Aganju: There's one problem with skipping Wednesday and Thursday: Vacations would get shorter. A three week vacation, for example, would only last 15 days - and 6 of those days would have been weekend days anyway. Maybe we could make this feature optional? I would like to be able to change my preference from time to time...

Carpe Diem: Seems like you came up with a good answer yourself :-)
I think the option to create n game matches is a bit silly anyway. If this had be 2 win match instead, it would have been over by now.
And yes, some people have so many games going that they don't seem to pay attention at all. I have a game where I've literally been winning for years, and my opponent doesn't seem very excited at all about playing on - but still does so.

Pedro Martínez: Yes, that looks worrying. Round 2 started quite recently, 20. September 2012. And the site clearly got the Sonneborn-Berger score wrong.

likewowman2cool: A simple way to take away any bias is Battleboats would be to have 'simultaneous' moves like in Logik: Even though the players take turns, the outcome is only revealed after the second player's move. And the game is drawn if they use the same number of moves to reach the goal.

Raistlin: I wonder if 3 Maharajahs would be too much? As White, I would try to combine threats against f7, c7 and g7, as a capture on any of these squares with a protected Maharajah would be mate. So Black would have to either protect each of these squares twice, which looks difficult, or create an escape for the king, which looks risky.

Hrqls: Yes, that would solve the problem rabbitoid pointed out - but not the problem with a strong player getting a ridiculously low BKR because he timed out in a bunch of games. His future opponents would still suffer from that.

Maybe the solution is to use the BKR from the start of the game AND delete someone's BKR if they time out in three games in a row? And (still) delete them from any tournament they have signed up for.

rabbitoid: I think it was essentially the same with the old vacation system, the difference being that the BKR decline happened over the course of a day, not an hour.

In my view, the main problem is that if such a player decides to come back and play more games, his next many opponents will be punished BKR-wise for playing a strong opponent who now has a 700-ish rating.

Maybe it would be possible to suspend a player's BKR if he times out in a certain number of games? His opponents who win on time would all be rated according to the player's BKR at the time of the suspension. The player himself would have to start over and play 25 games to establish a new rating. And, perhaps most important: The player should automatically be deleted from all tournaments he has signed up for, to limit the number of time-outs.

Fencer: Let me try again: Now there is also a problem with the smaller set. It must be recent, speachless was the first one to notice. But it's in my games too.

Fencer: Oops, I posted 5 seconds later than you :-)

speachless: The Fevga game I can explain: You can't make a legal move with the 6-6 roll.  "A player's first checker must pass the opponent's starting point before he may move any of his other checkers."

JungleBurger: You can use brains to play in prize tournaments that offer brains as a prize... I think that's pretty much it.

Bernice: Very sorry to hear it 

Has anybody heard from Pedro Martínez lately? I hope he is ok and that he is coming back to this site.

Ladybird68: You can play any game without thinking if you put your mind to it  The main point of playing ludo for these record attempts is the low click-per-move ratio: You click the piece you want to move, then you click the move button; and sometimes when you can't make a move, you only have to click the move button. That means you have an average click-per-move ratio below 2, while most other games typically require 3 clicks per move.

Chimera: Is this a competition? I played 915 moves once. But I think games only get that long when both players play defensively.

Vikings: we may be talking millennia then!

Bernice: It's just a bit of light-hearted fun 

norrsken: I'm not convinced that such a limit is really needed... this way it'll appeal to the wannabe turtles as well. Btw., I know people with 1500+ games that are not turtles, so it's difficult to set a relevant limit.

pedestrian: Something like this?

norrsken: I like the idea... but I'm not sure the turtles would confine themselves to the sanctuary. 

norrsken: I very briefly considered playing in the same 21pt tournament you're in. Then I did a few calculations and realized that if two turtles play each other under those conditions, it could easily take 50 years. Apart from everything that's been said (most of which I agree with) it doesn't make sense that one can create a tournament that can last 50 years.

Justaminute: Good point! Although some paying members are no longer active.

rod03801: Yes, that's my impression too. But how many are there? Out of the 2000 to 3000 active profiles, how many are here to play (board!) games, and how many are just hanging around? To estimate those numbers, I guess you would have to have access to the server and do what Aganju suggests.

Aganju: Yes, the number of active profiles is probably in the 2000-3000 range. 

coan.net: Thanks, that's great - very helpful! Now we're getting somewhere :-)

Aganju: Not looking at any particular time frame, actually. I'll more or less sign up for anything, unless the tournament is designed to take decades.

Thad: I get the feeling that the number of active members in slowly decreasing; it seems increasingly difficult to fill tournaments up. But I don't know, it's only a hunch. Maybe Fencer can enlighten us?

Pedro Martínez: Fencer is checking it, see November 29th. Seems to have something to do with the light bulb action.

I think this subject has been discussed before, but I was under the impression that the bug had been fixed:

rod03801: I'm pretty sure the site checks for timeouts every 10 minutes. That would be consistent with the time that these two games ended: 16:00:01 and 15:50:01 respectively. So to be sure to win on time in a fast-paced game when your opponent has overstepped the time, you would have to wait until the site's clock shows xx:x9:50 or something and then make your move. Not an ideal way to play fast-paced games, but then again, it's not the site's main focus.

Bernice: There was a message displayed on brainking.com saying something like "the site is currently down". So I guess that technically speaking it wasn't really down, since it could show this message.

