon it when checking out the tournaments a certain player was currently playing.

alright, i would like to AGAIN request that auto-pass be enabled for Ludo. Fencer, i know you've said (way too long ago) that this will be addressed in "the next version of brainking," but that doesn't help any of us who are using the *current* version of brainking. a fix talked about and a fix applied are two different things, and i'm getting really tired of waiting for a fix to be applied for this (and i know i'm not the only one). it would be one thing if you said that and then produced the fabled "next version" two weeks later, but this has been going on for a long time now. repeatedly being summoned to game boards on which i am unable to make moves is a very real and persistent annoyance, and daydreaming of a happy (and as far as we subscribers can tell, entirely imaginary) day when i won't have to deal with that anymore really doesn't solve the problem.

thank you.

diogenysos: Please discuss it on the other board, though. Thank you

grenv: have to look at it... Nh2...

grenv: yes. correct. but i appreciate it was posted here cause i wouldnt have seen it there...

rod03801: correct... somewhat confused apparently.

grenv: I think possibly you intended this subject to be on a different board?

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=6

Thanks!

diogenysos: Reason I like it is that it differs from the opening in reverse at a critical point.
1.Nf3 e5
2.Ng5 f5
3. h4 c6
4. Nxh7

however since white played 1.h4 this capture is impossible and therefore a new line is needed. I think black erred with Nh2 in this game. . . white can't actually force a win i think if black plays something like b5.

grenv: nice one...