BrainKing introduces a new chess variant called Fischer Random Chess. By the way, in case somebody is still not aware of it, since the last week we have another backgammon variant Hyper backgammon :-)
1) BrainKing brings two Five in Line variants - Pro Five in Line and Swap Five in Line.
2) Users with Brain Rook or higher membership level can create Ponds, starting today.
We apologize for the "deja vu" effect and the return in time (2 hours to the past), caused by a bug in the configuration files. Due to this situation, the game time will be suspended till tomorrow morning.
Everything works correctly now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
1) A planned downtime of BrainKing is scheduled to the 2nd January 2005, due to moving data to archive databases. The whole action should not exceed 1 hour. The game time will be turned off, just for a case of unexpected events.
2) There are still several days left for everyone who didn't take advantage of the Christmas Special! Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends the current one) and makes it to the end of this year (2004), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.
1) Christmas Special! Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends the current one) and makes it to the end of this year (2004), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.
2) And for the doubtful ones, there is one temptation - BrainKing brings the first multiplayer game which is accessible for paying members only. The number of participants is unlimited and the name is Run round the Pond.
3) The User Agreement has been improved in order to make it more understandable and clear.
Hello,
as you can see, all hardware problems have been (hopefully) solved and BrainKing is operating in its standard way.
Now it is time to announce the very first third-party tool created for BrainKing paying members. It is called BrainKing Notify, it should be working on all Windows platforms and after installation it keeps you informed about a number of games to play.
Important: This application was developed by Klokan, not me, therefore all questions/suggestions/reports send directly to him, please. It can be downloaded from this site and after some testing period, I will officially add it to BrainKing domain.
The last note: The application works for paying members only.
...phew, I've reincarnated "Maja" the database server and after a sleepless night we've moved (with Fencer) the database back to Maja. This was the cause of today's downtime.
The game time will be started again as of Friday 26th November 2004, 12:00 GMT+1 after a sufficient review of full BK functionality.
Due to a sudden malfunction of the database server, the whole BrainKing is currently running on one machine only, which can have a negative impact on the site speed and response time. This is the reason why the game time has been suspended until the problem is solved.
If somebody can observe a "time warp" effect (missing last moves in games, etc.), it is caused by a broken data replication to a backup machine. I recommend to continue in games with their current status and not to report it as a bug.
Global BKR recalculation based on all finished games since October 2002 will be performed next week, most likely as of Monday 25th October 2004, 8:00 CET. This process can take 10-15 minutes which will cause a temporary site unavailability.
New system of timeout calculating and processing has been launched in a test mode. It means that initial values of "time left" can be a bit inaccurate. After all tests are passed, the time for games will be started again (most likely on Friday 15th October 2004, about 12:00 CET).
BrainKing brings 3 new games - Jarmo, Alquerque and Froglet. My thanks go to white for those little froggies and Sinay for boards of Jarmo and Alquerque. Yes, I know that boards for Jarmo and Alquerque are too big, I will add smaller ones soon.
Besides, lots of bugs was fixed (e.g. multiple jumps in Czech Checkers) and added several improvements.
I have added a simple bug tracking and reporting system. It is accessible through a new Bug tracker menu item. This first version will be improved in the future, according to requirements and feedback.
For Pente players: The World Championship will be held in Las Vegas, NV on August 7 & 8, 2004. You can find more information here.
1) The First Team Tournament has been started! Although some minor bugs can occur (i.e. in score counting), it should be working properly.
2) The User Agreement has been officially released and is valid for everyone. I would recommend to read it at least once.
1) I have added a new page Store where you can order an original BrainKing.com T-shirt and more similar things in the future.
2) Suspended time will be restarted next week, most likely as of 10th July 2004 (Saturday).
Okay, I don't say anything ... let's wait and observe :-)
We've already found some small bugs but they should have no negative impact on the functionality. One of them is showing incorrect red numbers at the menu column, so please don't report it, I am aware of it.
Btw, what not to try Battleboats Plus, Dark Battleboats and Amazons? :-D
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Monday 28th June 2004, 7:00 a.m. GMT+01:00 due to a conversion of our database. The process should not exceed two or three hours. In case of additional problems I will inform about the situation on BrainKing.info.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Saturday 12th June 2004 due to a replacement of damaged hardware components. The process should not take more than 2 hours, hopefully.
Ehm ... hmmmm ... well, due to unexpected problems, we have decided to re-launch former BrainKing 1.0 again, until all possible [recently detected] performance bugs are fixed. I am sure it's better to have at least this site running. Sorry :-) We will try the switchover again next weekend, probably.
UPDATE: Due to recent access problems of WebTV users, I have stopped game time [to prevent timeouts] until it is solved. It will be started again on Monday 14th June 2004.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Saturday 5th June 2004 due to a conversion of our database. In case of additional problems (which are not expected) I will inform about the situation on BrainKing.info.
IMPORTANT: The "suspended time" will be turned off within several days [as of 9th January 2004]. Please make sure that none of your games (where it is your turn to move) has "0" as time left. Thank you.
Update: I have temporarily disabled posting on discussion boards for non-paying users. It is a short time solution before I improve our anti-spam filter.
