Pedro Martínez: I like it too. Of course there are going to be those who are confused, (LOL) and don't understand the implications of the difference.

I wonder what a good name for these ponds would be? People could post suggestions for that too.

alexlee: I should also mention that this idea is not to be interpreted as an effort to change the ponds as we know them. There would be two types of ponds available: the regular ones and these new "live" ponds.

Pedro Martínez:
That sounds like a great idea, so it would be like a "live" pond and you stay and play or go for a swim lol

There has been a idea of starting the next round in ponds immediately after all players submit their bids. In this way, it would be possible to finish a pond within hours or even minutes. Of course, the maximum time per move would still apply, however the creator would have the option to set as low time limits as one minute. I have already informed Fencer about this idea, but I would like to know how popular such ponds would be. So if anyone would post their comments, it would be mostly appreciated.

I was wondering if it would be possible to limit people with high provisional ratings from being ranked high in tourneys until they have an established Rating. In a tourney we are about to start there is a player ranked #1 (1 game played ever in that game type) and he leaped frogged over six 2000+ rated players. This seems very odd! Even though that player may be an excellent player i think that they should only get this high rating through an established rating!

grenv: There is no need for your final comment. Keep stuff like that off this board.

rod03801: Number of games is a better way to do it for many games, such as chess... since it guarantees equal number of games of each color for each player, hence it is fairer. Still, it should end as soon as someone gets more than half (so 5.5 points in a 10 game match should end it).
Also, it allows a drawn match - which is good.. ***Not very nice comment removed by MM***

Of course, the other thing to think about Brainking, is you also have the # points match option. In this option, draws in individual games can count towards the score. (1/2 points). In a #wins match, draws don't count for anything. The game didn't even happen. I found this out when an opponent and I were trying out a game, didn't want to continue and figured we would offer draws to end it early. Wasn't working! lol.

talen314: But that can be accomplished by declaring the match a # wins match. The point is, it doesn't work that way here, so if you don't want to run into that, don't use a # games match. If your intention is to have a "5 game match", and work the way you want it to work, just create a "3 wins match". Then, it would be a max a 5 games, but would end at the proper time.

rod03801:
The type of match is very much like high level professional matches when a championship is set for a maximum number of games but such matches are ended if a player has enough points to win.
Must win matches do cater to more aggressive players since draws have no impact. It is good to have the different types of matches.
Some choose the number of games matches because it is easy to know how many games you will have to play. I have had several wins matches in checkers where it took several games to get one win.

grenv: When created, if it is categorized as a 3 win match, then yes, it ends when someone gets 3 wins. However, when it is categorized as a # game match, it is handled literally, and it is a # game match. This of course brings on Draws, and and games that are not "necessary" for declaring a winner. I've never understood having the "# game matches". . Some people must like it that way. The "# win matches" make much more sense to me. I think sometimes people don't think about the difference when they make them.

grenv:
No, I have a 6-game match where I have won 4 games and it still is continuing.
Extinction Chess (Hackingnop vs. talen314)

talen314: Really? The match should just end if there is no chance of one player winning. For example if there is a 5 game match, it should end as soon as someone wins 3 games... is that not the case? Can you give an example of a match that continues past the point where we know the outcome?

There are times when a player has several games left to complete a match but has no chance of winning. Since rating points are only given for the completed match and not for the individual games there is often no point (rating-wise) in playing out the match. A possible solution would be to have an option to resign the match which would end the match without playing out games that have no impact on the outcome. (It is true that a player could resign each remaining game individually but this seems to be a tidier way to handle it.)

joshi tm: yes, it tournament and team games it would be nice to have a rating based on the average rating of all games in the tournament

El Cid: Yes, but say you win against the player, what then? does he stay dead? or bounce right back with a new minimum amount? if so, this is the same as to have an opponent with infinite resources.

rabbitoid: My idea was that that player would play with the minimum amount of chips a table demands. Besides, technicaly I also have unlimited amount of chips, since when below 1000, I can "magically" add 500 once a day

El Cid: You have a limited amount of chips. You want to play against an autoplayer, which, I suppose, has an infinite amount of them?
My advice: never approach the state of Nevada.

Is it possible to create a "phantom" poker player, that would appear when there are no real players on any of the tables. This way we could play whenever we want (specially if we wanted to try and get achievements in the limited tables).
That player would disappear once another player joins the table, or we leave it.
Of course this would need a little AI programming, but as I asked in the beggining "Is it possible?"

MidnightMcMedic: that would work. I need all the help I can get :)

Artful Dodger: Or maybe a little popup confirmation window.

I love the notepad feature here and use it a lot. Tonight I was moving a few things and accidently deleted a couple of things I wanted to save. grrrr

Here's my request: Could the delete button be moved more to the right? As it is, it seems natural to set the drop down to the file area you want and then click the button to the right. But that's the delete!

