sidpatel: Gambler means that we get credited for the wins since the competition started. It's so soon into it that they might not make much difference; I guess it depends how many points Fencer's going to award for a win. :-)

Matarilevich: Of course.

Fencer: I wasn't necessarily expecting it. Simply wondering. Thanks Fencer. And sidpatel, I was asking if wins would be counted from when the action started or just now.

Modify "board points" by "wins points" in the table of details!

gambler104: Haven't a clue, mate. ;-)

Fencer: God bless you and thankyou very very much

gambler104: You cannot expect miracles in such a short development time.

yuppee. what do you mean by retroactive?

The change is active.

playBunny: Are wins retroactive?

The board points have been wiped! :-D

The Badger: it must be early morning in your part of the world.

i believe that a nice person always gets his/her reward in the end ( not talking about this competition ) and i believe that no one is perfect in this world nor is the world itself but if you try to do the right thing , God will reward you. God bless fencer for his kindness.

What about not being allowed to score more board points than move points? This is a game site after all, so maybe that should be emphasised. The way it is at the moment, some people are able to rack up massive scores without actually playing many turns. Just a thought.

sidpatel: I agree. Fencer is a good person and he does a lot for his members (pawns included). And his niceness ironically had stirred up this debate. Regardless of how this situation turns out, I won't be too upset since Fencer had no obligation to offer any of those prizes. I guess that when someone does so well for so long, you expect him to be perfect. Hopefully, this will all turn out ok. Thanks Fencer.

even i am stuck in a tournament where im done with moves but it will take weeks to find out if i advance to next round or not.

i feel sorry for fencer because he went out and offerred free membership prizes and i think that is very very noble of him and instead of being praised for it its become a headache but it cant be helped since there are always people in the world who take advantage of every situation first chance they get.

playBunny: I agree. I am in a tournament where I am waiting for a round to finish so I would probably not get win points. If you want to do that in the future, I think it might be ok, but it would probably need to wait a few months so all or most pawns have a fair shot. It's already a little unfair with the 2-1 point ratio. But I can accept that since I can move more often. But to double that advantage might be too much.

Zero win-points for me then as Pawns only have one tournament and I'm playing the slowest player on BK! LOL

sidpatel: I don't agree with that since there is no real advantage to only count wins in tournaments. It might be a way to reduce the loopholes, but max number of wins against an opponent a day is pretty effective. You aren't going to find too many people purposely resigning to help others. So you would limit it to a few players, and Fencer could check the top point accounts and make sure that all or most of their wins(since an opponent can resign for no apparent reason) are ligit. If Fencer did that (basically checking to make sure that one opponent did not resign multiple games against the same opponent), you might not even have to have the win restriction.

sidpatel: LOL

playBunny: you assume too much bunny ...lol

gambler104, sidpatel: Indeed. Well, I'm rather relying on what I think Fencer means when he says "New users: 50 for each unique user who registers on BrainKing through your referral link". I'm assuming that "unique" means not originating from the same IP address. (But with shared-IP networks that could be tricky to police.

here are 2 suggestions. if there have to be 4 ways to get points then leave the new account points but put a max of 5 or 10 new users at most and also all those accounts should remain active for a week to be counted. secondly points for wins should be restricted to tournaments only. since pawns and rooks are in defferent categories it wouldnt affect anyone in the competition even if the points for rooks would rise dramatically versus pawns who can only join 1 tour at a time.

pauloaguia: Ah, thank you, that's interesting. I can't try it as I've got no unread posts anywhere. ;o)

But it means that there's a natural limit to the exploitation. One thing that could be done is to level the playing field on the boards points by setting everyone to all-read on every board. No more (4901 new) on any board. It's not as if people will be missing out on boards that they've never read anyway. (For legitimate board readers, those with, say, 10 or fewer new posts on a board, those particular boards wouldn't be flagged as all-read.)

playBunny: that is true playbunny if you go and get 20 new REAL people to join the site. if you open 20 new accounts yourself posing as 20 different people just for the points , how is that beneficial to fencer or the site?>

playBunny: I agree. But people can create dummy accounts themselves and credit their action points account with a referral. I'm not saying to stop it, I am just saying that Fencer would have to be very careful if multiple accounts were created all referred by the same user.

gambler104: I could perhaps go to a couple of other sites where I'm known and liked and get 20 or so new accounts in one go. But the point of Fencer encouraging new users is so that people will come and play - and stay. And who kows how many of that 20 would do just that! That's a win for Fencer and the competition points should be allowed.

sidpatel: Fencer wants four options so he needs a replacement. And I am not too fond of referring pawns since that could open up loopholes. Fencer will just have to be extra careful although it might not matter. It is only 50 points which is almost too small to make a difference in the long run. If a person get 10 new users all of a sudden, I think Fencer would have to be awfully cautious.

well there are always loop holes no matter what we do but i personally think that the best thing to do is remove points for boards and dont add points for winning because then there will be some sort of illegal way to counter the limits and again the same problems ... also i think we should remove points for reffering a new registered user (pawn only) leave the points for referring a paid user. this is only a suuggestion but i think the best one to avoid loopholes (not calling it cheating anymore) but i do like big bad wolfs ideas in general chat but only if they can be done in a way that there are no backdorrs to get points and i dont think that is possible to be honest no matter how strict the rules are .

anyone in the top 50 cannot get points from each other from playing games just for points , two players can easily boost points if they stick together to stay at the top of the list .

