Not sure if this has been requested before, but I'm wondering if it's not too difficult to implement if we could have "number of moves made so far today" added beside our name. Since the system keeps track of the number of moves anyway, would it be hard to do?

A set number of games is better. It would need to be an even number to avoid that problem. If the score is tied an extra 2 are played until someone wins.

I wouldn't be worried about the tournament length, some of these tournaments seem endless as it is!

I didn't think of that, I rarely play games where one colour has a greater advantage. Good point.

points matches are not always fair , take five in line and a 3 point matches (which is what happens now) , with winners from two sections .the first prson to move (white) will almost always get the three points before black does . this is why we would be better if we had pro version . it would work for some of the games though .

Or have a points match for the final round. First one to 3 (or 5) points is the winner. Play like that until there are just 2 players thrashing it out for the overall winners position.

But it's a good topic to think about.

I could live with that.

I would also like to see tournaments played until there is only one winner. But of course there should be some exceptions to avoid endless tournaments. Like a maximum of two rounds with the same players. For example: a,b and c have made it to final round, if they end up in a threeway tie another round is started. If they all end up tied again on that round, they'll be cowinners of the tourney. But if a&b beat c and tie each other then a and b would advance to next round.

Imagine a situation with three winners of the last round. They will form a new section and all of them will have the same number of points. They are all winners again, so the next round is created, exactly the same as before. And it can repeat again and again with no result.

So make it a three-win match or somesuch.

Lythande: It could lead to an endless tournament.

be nice to have something besides a 0 next to it! ;)

The option to have a tournament play out til there is only one winner. (Sorry, Sleep interrupted. ;)

I like it too.

I think that is a great idea BBW

How about turning the "Brains" into more of a game itself.

For example - How about a reward of 1 brain for each tournament game win, and also give brains as reward for winning a tournament (more brains for bigger tournaments). Or also when you have site tournaments offer extra brains to the winners.

Then instead of having brains buy memberships - have a whole "store" of things that can be bought for brains. (And when I say "store", mostly fun things that will not cost BK anything)

For example, some of the things that could be in the store: (Again, just examples - and example amounts)

10 Brains - You can make a post in a different color

10 brains - the background of a post can be in a different color

20 brains - lets you do both background & font different colors

50 brains - You can turn in for an extra vacation day

100 brains - You can turn in to get an APPROVED picture added to your profile

200 brains - you can get your rook membership expanded by 1 month (2 month Knight)

1000 brains - Let you post an APPROVED message to system news to stay for everyone to read for 2 days.

etc... etc...

The only down side would be that some people who be more prone to cheat to get more "brains" - but would be a cool extra feature.

Also - for Paid Members only - giving pawns another reason to join!

"Maybe, If you are on vacation, and therefore cannot be timed out of any games, then neither should your opponents be timed out in your games while you are on vacation either?" -- Upchuck, an excellent suggestion!

bumble: This is planned for BK 2.0 due to higher requirements of site performance.

If I go on vacation, I don't stop breathing. I'll likely be a bit busier with other things, might have a chance to pop in and make a few moves here and there, but mostly I'll be afk. I might even pop in and play one person, just to give them a shout (game message) about something. You seem to be saying 'vacation' equates to self-induced ban for XX days.

There are only so many vacation days -- use them unwisely, they're gone when you need them. Playing a light load while on vacation should not be a crime.

Along the lines of bwild's post below, I like to play my games starting with the one that is due to time-out first and play them in that order. Is there a way to do that witout having t go back to the main page each time?

lol I never even saw it comming, he beat me like I stole something lol. Only after I was in a huge hole did I bother to check his chess rating.

That's somewhat misleading since that unrated player has a provisional chess rating of 2200+ and has won 90% of his chess/variants so far. I'd say you still may be good! :)

tell me about it. I thought I was good at corner chess, then got beat 2 stright games by an unrated player lol

Lots of tough players.

Me too Backoff ... I can hold my own for a while against the better players but eventually those who spend days analysing will find me out ... even the variants are getting harder to win as new players arrive and those that are here develop their knowledge of the games ...

well I'm not one of them lol. I havn't yet managed to beat the top people on this site. I have a 2100+ rating but I never claimed to be a "great" chess player, I just play to have fun.

5 minutes...Backhoff,can you imagine that the top correspondence chess players analyze their games in nearly equal positions 2-4 days,sometimes a whole week or more,again and again the same position to find the best move,although they have a computer?
Against these people you will have no chance,also if you play with 5 engines.

I play two different ways. For my 200+ non-chess games, I play as fast as I can for an hour or so till they are all done. Then I start on my chess games. Those I spend about 5 mins a piece on.

I'm not sure if its been asked before...but on the "move and go to xgame" link....would it be possible to see the "time left to move" on your list of waiting games?

personally i usually have two yo three hundred games at once maybe more , i like to play fast on alot of the games and after an hour or so i run out of moves and are actually waitingf for someone to move , game like chess and go moko pente , do require longer thinking time and are played one after another (in my case) as apposed to playing mixed games in following moves .