Due to some New Year bug, several games had been finished by a timeout. I would like to ask everybody not to panic, everything is under control now. Please send me game IDs of all timeouted games, I will restore them. Thanks and I apologize.
IMPORTANT: The "suspended time" will be turned off within several days [as of 14th November 2003]. Please make sure that none of your games (where it is your turn to move) has "0" as time left. Thank you.
Since the description of the recent events is too long to be posted here, please read it on BrainKing.info before you ask me about anything. Thank you.
A hardware failure has occured at our web/database server. We are currently running on the second server only and the time for games will be suspended until the first one is fixed. Since we have only Saturday database backup, all Sunday and Monday actions are lost. I apologize for the inconvenience.
I have added two new tournament options:
1) Unrated tournaments - no games generated for the tournament will affect the players' BKR.
2) Private tournaments - only players invited by the tournament creator can sign up.
These options can be found on "define new tournament" page (visible for Brain Rooks only).
I have added pgn encoder for chess games. Since I have never used this format before, I would like to ask anybody who is familiar with this format to test it. There is a new link "download pgn code" at the notation column of chess games.
I have slightly modified the discussion board system to improve the overall site performance. Please do not be alarmed if all board posts are marked as "new", it is a harmless side-effect.
1) BrainKing.com releases three new games - Battleboats, Screen Chess and Crazy Screen Chess.
2) There is also new menu item Game editors to create game positions for later use. Please test everything and report any bugs :-)
3) According to many requests from Pente players, Easy Pente and Easy Keryo Pente have been renamed to Open Pente and Open Keryo Pente.
This is a reminder for all Brain Pawn and Brain Knight players who signed up for $250 Gothic Chess tournament - please make sure that you have at least 5 empty slots for tournament games, otherwise you will be automatically removed from the tournament.
A $250 prize will be awarded to the top finisher of the Gothic Chess tournament that will start on June 5. THIS IS FREE FOR EVERYONE TO JOIN!! The second place finisher will receive a FREE Gothic Chess set. A "brilliancy prize" will be awarded to the game judged to be the best by Gothic Chess inventor Ed Trice. A FREE Gothic Chess mug (stainless steel) will be awarded to the winner of this prize.
NOTE: Ed Trice (GothicChessPro) will NOT be playing in the event.
To join this tournament, click here.
To see more about Gothic Chess strategies and review completed games, go to http://www.geocities.com/bow_of_odysseus/index.html.
1) Congratulations to panda and bumble on the birth of your second set of twins (a girl and boy), with love from cariad and all your many friends here on BrainKing.com :-)
2) BrainKing.info has been updated. More information will follow soon.
3) I've completely forgotten to announce an addition of Easy Pente and Easy Keryo Pente last week ;-)
I would like to thank everybody who responded to the discussion boards moderator request. Because I cannot send a personal response to all of you, here is the current status - several moderator posts are already occupied and if you are still interested, pick any of non-system and "open" (moderated by Fencer) discussion board and send me a message about that. Thanks again :-)
Hello,
since I have no time for reading all posts, I would like to set new moderators for non-system discussion boards (especially General Chat). If anybody is interested, please send me a personal message. Thanks :-)
1) I have created BrainKing.info site to publish all important BrainKing.com information (planned outages etc.). It is located on another server, so it should be available even in cases of BrainKing.com inactivity.
2) Due to analysis of experienced Pente players I have added the first moves restriction to Small Pente and Small Keryo Pente. Otherwise these two games would be virtually impossible to win by the black player.
3) The first simple opinion poll has been created to test this new feature. Please follow the Polls link.
4) Check out the new Winners page as well :-)
1) I have just added Small Pente and Small Keryo Pente (13x13 board and no move restrictions).
2) It is possible to create more game invitations at once, check the last page of New game process.
3) We have exceeded 4000 registered players :-)
BrainKing.com proudly presents (at the first game site in the world) Gothic Chess. This game is protected by U.S. Patent 6,481,716 and BrainKing.com has been granted a licence by Edward A. Trice, the inventor of the game.
Of course, test it as you want :-)
Hello,
I have just added three new games - Pente, Keryo Pente and Janus Chess. Since I have never played any of these games, I would be very glad if somebody could test them according to the correct rules. Thanks :-)
1) After a long discussion I have made the final change at Atomic Chess rules. There is no check or checkmate and the only way to win is to blast off the opponent's king. It should solve all recent problems.
2) Backgammon - the current dice are displayed at the right half of the board which is (at last) correct.
Hello,
please make sure that you have a correct e-mail address at your Profile. There are many players who entered an e-mail address with typos and all attempts to send e-mail to non-existent domain slow down our server. Thank you.
1) Prize Tournaments - any player with Brain Rook or higher membership level can define a tournament with a price for a winner. Such tournaments are highlighted at the tournament list.
2) Internal Fellowship Tournaments - each Big Boss can define a tournament for his/her fellowship. Only members of the fellowship can sign up for this tournament.
3) Several other minor improvements, you will find them :-)
BrainKing introduces a new chess variant called 
...phew, I've reincarnated "Maja" the database server and after a sleepless night we've moved (with Fencer) the database back to Maja. This was the cause of today's downtime.
