Can it be arranged so that internal fellowship tournaments of fellowships of which we are members appear on the normal tournament page?

I see, thanks.

Thanks. So a bit like a game board.

Thanks for posting that, what does it mean? (I'm ignorant of computer jargon.)

It's also a board game alternatively called "phutball". It requires a 19x15 point board and Fencer made some remark about limiting the size of halma that suggested to me that it might be impossible.

How about philosopher's maharajah chess with suicide punishable with a loss by defalcation? (What is "defalcation"? Sounds like the game turduckens would play.)

Philosopher's cricket? Now that sounds like a slow game.

Okay, I dont understand the connection with philosopher's football but.

What's a "wiki environment"?

Philosopher's football would be a nice game to have at BrainKing.

Could it be arranged so that completed tournaments showed the ratings of the players at the time of the tournament not the present?

Dark chess is a bit boring for spectators, how about if we could see on which square the pieces were captured, this information is also clear to both players.

I've never played loop chess anywhere else so I assume it's correct. You could check at Hans Boedelander's page probably.

I guess you're talking about loop chess? It was a surprise for me as I was used to shogi, it just means you need to take care about what you promote to.

I like the fact that the drop-down is ordered differently from the main page, it adds to the flexibility of options.

How about the possibility of thematic games for the waiting room? Particularly in chess one might only be interested in games in a certain opening that if left to chance will only occur 20% of the time, so it would be handy to be able to define the first few moves before submitting the game.

Jungle is a Chinese game that you can probably find in your local Chinese supermarket. The rules are very simple but it's fun and interesting.

But if you internally mail it to yourself within BrainKing it's not outside, it takes an extra click, copying, etc but it's okay.

I asked one time about bookmarking games and it was suggested that I mail the address to myself, this works quite well.

Or list all accounts on one page.

Would it be an idea to have a board for questions of Czech-English translation?

Would it be tiresome to introduce a facility whereby it would be possible to search for any particular member's posts by page on a chosen board?

But they still wouldn't find any greater number of waiting games. It's not as if the number of waiting games is so great that it's difficult to look through. If the desired game type is absent surely they'll put some up themselves?

Which mancala are you opting for? My preference is omweso, well clear of any others.

Honcho recently told me that his rating went down after a draw but he has an unestablished rating, I dont know if that makes a difference.

I think the rating depends on the pool size, so as more players join your rating will increase (assuming you continue to play), thus you'll overtake any above you who have stopped playing. This latter is another negative of ratings, once a player is top rated they've been known to stop playing just to preserve their spot in the list, pathetic.

I cant understand any of this fuss about ratings, all they do is give an approximate idea of whether a prospective opponent is likely to provide a challenging game or not, otherwise they have no importance whatever. It sounds like some of you people sit in the pub boring your friends with stories about your BrainKing ratings, ridiculous, who could possible care?

Taurec: pentathlons, decathlons and the like sould a good idea. I think it would be fun to have tournaments that change game for qualifiers as they progress.

Harley: I think you've missunderstood. The idea is an average rating calculated by the mean of all a players ratings. I think the average of all player's ratings over one game should be about the same regardless of the range, so lower rated players are needed to give other players high ratings.

I dont exactly object to the idea but it might cause ratings to be taken over seriously and considered competitively. There are two possible negative effects of such a tendency, first it could encourage various members to indulge in forms of rating manipulation, second it could discourage members from experimenting with "new" games for fear that poor results would adversely effect their general rating.

What would be the point of a general rating? The main point of ratings is to get a rough idea as to whether or not a prospective opponent is suited to one's own level and as such is game specific.

I dont think it's just a question of "get rid of Gothic", but clearly the performance of moderators needs to be open to review. Moderation along the lines of personality cult lacks the objectivity required by the position.

It would be nice to have a choice of where to go next after resigning a game instead of being automatically sent to the main page, somewhat as if resigning were a normal move, which it is.

Along with the date it would be nice to know at which move a comment was made.

To make it clear: the rat can capture the elephant, the elephant can not capture the rat.

In the Jungle set I bought at a Chinese supermarket in London the rules state that the elephant loses in a meeting with the rat. If this wasn't so the elephant would only be vulnerable to another elephant which I think would reduce the games dynamism.

It really isn't difficult to get used to distinguishing the pieces, three of which in any case have no chess equivalent. Having acclimatised with Xiang Qi it is then easier to learn the pieces for all the shogi variants as well. After all chess symbols themselves have no real meaning, they are just mnemonic pictures.

Basically it uses two boards, when you begin a move with a piece on one board the move finishes with the piece on the other board. You can get the idea here: http://www.pathguy.com/chess/AliceChs.htm

One game that I would really like to see at BrainKing is Alice chess. Anybody else feel the same way?

Of course that's fine but even in games where an advantage can be statistically demonstrated there are still people who prefer the theoretically disadvantaged side. The easiest way for me to express it is in shogi terms where the colour terms 'sente' and 'gote' are inextricably linked with a player's style ie attacking or defending respectively. Likewise with many of these games a player's preference or talent might find it's most suitable medium in the unpopular colour, it could just be that there are less of those people, like the left handed. I like to play a balanced range of colours but I wouldn't want it to be compulsory.

Thanks for that long and considered reply. My view is that in a community as small as BrainKing ratings are not very important or accurately representative, just a vague guide to the strength of an opponent before deciding to play or not, then you can also look in their profile to see with which colour they won/lost. Especially with the games supported by BrainKing there is no great bias in favour of those familiar with the literature, most of the games here I've never heard of, so I dont think ratings are a very big issue. If you know which colour is more likely to win then it's up to you if you choose that colour or it's opposite, after all despite the fact that these game are played by winning or losing their main function is as a social interaction between the players, we want our opponent to enjoy it as much as we do. Sorry if this is confused, I'm very drunk.

The same can be said of chess and probably any game other than the likes of janken.

I agree with you there. It seems natural that if you have already put off moving in a game and gone to a different game that the first game is no longer first.

It would be really nice to be able to play Omweso and/or Bao. As far as I'm aware nobody is offering these games online.