Hrqls: Both tenuki and Pedro Martínez are strong players, and I want to be able to respect them both. What they have achieved on this site has taken a lot of effort and deserves respect. And when one of them accuses the other of cheating, I still want to respect them both. Apparently, tenuki hasn't broken any rules even if there was team play - but the current discussion has shown that nobody (perhaps except Fencer) is really happy with this interpretation of the rules.

I have to say that this 865 bet seems a bit odd - nauars played 865 in the previous round too, but there's no * next to the number like there usually is to indicate that a player was offline and his/her last bet was automatically repeated. I don't see how somebody would guess that it was safe to bet 866 in this case.

Fencer: "Fine.  The problem is solved."

Bwild: @ "it seems highly unlikely that these 2(?) players can be 1 apart for so many turns."

MadMonkey:  It does look very suspicious, but I think MadMonkey has a point. It is possible that nauars has a formula, and that tenuki simply guessed his formula and played 1 higher every time.

Universal Eyes: "The way i see it, the longer it takes for BK3 the better it will be."

Snoopy: Finally made it to 5000... I know, it's nothing in comparison 

furbster: Congrats furbster! 

plaintiger: "score of finished games" is the score in previous, finished games (or matches) between you and your opponent in this game type. It doesn't concern the current match at all. Note that if you play a match of several games, it is counted as one game for all statistical purposes.

So 1:4 (=0) means that the player mentioned first has won 1 game, the second player has won 4 and no games have been drawn. When your current match is over, one of those numbers will go up by 1.

rabbitoid: That's odd. I fooled around with it a little, and if you choose a tournament type (rather than leaving it on 'all tournament types') it actually shows more running tournaments! I don't know if it shows them all, though:

one game for each two players - running (482)
two games (switched colors) for each two players - running (226)
single elimination - running (423)
triple gammon - running (4)

It seems you can only have a maximum of 50 games on the "waiting games" list at a time. I guess it's fine to have an upper limit, but shouldn't it be stated somewhere, for instance in the membership conditions? If it is, I can't find it.

Moreover, when I try to create waiting game no. 51, I get the usual message:

"New game has been successfully created."

even though the game wasn't created.

Nothingness: Yes, of course

It will take a lot of moves and probably a lot of online time, though.

Nothingness: I still don't think you understand how the fischer clock works. If you move 10 times a day, you DO get credit, and you will NOT time out if you leave for a couple of days. If the time control is .../0.6/... (which is very fast) and you respond immediately 10 times in one day, you'll be credited 60 hours. If your opponent responds after one hour 9 times that day, he will only be credited 45 hours. And if you make the last move in the evening, you won't lose time during the night, but he will.

As for going away for 2 days, the 60 hours you saved should be plenty of time. But on top of that, you also have your initial time (the first number in the description of the time control). if the time control was 7/0.6/..., that means you have 7 extra days that you can choose to use now or later, plus the 60 hours you saved which you can also use now or later.

AbigailII: "With ../0.6/.., if you sleep 7 hours a day, and be online the other 17 hours, you still may lose the game on the clock. It all depends on when your opponent moves - which is outside of your control."

I've been thinking about that for an hour now, and I don't think it's true. Remember that every time you move less than 6 hours after your opponent, you gain time. If you're online for an unlikely 17 hours a day, two things could happen:

1. Your opponent makes moves during the day. If you respond quickly (i.e. in less than 5 hours!) the time you save will more than make up for the time you lose during the night.

2. Your opponent doesn't move until you log off. When you log in the next morning your clock has been ticking for 7 hours, so in this case it's true that you lose 1 hour. But meanwhile, your opponent has lost 11 hours because he didn't move all day. If this goes on for several days, he'll time out long before you do.

In general, if you're able to log on four times a day and there's more than 12 hours between the first and the last log on, I think this reasoning applies. You can't possible lose on time, because you'll either make four moves a day or play faster than your opponent.

Nothingness: I think the short anwer to your question is 'no'.

You can't have a time setting of 1 day and a bonus of 6 hours, because 'time setting' and 'bonus' are basically the same thing with the fischer clock. Let's look at the way the time is written, for instance 7/1/15: In this case 7 is the number of days you have in your 'savings account' when the game starts; 1 is the number of days that is added every time you make a move; and 15 is the maximum of saved time you can have. You only time out when your 'savings account' is empty, in this case that won't happen the first week no matter how slow you play.

But what you need to care most about is the middle number. If you change it to six hours, it would look like this: 7/0.6/15. That means if your opponnent moves very fast and is always online, you will have to move four times a day to keep up. If he moves at the same pace as you, you will both have to move approximately two times a day. I think that may be close to what you're looking for.

Nothingness: You can make a move and check the box that says "Offer draw with this move" before you click "Move". This way, your offer stands while it's his turn.

You might want to make a comment like "½-½?" too, to make sure he sees your draw offer.

yes, BrainKing is slooooooooooow today... has been slow on an off the last few days.

hagaren: To be counted as one of those 25 games, a game has to be rated. That means it must last at least 2 moves (not 10). If you play a game that only lasts 1 move, it is still counted under 'My profile'-> 'finished games', so unless you keep your own score of those unrated games, you won't know for sure when you'll reach 25.

Bernice:

Slow here too....
Spent all morning setting up my start position for a game of screen chess, took up to a couple of minutes to place each piece...