Moving the delete button would help. Maybe I'm the only one that does this. Twice! ;)

DeaD man WalkiN: Also, what annoys me is if some games start within a Tournament the check boxes vanish, and you have to go into each one seperately to sign up.....a pain as well

I was just wanting to know if there is a way to add something to Tournaments, we have a box that lets U "Select all on this page", is there any way to put another box letting U remove from all on this page?

Y I ask if this can be done is today I clicked on Select all on this page, and it took me over an hour to remove myself from all of them.

Thxs for Ur time and any help that can be done.
:o)

grenv: Same here

I notice performance is slow (about 30 second page refresh on Backgammon). Am i the only one? It's been like this all day and no other site doing this, eliminating my connection as the culprit.

Fencer: Yes. In fact, that's how I would handle vacation days in all situations. If a person runs out of time in a game, and still has vacation days left, add 24 hours to the clock of all games the person has running, including games where it's his opponents turn. This may cause a person to have more than time on the clock than the maximum, but that's ok; resetting to the max (if necessary) will happen as soon as the player moves.

Let me try to given an example. First note that "non"-Fisher Clock games are actually Fisher Clock games. If you have a game with 5 days/move, it's just a 5/5/5 Fisher Clock game. Say I play three games A, BC, and D B. A, B and C are regular Fisher Clock game: 10/1.12/10. D is 5 day/move game, 5/5/5. I'm on vacation, I run out of time in game A. It's not my move in games B and C. Assume I have 48 hours left on my clock in game B, and 240 (max) in game C. I have 120 hours in game D (5 days). If I have vacation time left, my clock is set to 24 hours in game A, 72 in game B, 264 hours in game C and 144 hours in game D. After 2 hours, my opponent moves in game B. 24 hours later, I time out again. Clocks for games A, B, C and D are reset to 24, 74, 286 and 168 hours. 12 hours later, I come back from vacation. I have 12 hours to move in game A, and 62 in game B. If my opponents move in C and D, I will have 286 and 168 hours, more than the max, but once I move the clocks are set to 240 and 120 (their max).

Note that I assumed weekend don't exist. (Weekends are just periods clocks don't run).

”Warning: This is a turn-based game site. The game you are about to start may take days, weeks, or even months to complete, depending on the time control used in the particular game. If you start a game, your opponent may not respond right away, in fact they may sometimes take several days to respond. You should not start a game unless you’re aware of this and prepared to finish the game.”

I suggest something like this should pop up the first time a new member tries to start a game from the waiting list. It happens too often that somebody creates an account, surfs around the site happily for a few minutes, finds the list of waiting games, starts a few games, then sits around for a few more minutes wondering why nothing happens, logs off, never comes back…

Of course, when I create new waiting games, I could just limit them to rated or paying players and avoid playing new members at all. I actually do that some of the time. But if everybody did that, how would new members ever get to play? If these ‘ghost players’ were scared away with a warning, I expect that more old members would be willing to play new members, and everybody would benefit :-)

AbigailII: How would you use vacation days in Fischer's clock games? Just adding 24 hours instead of a timeout?

coan.net: I really do hope the next version of BK will have a time setting that allows both the Fisher clock and vacation time. I'd switch all my tournaments over to that - and it would be my preferred time setting. I'd probably wouldn't even play anything else.

The rationale? I like to play games with an average fast pace. But I don't want to have to eat (or have my opponents eat) from their vacation days if I (or they) are away for a couple of days. Hence I never create (or play) games or tournaments with a time limit less than 5 days/move, for no other reason than that I sometimes need them. Fisher clock would be ideal for me, except that currently, Fisher clock means no vacation time. But most years, I will be on vacation for 3 weeks - I need to be able to take vacation. Hence my games (and tournaments) progress much slower than I like, but picking any of the other options BK offers risks me having to time out, or take vacation. And that's something people don't like.

My preferred pace? 168 hours initial time, 36 hours added to the clock at each move, 168 max time (I think that's 7/1.12/7 in BK notation), no weekends, auto-vacation. That gives an average pace of about 2 moves each three days while still allowing to be away for a few days without vacation penalty, and the longer vacation. No weekend nonsense (but people who aren't able or willing to play on a weekend can still cope).

coan.net: That sounds good.

grenv: As AbigailII does, I never set vacation days anymore even if I know I'm going to be gone - I just let autovacation take over and use what is needed, and sounds like that will be the only option in the new version. So limiting auto vacation to only 2 sounds like something that will punish many because of the abuse of the few.

