Could there be installed some way into the scoring system, if you make the top five and your over say maybe 2000 or 3000 points behind the next guy you get no points?

Would this stop the HIGH bidders from riding the game out, just to make the top five?

Pedro, BuilderQ: Yup, he/I sure am/is.
I was perusing a tourney game between two of the top players and was impressed by a whole sequence of moves where the loser was led around by the nose until finally succumbing. It would be nice to see such artistry marked in the notation. :-)

Pedro Martínez: I think Gigolo is refering to moves which are forced in that only one option prevents the opponent from winning next turn.

Gigolo: There are no forced moves in line games (played at BK).

Is there anyway to show that a game into the second round of a tournament? With so many numbered tournaments I haven't realised I was into Round 2, except after I lost, and may have played more diligently had I been alerted

Andromedical: Indeed, you should be patient. In February I renew my subscribtion, after Fencer had promise to program Shogi (Japanese chess) before the end of this year.

Up to now, no clue about that but I keep hope ;-)

There are millions shogi players in the world (mainly in Japan, of course).

In the Moves List for the Line-type games it would be interesting if moves that force the opponent's next move could be indicated with a * or something; it's very much like a check in Chess or hitting a blot in Backgammon.

I have been to other gaming sites and I keep coming back here. This is the only site I have paid for, simply because it is the best and it has a lot of great games and great people in it. I say this honestly.

My only wish at this point would be two games:

- Xiang Chi (Chinese chess) or Chang Gi (Korean chess). The "oriental" variants of chess are missing at BK.

- a random Capablanca Chess variant, maybe with rules similar to Fischer Random chess

In fairness to Fencer, programming these things is not easy. It takes time and effort. I am patient, I am sure the things we want will come to the site with time.

Here is a page which compare the features for the membership levels:

http://brainking.com/en/PaidMembership?p=1

It is not completely up to date, since it does not have things like Ponds, or the cloak feature on there, but does give a good idea of the different features.

Playing is free at many sites and that is enough for plenty of people; they play and don't pay and yeah verily, it is good. So I rather think it's actually the extras that earn the money. Some sites won't give ratings to non-paying members and people will pay to have and work towards a good rating. Some sites provide customisation and ease of use factors which people who play a lot will pay for. At Vogclub, people pay to have a permanent membership account instead of having to re-register a new name every few weeks and/or for the ability to save matches to disk (not possible here yet), and to access the searchable archives (available on a limited basis here). Here, people pay to be able to have more than 20 games going at once, for the ability to have teams and fellowships and cloaks, javascript(?) and what-have-you (I don't know too much about those things yet).

grenv: Some do, but the real gamers are not interested in that, they are interested in the games and the competition of playing good players.

baudrillard: I agree, I meant that I don't think anyone pays money to join a game site because of peripheral features. I could be wrong.

Sorry, but I think that is nonsense! If people were here just to play games there would be no discussion boards and no fellowships and no community! Sure, lots of people just want to play games, but I see a much bigger, global picture here. And 'bravo' to the guys who run it! They should be paid good money!

baudrillard: I disagree actually. Nobody's paying for this site for anything other than playing games.

In fact giving all the extras (other than # of games etc) to non-paying players would not have an impact on sales IMO, so might as well.

Fencer - great that the new layouts are for paying members. The only concern I would have is that when people come here to try the site out, they may not realise how good it is when they become a paying member. I wonder if there is anyway to give them say three days free trial in paying member mode? I don't want you to lose out on potential business! we need you to be succesful!
Alison

I am missing the ability to set up theme tournaments, especially for chess. The usage of a specified opening should be decisive.

When you are in a pond game, it has a place for discussion on that specific game.......would it be possible to have the red numbers showing when and if someone comments. I have checked several only to reveal no one saying anything and on some games, a good conversation was going on and I missed it.

playBunny: I once said that displaying a sample of the BKR history graphics could have the same effect. Everything that is visual is so much more appealing than a description of the feature...

Fencer: Paying mebers only? For sure! And don't miss the chance to display a range of members' customisations to show the Pawns what possibilities they can enjoy for just a few $$. I think it could even be a better enticement than other features like the 20 game limit.

The limit of teams per section is 8 in any tournament. I think it´d be interesting playing tournaments with 9 or more teams. For example, this tournament:

http://brainking.com/en/TeamTournaments?tri=18&trnst=10

started in October 2004, now it´s still in the first round and probably it´ll finish in 2006. I think this tournament would had been more interesting with only one section with the nine teams because the first round was won clearly by Untouchables team and Blizzars team. I think a very long tournament as this, loses its interest because in the first round strong players play againts a weak opponnets and the decisive match will start 9-12 months later.

Would you prefer only one round in the next tournament "Châteauneuf du Pape"? Is it possible?

Whatever I do with the layout customization, it would be available for paying members only.

playBunny: Hiding irrelevant stuff would be my main purpose of stylesheets as well. I really don't have the need to see the time and date displayed - the clock on my computer is more accurate. I don't have a frieds list, I'm not switching between languages, enable/disable tips of the day or switch to/from column layouts nor do I belong to fellowships, so I don't have the need to show links for them on every page. And it could be used to increase the tiny box I'm typing this in.

