pgt: not sure if the definition of 'unrated' includes 'provisional ratings' - could be be unrated means 'not even provisional rating'. Anyway, here are some options:
- the player might have had a higher rating when they signed up (most probable)
- there are bugs in the code that allow people to bypass the limitations if they care to hack it
- when you explicitly invite players, that could override the limittations

ketchuplover: in a 10-point match, NO. You need ten points to win a 10-point match.

In a 10-games match, YES, agreed.

I found game 8638385, which is a 10-point match. Which one is going wrong?

ketchuplover: can you explain that what you mean? As far as I understand, that is implemented.

Carnie: i think this was asked before (I'm all for it!)
One of the issues that was brought up was that you might come back to a game that you don't recognize because it could have moved twenty or thirty times (while you were trying for a roll you can move).

pgt: you can always resign them, even if it is not your turn. If less than two moves were played, they do not count for rating.

Carnie: agreed.
But be aware that some games would end after one or two 'real' moves then...

ThunderGr: Sounds good, but it could lead to a contradiction - if the tournament has a minimum number of participants (most do), and the removal reduces the number below that, the tournament would not start. But if it doesn't start, those people should not be removed. But if they are not removed, it would start, and they would be removed And so on.

Of course there are simple solutions for this, I was just pointing out the issue.

ThunderGr: The problem with Fischer clock is that it negates vacation completely - and sometimes I want to make a real vacation, and I need 6 days without internet access, and then I lose all games, no matter how fast I play all year.
Therefore, when I make games/tournaments, I allow a significant build-up of Fischer-clock-time.

There is no perfect way to define the game speed that pleases everyone and considers such situations. That is why I proposed to show that number below; that way you can identify and sort out the players that produce the lag.

What about this? For each player, show on his profile the average time games sat with him until he moved for the last 10000 moves.
(that means the time passed from when his opponent moved till he moved)

This would be very helpful to see which players typically delay tournaments and which not, so others could selectively weed some slow players out (or avoid them), if they care about their tournaments taking years.

For a player that comes here once a day, this would probably show 24h; for a player that plays more often, less than that.
For the typical 'lagger', it should be weeks.

diogenysos: "This game is private and the players do not allow you to see it." - so what exactly are you talking about?

Fencer: The question would be what is 'reasonable'. According to
http://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/brainking.com

it would 35 000 $. But the methods used to calculate that are doubtful. Compared to dailygammon, which I personally see at a about 1/10 of brainking, and which is valued 630 $, 6 300 $ would be more like it.
From my gut feeling, the truth is somewhere between 6 300 $ and 35 000 $.

Anyone willing to chip in?

Thom27: that would imply that separate random number context is saved for every game, but that should be doable, after all, it's just two more fields at the game.
This can be even realized without implementing any new algorithm - the current algorithm could be published and the seed number stored in that way.
Publishing the algorithm would be a good idea in itself, so anyone could verify that it is good (or not good), and stop whining (Yes, there are people who would still whine because they don't understand math, but we could just ignore those)

I often find myself spending a lot of time searching through the tournament list to find open games that need only *one more player* so they would start immediately.
What about a filter in the tournament page to show only those? If you are looking for new games to start now, you sign up for some of the shown tournaments, and minutes later you have lots of games going.
I would consider that a great feature.

SchlagerPower: Schlagerpower, you will not get more participants by posting your tournament multiple times and in the wrong discussion boards, you will just get the opposite effect. It is like obnoxious advertisements this way.

diogenysos: Be aware though, that that is a valid and accepted strategy in real-life games - making complicated or surprising moves to have your opponent time out. The point here is more that there is an arbitrary 1 - 10 minute extra time before time-out, which makes it random. It could even happen that your opponent has -9 minutes and you have 0 minutes, and just when the demon comes by, it is your move, so you *lose*. And a malicious opponent could even use that - if you watch the timeouts taking effect in the system, you can time the demon's arrival up to 1 or 2 seconds, so you could make a move right before that...
I agree with you that a game where seconds count should have a more exact time control that ~10 minutes.

rednaz23: Makes a lot of sense to me. Seconded.

pgt: While you are still blocked, your opponent could keep moving and being forced to open a prime, or being forced to move himself in a bad position by an ugly roll.

Nothingness: I think that's called "Double Elimination". I like that idea!
Also what about another tournament format: Swiss-System?

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.

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.

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.

Thad: Agreed. What you describe it slightly more than what I thought; basically whenever any page display finds a negative time, (instead of displaying it,) it triggers 'end the game'; I meant only when the opponent opens it.
I think the latter is less effort to implement, but the former is nicer of course.

Ever had that? I really need to leave, but I have only one hour for my move left in that game, so if I leave, I'll lose. But the opponent does not play either... so I wait and wait... finally, when his clock says -9 minutes, I leave. When I come back, I lost on time - he came, made a move (sitting on -9 minutes!) and won on time. Frustrating.

Now I understand that the timeout demon cannot be run every second (or the CPU would do nothing else), but what about this:
Whenever someone goes to a game page to make his move (and the system knows that he is the user due to move), the remaining time for him is checked, and if it's <= 0, he loses right there.
That would mean that without him opening the game, he could watch the time go to -1, -2, -3 mins, same as now, but he has already lost, the system just did not execute it yet. That would be fairer, and I think easy to do, without producing extra load on the server.

- this is my third idea in so many days; so if I bore you let me know. I thought they are all worthy. -

I find myself scrolling through 'All-Games' tournaments over and over again, tediously selecting the same 14 games I'd like to play.
It would be great if I could set a filter for that once in my settings, and then in each such tournament, I have a button 'Sign up for all *my* games'.

Idea: On the main page, where all my games are listed, it would be great to add a (sortable) column 'my remaining time' to the list of games 'Opponent's turn', where my opponent has to move.
Even though I'm not due to move on those (my opponent is), I think it is useful to see how much time I have in each game once he does move.
For example, if the lowest number showing is greater than one day, I know I do not have to use vacation for at least one day, even if my opponent moves right when I log out.

I understand that the feature is not the greatest since sliced bread, but it would probably be quite easy to implement.