Like I said, I'm sure it depends on the type of game. As far as chess goes, 2 games would be way to many for ME!!! lol...

but not in chess or variants,rod03801.And if you find the one or the other with very many games perhaps he copies his moves only from pc..:)

some of the people who have hundreds of games also have some of the highest BKR's, so no I guess some people don't lose context and focus doing that. But I think it definitely depends on the type of games.

I would like to place my "vote" for not changing the vacation time.. It too is one of the many reasons I came here.

But sure,at least a bit.And I have the opinion, that I play better only a few - 15-25 - games and try to play these games as good as I can.But if I have opponents with many games -we say more than 100 - they are mostly weaker players.In chess you cannot play so many games on a good level,if you want analyze correctly.Unless you are playing in a full time job :).

if the games are "brain easy games" such as backgammon, 100's are possible at the same time. Other more difficult games such as chess etc I would guess it is easy to lose touch of these

Which leads me to the question: Don't you lose context and focus playing more than, say, 30 games (I sometimes creep over 30 but not often)?

if someone is in a 5 day tourny, but there opponent has lets say 15 days to move, it's still your responsibility to check your games within 5 days

Hey to all,the vacation feature is a good feature of course and should not be removed.But a bad feature is the fact,that they can use vacations days for single games and in the other games they continue to play at the same time!And then the vacation days are nothing else than an additional respite for those who have running too many (mostly hundreds) of games.This also completely unsportsmanlike!

one of the reasons I joined this site was the vacation days feature... I travel a few times a year to visit my kids and when I do, I set my vacation days so I don't have to worry about making my moves while out there playing with my grandson .. but there are times when I do have time and get a chance to get online and catch up on my games .. I've stopped playing tournaments at iyt because of it's not having this feature ... seems the days i traveled .. I always timed out.. so please Fencer .. don't change this ... vacation days are just that for whatever reason you use them... not everyone uses them to extend play

It's already slow enough finishing some of these tournaments. Any rule that prevented players moving would be a bad rule in my opinion.

I too have used vacation, but actually been able to make some moves. However with no vacation I would have been forced to timeout some games.

That would be frustrating. I have used them when I travel and didnt know if I would have access or not and then got lucky and found a puter and got online. I do understand your point though about just using them to extend their times. Not an easy choice.

I like how it is now - I know in the past when I was overwelmed with many games, and a slow game site - I would put myself on vacation while still trying to play the few games that I could so I could keep up and not time out.

... plus as someone else mentioned, if I know I have a big hot air ballooning event over the weekend - I will put myself on vacation since I don't know exactly how much time I would have to play. Sometimes I can get on and still play some games, sometimes I don't.

One point.... If I am in a quick game with you, lets say a 1 or 2 day game, and You tell me you are on a vacation for 5 days, and the rest of my games have a longer limit, I may choose to not be on site for a couple of days myself, thinking I am safe. But then you come on anyway and make a move I don't know about, and I get timed out thinking you were not around... Just an example, and may not be all that relevant to most situations....

Maybe, If you are on vacation, and therefore cannot be timed out of any games, then neither should your opponents be timed out in your games while you are on vacation either? Just a thought.

I've had to do that once myself...got caught in 3 2 and 3 day tournies and playing the likes of you guys...I need all the time possible!That,mixed with my work load,made it neccessary to keep fromtimeing out.
But that brings up another question...should vacation time be increased with renewwed subscription?

As one who never has holidays I use vacation days to releive the stress of the hard games (when they conflict with work) while I still enjoy playing the simpler situations ... so I would be against excluding play during vacation days.

But @all, that`s why you can have longer time limits with we say 5 days. And you can change your vacation status at once or within the next day if the situation is changing? But vacationdays should be vacations for you completely and for all games also,not only for some of them.It should not be a possibility to extend your time in some special games.And it is abuse for me if a player sets a vacation day if he only needs more time in a single game.

I concider myself a reasonably serious board game player. I am also very busy on most days of the week.
On those busy days I usually don`t play games that require lot of thinking and analysing BUT play a few moves in games in which the next move is obvious and/or easy to come up with.
Some moves are easy and relaxing but some moves can feel like a duty IF you have to make them when you don`t feel like it.
For this reason I have sometimes used the vacation days the way Caissus objected to.

That’s a good point, but let me play devils advocate here. Lets say that we are allowed to use our allotted vacation time for anything we want. The last time I used mine was a few months ago when I had to bring my computer to the shop for repairs. Thanks goodness for vacation time because it ended up being a week before I was up and running again… anyway I did have an opportunity to use another computer a time or 2 while my computer was gone, and it felt great to be able to make some moves to relieve my withdrawal;) to my way of thinking, it would be a shame if I had not been allowed to make the moves when I had the chance.

Interesting. It's not a big problem to implement but is it really what people expect from vacation days? For example, one is not sure if he will be able to play tomorrow, so he sets a vacation day, then he actually comes here the next day [because of some reason] and since the vacation day cannot be cancelled at this moment, he won't be able to play. Kind of frustrating, isn't it?
But maybe I am wrong.

In the past I have seen sometimes that some of my opponents have announced their vacations,even so they have continued to play some of their games. So they have used their vacations to extend their time limits in some of their games.
I think,during the vacations the players should not be able to play their games! Either they have vacations or not!