Oh well. It isn't going to happen judging from Fencer's response.

Ooh, ooh, Great idea. I would immediately use position: absolute and rearrange the page so the stuff I don't want to see goes away.

Things like "Time per move", "Public game", "Board size" "Layout-columns", weendays - these are all sooooo irrelevant when I'm playing a game, even "Game Id".
I'd move the [Move] button so that it's actually visible on the page and change the size of the message area, and, and, and....

But all that would need plenty of elements to be given ids. A good bit of thought would be required to choose which ones can be played with. Or just give 'em all an id. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

baudrillard: Free members don't have the cloak facility

I don't get it ... I am 'cloaked' but can still see what everyone else is doing. I don't particularly want to know, however, and am happy not to be able to see. Very fair indeed!

I don't agree that free members should have these facilities. I think it is extremely important that those people who work so hard to make this site work should get paid to do so. Bravo to them!

Very fair!! :o)

harley: That is correct - it shows up as "disabled when you are cloaked"

So everyone who is cloaked can't see what I'm doing? Even though I'm not cloaked?

Fencer: Yes, great addition. Maybe now the people who did not like the cloak feature, but at the same time did not like the cloaked users "watching them" (???) can now remove us from their blocked users list.

I was going to try to help someone the other day, had a long message ready to send to them and when I got ready to send, found out they had blocked me (because I use the cloak feature) - so I just gave up on trying to help them.

it makes sense to me.

Eriisa: Yes. Who wants to be hidden, shouldn't have an advantage to see others.

excellent addition, Fencer.

Fencer: sorry for misunderstanding ...

chessmec: Yes, I know. I meant a new tab on the Settings page where you would be able to modify a default BK style without a CSS knowledge.

Fencer: if you use CSS you cannot prevent people from using their own style sheets ... it's easy with mozilla/firefox.
but it would be more W3C-compliant

AbigailII: Yes, when I have more time, I will rewrite the pages to use CSS instead of hard coded fonts, colors etc. But I don't like the idea of "personal style sheets", if you want to have every possible attribute customizable. It could end with some weird looking results which wouldn't be a good promotion of the site.

grenv: On the other hand, would this really be useful?

If you mean "personal style sheets"? Yes, I think that's really, really useful. But that's just my opinion.

chessmec: i meaned, that in some fields there is fixed <font color=red>blahblub</font>

Obviously, for such a thing to happen, all pages need to be revisited. You'll be needed SPAN and DIV elements, and add CLASS and ID attributed to new and existing elements. It wouldn't be much of a problem to remove the FONT elements while you're doing that. Of course, for the one person out there who managed to survive with a browser from the last century, you can keep the FONT element:

<FONT color='red'><SPAN class='unread-messages'>1234</SPAN></
FONT>

AbigailII: I'd like to have an API, so I can get the data in some program readable form. I'd like to do my own web pages and include information that I want, but as it is now I have to retrieve web pages and parse them. Possible but ugly. (And then Fencer changes the page slightly and my program stops working)

AbigailII:

Don't forget the other attributes:
.unread-messages {
font-size: 8px;
color: #ff0000;
font-weight: bold;
}

On the other hand, would this really be useful?

AbigailII: i know CSS, i am using it too. but i meaned, that in some fields there is fixed <font color=red>blahblub</font>

chessmec: some colors are fixed, e.g. the red color of the amount of unread messages. will be not so easy i think

That would be rather trivial. Put the amount of unread message in a SPAN element, with a CLASS attribute - and say this attribute has value "unread-messages". In the default style sheet, you say:

.unread-messages {color: red}

This will make the amount of unread messages red. However, someone who wants the number to be yellow puts

.unread-messages {color: yellow}

in his/her stylesheet.

AbigailII: now, i cannot speak for fencer, but during translation i recognized, that some colors are fixed, e.g. the red color of the amount of unread messages. will be not so easy i think

It would be very nice if Brainkings allowed users to make their personal stylesheets, that is, on each page the stylesheet is included. In combination with 'class' and 'id' attributes, users can then for themselves decide what elements on a page can be highlighted, shown in a different font, not shown at all, etc.

maybe a link 'expand fellowship boards' to show all the boards in all your fellowships would be nice ... clicking on the link again would hide the boards again

(this means a combination of how it is right now and the way it was for a half a day last week :))

baudrillard: I think the cloak mode should be made available to everyone (it would make more of my buddies wanna come here ;-))!

baud, wouldn't you agree??

Hrqls and other...thanks for the work-arounds. You all have good ideas. Hopefully in Fencer's free time (if there's such a thing), he can implement this feature.

Summertop: you could make a tournament start far in the future .. write in the description the real date and time at which you will start it .. that way you can remove anything from it right before you start it (i think you can start a tournament right away by changing the start date to the past ? i think bbw did that a couple of times ?) .. i am not sure if this wont leave a gap of 10 minutes open though .. but at least it would minimize the chances

I don't know how easy it'd be to implement but i think that a fellowship thats entered into a team tournement can not be deleted until that team/teams have finished.

grenv, Well, yeah. But there is still the chance that someone joins right before it is automatically started. It would be much cleaner if we could limit it so that those that don't fit the criteria don't even see it.