Board for everybody who is interested in BrainKing itself, its structure, features and future.
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Teema: Re: 33 consecutive passes in Ludo. Needs an achievement :)
Pedro Martínez: Ludo is the most exciting and intellectually demanding game on this site, no question. At least until Fencer introduces Tic Tac Toe, probably in BK version 14.3.
Teema: Re: 33 consecutive passes in Ludo. Needs an achievement :)
Artful Dodger: The probability of not getting a 6 33 times in a row are (5/6)^33 , about 2.5/1000. Not bad. I recommend buying a lottery ticket, fast, before your luck runs out.
when the vacation day changed at the start of the year ive just noticed that when a bishop buys a new bishop membership he gets all his vacation days back again even thou he had already used 4 of them i was just wondering if this is the norm now or is it an oversight on your part?
When searching for ponds to sign up for, if you click on the Fellowships ponds, there are many ponds waiting to sign up that are 2 to 4 years old... wouldn't it be great if those were simply deleted from the site?
Marshmud: Yes, I remember. When Fencer first created Team Tournaments, they were prized with brains. I thought it was a great idea, and felt more addicted to BK, then. This is good, right? :)
Gabriel Almeida: There has been Team Tounaments with the winning team receiving brains for their win and also many fellowship team tounament that have brains for the winning team. However you must set up the tournament. Currently the brain system is inactive but I hope it soon will change.
I've already suggested, and repeat it (sorry for that), brains could be a great prize for team tournaments, and I think it would be good for the site. Team competition is an important and still not very explored potentialitty of BK, if players could be motivated to great competition in those tournaments. How about it, Fencer? You give the brains, for now!
So one can only gain brains by the Referral or Promotional program? The re is something about "20 brains for free", but I don't get how it wroks, it seems it doesn't work any more...
rod03801: I'm pretty sure the site checks for timeouts every 10 minutes. That would be consistent with the time that these two games ended: 16:00:01 and 15:50:01 respectively. So to be sure to win on time in a fast-paced game when your opponent has overstepped the time, you would have to wait until the site's clock shows xx:x9:50 or something and then make your move. Not an ideal way to play fast-paced games, but then again, it's not the site's main focus.
Atrotos: I took a quick look at your 2 games against that person.
Really, with the Fischer clock, you EACH have one hour of play. Your clock runs while the turn is on your page, and your opponent's clock runs when its on their turn. (Which you probably knew, except your post said "1 hour for the whole game")
The site checks for timeouts every few minutes (unless that has changed) so, perhaps he/she moved right before the site checked. I know I have seen plenty of games get to negative 5 minutes or more before timing out.
i played a horde chess game with Fischer time control of 1 hour for the whole game zero increment and my opponent run out of time for about 40 moves in a row but he didn't lose.
when his time run out his clock shown 0 mins or -0 mins but this continued happening all the time and he never lost on time. he had time problems from the beginning and i adapted my play to play lower quality moves for gaining time and putting time pressure on him.
that didn't work since he can lose by time running out it seems. go figure.
i saw this site as a good chance to escape from all the chess i was playing with all these variants but its great flaw in time control disappointed me.
my opponent finally lost on time as it seems and see this moment i'm writing this.
Fencer: By the way, is it possible to "auto-remove" the auto-vacation feature if a user does not login for more than 30 days (I ask this because they are already marked in fellowships, so it is definitely possible to filter by last login date). It is kind of annoying to have to wait 2 months for someone to timeout, just because the game timed out in january 1st or 2nd, and the user gained auto-vacation (wheter (s)he already had them or not). Besides if someone does not login because, for example, he had a surgery, or something like that, when (s)he returns to the site there are no more vacation left for the rest of the year...
All vacation will be automatic, which also means that the calendar would be removed from Settings page (it should disable all attempts of cheating by periodical setting/unsetting of scheduled vacation days, as we could see in the past). Users of all membership levels will be allowed to activate/deactivate automatic vacation anytime.
Teema: Re: The new vacation system - 4 holidays in one week
okjb: I'm not sure all that has changed, but I think time when a game is due is still done when opponent completes their move, and adjusts for weekend days a player has choosen.
But lets say a person has Sat & Sun as weekend - and a game is set to time out on Friday - if the auto-vacation kicks in on Friday, then when Sat & Sun comes along - it will still add hours, but without using weekend days.
I would guess the correct way for the system to handle that would be to when the weekend comes along, only add hours to those games that are to time out (not all games since the rest should have already been adjusted for the weekend) - then when the weekend is over and if vacations are still being used, then adjust all games and not just the times out games.
Teema: The new vacation system - 4 holidays in one week
According to new vacation system if a player has a timeout in some game then 1 hour is added to all his games and this player loses 1 vacation hour. However, if this situation takes place in his holidays (usually Saturday and Sunday) then this player doesn't lose a vacation hour but 1 hour is added to all his games too. But usually days for vacations are already added to his thinking time just after his opponent's move. So, if the thinking time at least in one game is finished during player's holidays then he receives additional time up to 2 days. Thus, he has in all long time games 4 holidays instead of 2.
Usually the thinking time is not finishing during holidays. But it could finish in some game, for example, at 23:30 at Friday. The player does not make a move in this game and pays 1 vacation hour but he receives 2 additional days in ALL games. After it the finishing time in some other his games can be shifted to next holidays and so on. Thus, paying only 1 vacation hour a player can organize 4 holidays for himself instead of 2 for many months ahead.
I have found that some players had recognized it and started to use this situation already. This is important , for example, in high level pente tournaments where it is helpful to wait for moves of other players in other games before to make own move. So, Fencer must wait new proclamations from pente players.
alexlee: Round? Now that's a LOL. I'm happy when he finishes a point. With 21 as goal... I'll have to remember to bequeath my password to my youngest grandchild :)
rabbitoid: Exactly what is says. It is possible to turn it off on Settings / Calendar page (and since there is no calendar any more, the option will be moved to Settings / General soon).
El Cid: Well, they both got an extra hour on their time for all their games (not counting games with red dots I presume). They also weren't penalized an hour on the profile, which I am guessing is because of their weekend days being as you said.
It is a bit unintuitive how weekend days are accounted for though....