bert515: Yes I had the same problem last night. I had to leave the site twice last night. And the same is happening intermittently this morning. As I tried posting this message the white page came up for several seconds and I clicked on fresh and nothing happened. I had to leave the site and when I came back this message had posted twice.

Bernice: Something happened yesterday evening (GMT time), i had 2 computers logged into BrainKing & on both when i went back to them tabs both had 'Page not found' errors but when i refreshed all was ok

from what you said , i guess something else happened after that

bert515: exactly.....I am having the same probs again also....but of course it isn't BK, it is us..........

getting slow moves and white screens after making a move again like a few weeks ago...

Thad: This is what Masters level checker players do..almost.

It seems entirely possible that a 10-wins match with a high probability of ending in a draw could reach that many games. But then again, who'd want to play 230+ draws out of 255 games!

rod03801: Shows you how much I know. I never create new games on Brainking, just join existing tournaments, so I didn't know it wasn't possible.

Roberto Silva: He means it wasn't even a readily available option. Who ever created the match "went around" things to create a match that long.

*I think thats what he meant anyway.

Fencer: I think you've lost me now...

Roberto Silva: Well, I certainly hadn't supposed that someone would find it worth hacking to pass a number greater than 9 there.

Aganju: In Brainking's defense, I'd think "no one will play a match with more than 255 games" was a reasonable programming assumption... You'd need double server capacity to store the games on a 2-byte counter right?

Thad: lol.
Looks like the coder saved memory and used a one-byte integer to count them. 80ies style.

Wow, it looks like you can't play a match that's longer than 255 games. Our match just disappeared from the main page without any warning or message or anything after game #255. Open Pente (Thad vs. JackS)

Fencer: The site appears to be working well with me now. Let's hope it stays that way. This morning I could not make any moves in my games.

crosseyed: Since the site itself is fast and running without any problems, it seems that only some routes are affected. It usually means that there are problems with certain network nodes which is out of our reach (so we can only wait).

Fencer: Thank you for informing us. Yes I am having difficulty playing my games this morning.

You might have noticed some connect problems that started about an hour ago. I have already notified the ISP (the issue is on their side), so I hope they will fix it soon.

Energizer: I love progressive, and play a strong game. Would recommend adding a Fischer Random option for it, as (IMO) the standard variant's openings are deeply analyzed, and don't offer much opportunity for original analysis.

Progressive chess is a chess variant in which players, rather than just making one move per turn, play progressively longer series of moves. The game starts with White making one move, then Black makes two consecutive moves, White replies with three, Black makes four and so on. Progressive chess can be combined with other variants; for example, when circe is played as a game, it is usually progressively. Progressive chess is considered particularly apt for playing correspondence chess using mail or some other slow medium, because of the relatively small number of moves in a typical game.
What about making Progressive Chess on the Brainking...

Roberto Silva: Stats can be misleading. loop chess has a significant advantage to the player with the inititive (white). Never the less it is far from a forced win and a stronger black player can neutralise the advantage and go on to win.

SL-Mark: Maybe. I've only played any variant of that game once or twice I think, so can't really say anything about it.

Roberto Silva: I would argue that in Espionage and its variants, its makes no difference if you are white or black.

Marshmud: No turn-based game is ever balanced. For every game either moving first or moving second is a better option, and master players will exploit that easily. Even chess is unbalanced in favor of white, and between grandmasters a black player can be quite happy if he gets even a draw.

However, if you check the stats for the other games mentioned (Maharajah, Horde Chess, Battleboat Plus, etc.) you will see that those games are so unbalanced that one side automatically has a huge advantage. It's not that a highly skilled player can exploit a bias in the game, but that the game is heavily loaded against one side regardless of skill or ability.

Marshmud: Concerning spider line4: true about the huge advantage, but the game is complex enough to be fun even as a second player.

Roberto Silva: Those stats don't tell the true story. In Regular stack4 the 2nd player has a huge advantage. In the variants, like spider 4 The player who goes first has the advantage. Such an advantage that a good player will seldom loose.

Roberto Silva: hmm just a feeling .. i like it best to start as player 2, and i think i win more when my opponent has the first move

will have to check my games to be certain

Hrqls:
white 34313 (51.78 %)
black 31472 (47.49 %)

You sure about that?

another example is connect4 : player 2 has a big advantage there as well

Gabriel Almeida: Didn't forget; I've never played it. ;)

Carpe Diem: You forgot one way checkers. Easy win for white. In 3 moves it get a huge advantage...

pedestrian: Great idea!

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.

after the first move the players would move twice each turn.

Carpe Diem: I like your suggestion for battleboats plus. I would love it if they changed it so that for the very first move of the game that player one gets only 2 moves, and then for the rest of the game it is 5 (or fewer of course once ships get sunk) for both players.

likewowman2cool: Haha, funny you would mention Connect6 - I just edited my last post to say that using the same idea as Connect6 does for the first move might help with the Battleboats Plus problem.

Carpe Diem: Ah yes, you are correct. I guess it is just that I am not familiar with those other games so that hadn't occurred to me.

For anyone looking to play a pure skill game that is essentially 50-50 even for top players, then I suggest trying connect6.

likewowman2cool: Absolutely, but wouldn't that apply to most games? The better the players, the more in-depth understanding they have of the game, and the closer they'll be to optimal play, which will increase any inherent biases in the game.

Carpe Diem: Add "battleboats plus" to the list.

I also want to point out that those pente statistics are deceptive. It is more like 80-95% wins for player one when top players play each other. Scroll to see the match results thus far in this match: Pente (aleph_1 vs. Brf)

FWIW, for the games mentioned thus far, the BK results look like this:

It's my understanding that in Reversi is biased as well but that in Reversie it's actually Player 2 who the advantage.

Pente is that way too. The advantage is not significant for novice players, but expert players rarely lose as Player 1.

In games like these, I think the BKRs should be calculated as follows:

Calculate BKRs separately for games in which the player moved first (Player 1) or second (Player 2). Calculate the percentage of the player's wins that come as Player 1 and as Player 2. Multiply each BKR by the player's winning percentage **of the other position**.

For example, if player has a BKR of 2000 as Player 1 but only 1800 as Player 2 and was Player 1 in 70% of his wins (meaning he was Player 2 in only 30%of his wins) then his BKR should be 2000 * .3 + 1800 * .7 = 1860.

This system usually produces better BKRs than the curent system. And it never produces worse BKRs than the curent system, at least not in any situations that I can think of. I can think of situations where this system wouldn't give a very good result, for example, when a player plays as P2 exclusively. but the system we have in place now doesn't give a good result in these situations either.

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.

cd power: Maharajah chess would be easy to balance : add two more white Maharajahs. For horde chess, its harder...

Roberto Silva: And let's not forget about Maharajah chess... that is probably the worst offender of all the games. If I play the black color, I am 100% guaranteed victory in 24 moves. Anyone who does not believe me, then send me an invite where I am black and I'll prove it to you!

Carpe Diem: Horde chess is another example of imbalance. I think the only effective solution to that is to only play 2-game matches for those games. Of course that's a problem with random game tournaments.

I think Mancala is one of the most skewed games when it comes to first move advantage - 63% - 33%. Does BK ever look at rules tweaks when there is a heavy bias like this?

ketchuplover:

crosseyed: It didn't help matters when someone on the iyt board spoiled the end of The sixth Sense.

So far today I am able to play my games without any problems with this site.