Purple, Thanks. :)

Dryznik: The Purple World Fellowship will be offering some excellent Halma tournaments in the next few days with some very good players.

Purple=I need to play the Halma tourneys here and do some lo0oking at the set up, other than than I think I should close my mouth! ;)

Purple: yes, very poetic, lol :)

alanback: Yes indeed. LOL.

Purple: Poetic justice, if you ask me!

In games like checkers and chess the IYT tournaments are fine until you get to the final round. There you often find two programmers left standing and as most people know when one program plays another you can get 25 draws. IYT won't declare a winner and keeps generating endless final matches..and it can go on for years. LOL.

Dryznik: Aye, it's a round-robin. So, like Czuch asks, how is that different to here? (Except that there can be joint winners of the final section.)

Diogenes, Correct idea.
Czuch Chuckers, I am so used to IYT Halma 10 tournaments! Go to iyt.com, left menue column, tournament area, then click on tournaments in progress and choose one (or more) and take a look at jow they are set up. More than 1 player can win a section but play continues in next subsequent section until only one player emerges as the winner of that tournament. ;~)

D'oh, guess thats what I get for thinking while taking exams

MidnightMcMedic: No, current tournaments have a min. of 4 per section - and draws are allowed.

can't the tournies be set up that way? i honestly thought they could...???

playBunny: there is a difference - there can be only one winner per section

diogenes: A knock-out tournament isn't that much different to a round-robin with only two players per section and no draws allowed, so I'd guess that much of the code is already available.

Dryznik: my "new" idea was to build up an alternative to those "round-robin"-games. to increase the thrill by the need to win each single game in order to head into the next round.... >;-B

Dryznik: Not sure if I understand how that is different from the tournaments here on brainking?

I like the way IYT has their tournaments set up by several sections, the winner(s) of each section goes on to round two and plays the winners of round 1, etc. until one final winner is left. IYT starts 2 tourneys a week for all kinds of games. I play Halma 10 on IYT. The invitations to the Ts are at the top of the window page and are very easy to follow, unlike the Ts on this site. I would play in such Halma 10, and Halma 16 for 4 players.

diogenes: Like brackets? Yea, if so - that is one of my long-time request for this site. (like dailygammon's tournmanets)

Basicly:
Player 1 vs player 2
player 3 vs player 4

then winner of first, and the winner of the second meet and play each other

(Nothing wrong with the current tournament way, but to have additional options would be great)

diogenes: yeh think that would be a fun idea

Socrates: I like both ideas!

diogenes: I like that idea :) Another system that could be used is a "League" system. Much like the NBA and MLB in the USA, with regular season and post season (playoffs, knockout) play. The top players of the regular season would qualify for the post season. This system would be using mandatory games that would start automatically according to the schedule. There could be 1 league for every main game or even every game.

diogenes: That would be a certain 2ndment from me!

hello, now we have "normal games", "tournaments" and "stairs"... . how about classical knock-out-tourneys where the winner heads into the next round and the one who loses is eliminated. with quarterfinals, semifinals, finals and so on? this would be a special thrill for some special tournaments! ;-)

ScarletRose: the IYT downtime was awful! however, everyone got to see a side of Pat Chu we never expected.

Yes, a page that displays during scheduled (or unscheduled when possible) downtimes would be a big benefit. We'd at least know that our connections, etc. were good.

ScarletRose: Yeh, they almost kicked the bucketed!

LuckyCat9: yes.. it was down for what.. almost 2 weeks.. OMG

I think IYT had a horrible crash not to long ago and they had a page with constant updates regarding getting fixed, even started a blog.

Fencer: If there is a network or a connection problem, you couldn't reach the fault page anyway. It would make no sense.
Yes, but it would allow us to know the difference between a "programmed" downtime or server maitenance or something like that (BK error page kicks in) and a network problem (standard "cannot display page" error)

playBunny: Did you just answer to yourself there or wha'?!? [sideways glancing with one eyebrow higher]

On the other hand, if somehow he decides to introduce game group ratings (by which, BTW, I actually meant separate rating SYSTEMS for game groups, but you can also have some averaging done foe eligible members of the game group) then some further delays may occur - but let's leave the operational aspect to Fencer, our Brain King (of the white variety)

playBunny: And on the topic of normal service.. I think it's great that Filip doesn't have to take the site down for a period every day to do his backups, that the upgrades are so quick to install and that major downs, like the BKR recalulations, are so rare.

WhiteTower LOL.

playBunny: Darn trunk lines :P

wellywales: wellywales: Those sites have such a page when you can reach the server but it's not providing the usual service. Brainking's server is providing the usual service nearly 24 hours of the day. If you were in the Czech Republic there would be no outages or anything. The problem is the "trunk" line from there to certain other regions. Either the page request doesn't get to BrainKing, or it does and BrainKing gives the correct page in return, but that gets lost on the way back out.

wellywales: Yes, but they don't "do" faults. What they do do is display a page notifying users of essential maintenance, like database backups etc. This is not a fault, but a regular feature, while the game server is still working fine.

What BrainKing has is another domain, BrainKing.info, for such faults and other cases, but it seems to have been forgotten for a year and a half - Fencer, any comments? :)

wellywales: No site is able to do it if it's unreachable due to a network problem.

Fencer: I understand that but these other sites seem to be able to do it, perhaps a sister site, I don't know

wellywales: If there is a network or a connection problem, you couldn't reach the fault page anyway. It would make no sense.

Fencer, is it possible to have a fault page that clicks in, as other sites like IYT, Daily Gammon, Gold token etc, that tell you there is a site fault, "please try again later", other members must have seen these, it is better then nothing at all, sometimes you don't know if it is your own computer at fault.

BIG BAD WOLF: Of course, even a lowly Pawn can eliminate ads, by using the right ad blocker :) However, I elected to keep them displayed, for the sake of Fencer ;)

Jason: In settings, as members you can also places the ad's at the bottom of the page. I do that - that way every once and awhile I can go click on them to help Fencer make a few extra cents here and there - and the ad's are not in my way on the top of my screen. (Again, only a member option I believe.)

About a week ago, there was a time when the google ad's were both not loading - would get an error about not being found, but everything else loaded fine.... and only laster about 5 minutes. Other then that, I have had no problem with the google ad's. (Think I will go click on it again to help Fencer out!)

Fencer: Thanks :-)

I will let you know if performance improves. I have not seen very many delays that were traceable to the Google ad, but there have been a few.

Fencer: lol i have never seen that link before or now even ..... but its ok the google ad thing has just vanished from my page . spooky

alanback: Now it does.
Jason: Just below the banners.

Fencer: where is the hide link ?

Fencer: This apparently does not apply to the Google ad under "Logout" in the menu bar.

votacommunista: Paying members can disable Google ads, click on the "hide" link.

eagle eye: There is one thing that could be done, which is to remove the link.

votacommunista: I guess nothing can you do about, google ads are from google and BK just displays them...

it would be nice that google ad sense would not lead to a longer waiting time ... if the responsible page could not be reached you have to wait and in some time a timeout occur.

grenv: The flag problem is easily solved with a confirmation screen.