I would much rather see possible a limit of vacation days be a settable option on new games/tournaments - for example, setup a tournament that limits 5 vacation days per section (so a total of 1 week with weekend days could be taken by someone in one round), and have the same option in regular games. (Maybe instead of the red dot for no days off, it can be a purple dot to indicate there are other restrictions on days off on the game)

That way you the rules don't punish those who don't care how much vacation someone takes, and still allows those who want to limit vacations, but do not want to play the fisher clock games to have the option to set limits if wanted.

grenv: But that requires planning in advance. I use auto vacation because I don't know the exact dates I need them. It will depend on when my opponents in the games with the fastest time controls will move - if I play a game with 4 days/move, and I'm away for 7 days, I may need 0, 1, 2, or 3 vacation days, depending on when my opponent moves. I don't always know when I will be back. And after coming back from vacation, it may take a few days to make moves in all my games, depending on what other pressing things I need to do, and how many games I have to move in. Autovacation is just much more convenient. As for "dragging on tournaments", I don't experience that. Whenever I look at a tournament that has been started a long time ago, and hence is "dragging", it's always because of active games, where people actually move. Note that with vacation days, and weekends, a black rook (assuming he's not bought more vacation days) can only "drag" a tournament for at most 2 months by not playing. Then he's out of vacation days. And she can only do that trick once a year.

Note also that Fencer has pointed out that in the future, autovacation will be the only vacation. But that's all I know about the rewrite of BK.

there are few reasons I keep this account ... first, Fencer didn't see any problem ... second, I know I am not going to harm anybody by keeping it (this is the way I am, simple and good guy) and thirdly, I am a director of a branch of US Backgammon League in Lincoln Nebraska and wanted to attract more backgammon players from my region to brainking to this particular, backgammon only account ... here is the link:
http://www.usbackgammon.org/clubHome.php?id=7
And I was thinking about transfering my membership from Herlock Sholmes to gammonrace if possible ...
Anyway, if it will be causing more dissatisfaction, I am going to stop using this account.
Andy.

AbigailII: Just because you use it properly doesn't mean others don't. Many of the tournaments that drag on interminably have auto vacation to blame. If the games were so important, wouldn't you remember to set vacation? How about restricting auto-vacation to 2x per year to catch the times when someone truly 'forgets'.

gammonrace: The simplest way to solve it would be to no longer actually use the gammonrace account. I can understand your reasoning to create the gammonrace account - but I fail to understand why you still use it.

Pedro Martínez: for your knowledge: Few weeks ago I had some strange problems login in to my Herlock Sholmes account ... I created another account gammonrace and reported this fact immediately to Fencer ... I asked him to remove this new account if this is a problem. Fencer decided to leave it like it is ... he apparently had a confidence in me ... and I can assure you, Herlock Sholmes will never play a game with gammonrace ... but I can understand it may be a dangerous precedence ... any clue how to solve it ? I am open to anything ...
Andy.

gammonrace, Herlock Sholmes: User Agreement, General Guidelines, Section 1:

"Each individual who plays on BrainKing is asked to use one, and only one, BrainKing account."

Universal Eyes: double roll do not happen very often, we know this, right ... there are only 6 opponent's checkers and they are not going to block their home section to make more troubles for you being on the bar since they will take advantage of the third twist and escape from the board right away they will have a chance ... if you get double you most likely will send to the bar my most advanced checker, possibly sitting in mu home section ... isn't it not like in Ludo just standing in front of home section and waiting with fear not to be hit ?
I think you will find ways around these rules governing doubles the same way you found them in regular backgammon ...
thanks,
Andy.

Herlock Sholmes: Just trying figure out if Im going to be dragged into the hell of winning or losing by the dice,or i can choose not to play it at all,in regular backgammon there are ways to get around all those double rolls,i just cant see it with this game.
Mike.

Universal Eyes: doubles are always killers even in regular backgammon ... you probably played many games that doubles ruined your game ... again, third twist helps to make life easier ... that part you don't like is actually what often happens in our lives ... we drag people to the same hell we cannot escape ... am I right ?
thanks,
Andy.

AbigailII: Good for you. Because there will be nothing but automatic vacation in the new version of BrainKing. And everything will be extremely easy, understandable and hack-proof.

grenv: I don't think it matters a lot whether people use auto-vacation or set vacation themselves. I seldomly time out (I doubt I've timed out more than twice - perhaps a dozen games in total). I use auto-vacation to avoid having to calculate how many vacation days I need.

Herlock Sholmes: Sounds to me like the one who rolls the most doubles is the sure winner,what would you need any pieces for just roll dice.
I don't like the part where you can send them to the bar with doubles even if you can't get of the bar yourself.

lukulus: thanks, a Think Twist Number 3 takes care of this ...

Herlock Sholmes: sounds good, but I see some problems with double rolls. Probability of double roll is 1/6. Pieces can be on bar very often and game will be very long.

AbigailII: I think the solution to long tournaments is to not have *auto* vacation. This is an unnecessary accommodation to people who bite off more than they can chew.