BIG BAD WOLF: Yes, it will be counted only once a day with the same opponent.

playBunny: I guess that works.

gambler104: That wouldn't be a problem. If someone sabotages you then you simply don't play them again.

playBunny: You're forgetting the posts in the past ;)

If you don't have the habbit of going through all DB's to read the posts, most of them will have plenty of unread posts.
All you have to do is to make sure you only read one post per hour - that way you'll have plenty to read in the hours to come. It's easy to go to the first unread post.
If you multiply the over 100 boards by 24 hours, you'll easilly get over 2000 points.

But who cares, since the action points for reading posts are going away anyway? ;)

sidpatel: The only way you could do that is to remove resigning as an option which some people would not support. Like I said, sabotage could become an issue. I know most people here would not do it, but some people are desperate enough to do it.

and yes like playbunny said , no points if one person resigns at any time in the game

playBunny: The resignation suggestion has a flaw with players attempting to sabotage others. If I didn't want you to get a point for a win, I simply resign a game you are winning. I like BBW suggestion better.

BIG BAD WOLF: People may already do that to earn more moving points...

can something like this be done that the game wins only count if the game is set up in the public waiting room and not a private or personal invite and like big bad said , only max 2 games per 2 opponents per day?

Fencer: "It's not possible to get more than one (two) point from the same posts."

I reckon I could proves that by simply listing the times of posts made to the boards in 24 hours, chopping the list up into hours and counting. It'll be easily less than the 700 board-hours (1400 points) that Sahar has clocked up since the last server midnight.

For now, I'll take it as a yes on the board points and I'll plead with KotDB to publish the method so that everyone can exploit it. ;-)

But I much prefer your offer to kill the board points and replace it with something. I think gambler104 suggested using wins a while back.

Whether that's games won or whole matches could be an interesting debate but I don't mind myself. If it's games then playing anything goes.. If it's matches then (serious) competitors would simply stop playing multi-pointers. ;-)

Resigned games ought to be discounted from such a scheme.

Fencer: That sounds good. I think a lot of people would like it a lot. Like you said, it is a game site. And I think that would take away potential bugs. But I think you would need to implement something like BBW said and limit it to two wins a day against the same player. And some people might complain about board points being taken away, but I think the majority would support it. Thanks.

Fencer: Game wins - are you going to limit how many points you can gain from the same opponent?

If not, i can see a couple getting 50 games between then, just to quickly play (or resign) just to get some free points. (and of course you will hear about it here shortly after that about players gaining points unfairly)

BIG BAD WOLF: Game wins.

gambler104: No matter what limit is created, the boards can be always accessed by a script (I've already detected something like this yesterday). The points for game wins would be a better option.
Hey, this is a game site, not a chat site! The point system should support playing games, not reading boards.

Fencer: How about something like I suggested on General Chat - give 10 points for reading a public board, 5 points for fellowship board - but limit that to once a day for each board.

That way it will still encourage user to read (or at least look) at the boards, but they don't feel like then need to come every hour and click on every board just to gain points. (just once a day)

gambler104: It's just a little frustrating when you play all night to try to get points, and then someone comes and gets a lot more without half of the work.

Fencer: I'm not against having board points, but maybe limit it to 200 or 300 a day. That would easily prevent cheating, but still promote reading the boards relatively often.

playBunny: It's not possible to get more than one (two) point from the same posts. But I agree the actual "reading" cannot be easily detected, so I am willing to remove the board points but they must be replaced by something else, in order to keep the four options. Make your suggestion.

Fencer: Just so that I'm clear on this..

There's a trick which people can use to get more than one point from the same posts on a board and this isn't cheating. It's okay to use the trick.

Everyone knows how to make moves in games. Everyone knows how to visit a board to read a post. This is knowledge that the site provides.

Not everybody knows this multiple-points-from-boards trick (perhaps involving different browsers, multiple windows, cookie files, or who knows what - and I'm not one of them yet).

If I and sid and everyone else knew this trick we could make 1000s of board-reading points with it. But we don't know it. You say it's a legitimate tactic yet we don't know how to do it.

Would you be willingly to let us all know how to gain these multiple points, please, so that the competition can be fair?

And, just to confirm .. If I or sid discover how to use this trick and stop trying to win by making moves and simply make 4000 points per day from this trick, you'll be happy to let the points stand?