I thought this meant that for 10 (50) game types, you have to win 50 games against different opponents. But then it claims that for the first one, I've done "7/10", which I assume to mean that I've beaten 50 different opponents in 7 different game types; however, for the second one, I have "6/50". Which would mean I've beaten 50 different opponents in only 6 different game types.

But that doesn't make sense.

So, what does this archievement mean? Or is there a bug somewhere?

joshi tm: Let's see what's left: all checkers variants, some chess variants, Alquerque, Cam(elot), all boats variants (trivial), all Pente variants, all Espionage variants, all Go variants (very hard to capture all your opponents pieces - OTOH, each player has an unlimited amount of stones, so perhaps Go doesn't qualify anyway), Jarmo, Tablut, Tank Battle, (Big) Jungle. Spider variants have the same issue as Go: it's possible, but very hard to eliminate all pieces from the board, but the number of pieces in the hand is unlimited.

joshi tm: A couple of games that have permanent captures, but will be finished before all opponents pieces are removed: Extinction Chess, Three Checks Chess, Knight Relay Chess, Racing Kings. And this is even side-stepping that fact that under regular Chess rules the game always ends with both Kings on the board - there's no such thing as taking a King.

coan.net: Of course myself I don't think I could force myself to lose on purpose, but many others would, and I think having achievements that encourage you to lose are a bad choice.

What I find even worse is the Stick around achievement which encourages people to play without autopass (you don't earn it if you play with autopass).

coan.net: There are achievements that encourages sub optimal play (of even playing losing moves) under certain conditions (for instance, not taking your opponents King in Dice Chess, hoping to score "Pawn of glory" or "Deadly king" later in the game; prolonging a game of Anti Backgammon or Cloning Backgammon (by taking your opponents checkers when you shouldn't) trying to gain "Double strike" or "My three sixes"; marking up your 6 1's as a "Chance" instead of a "Six of a kind" in order to win "That was really close"; discarding full hotels, cars, houses after the second roll in order to try gaining "Five lucky dice" or "Six lucky dice"; taking the 11 instead of the 98 in Knight Fight in order to gain "Double defeat", "Path of twins" or even "A little more horse power"), so achievements for losing isn't that far off.

OTOH, a meta-rule of "you cannot gain an achievement (nor a partial achivement) one a game you did not win" would eliminate some of the sub optimal plays. And prohibit any achievement that requires one to lose.

Pedro Martínez: In Hyper, I believe it's 8.

I can make a sequence of 11 passes. Start with two stones on your 6 point; one stone on the bar. Opponent has a blot on the 24, and two stones on 23. Now:

1. Roll 1-2. Play bar-24, 24-22. Opponent rolls 6-6 (pass)


2. Roll 1-2. Play 22-21, 21-19. Opponent rolls 6-6 (pass)


3. Roll 1-2. Play 19-18, 18-16. Opponent rolls 6-6 (pass)


4. Roll 1-2. Play 16-15, 15-13. Opponent rolls 6-6 (pass)


5. Roll 1-2. Play 13-12, 12-10. Opponent rolls 6-6 (pass)


6. Roll 1-2. Play 10-9, 9-7. Opponent rolls 6-6 (pass)


7. Roll 1-2. Play 7-5, 6-5. Opponent rolls 5-5 (pass)


8. Roll 1-2. Play 6-4, 5-4. Opponent rolls 4-4 (pass)


9. Roll 1-2. Play 5-3, 4-3. Opponent rolls 3-3 (pass)


10. Roll 1-2. Play 4-2, 3-2. Opponent rolls 2-2 (pass)


11. Roll 1-2. Play 3-1, 2-1. Opponent rolls 1-1 (pass)

Changes your roll 1-2 11 times in a row while your opponent rolls the appropriate double: 1 in 8459117637862050464804269719552. (If the entire populate of the world (6.75 billion people) rolls 22 times a second, it still will only happen about once every 40 trillion years - a time span about 3000 times the estimated age of the universe).

Hrqls: I'd make a separate achievement for forcing your opponent to pass 40 times a row in Hyper. ;-) And not count Cloning (40 passes in a row in Cloning Backgammon happens far more frequently than in other types).

Which leads to an interesting question. What's the maximum forced passes in a row you can have in Hyper Backgammon? Or in any other variant with a fixed number of stones? (It clear there's no upper limit in Cloning).

All the achievements have a number in the top right corner. Does anyone know what they mean? At first, I thought it was points, but the summary just counts the number of achievements, it doesn't sum the numbers. Then I thought it might be difficulty, the harder an achievement, the higher the numbers. But voting in 10 polls has a "10", and so does "Become the most active player in 3 consecutive days." The former is something anyone can do easily, taking all the time you want. The latter is quite hard to do.

So, what does that big number mean?

There are a number of BKR Achievements that require active chart positions. Which means that you can qualify today, but not tomorrow. Does that mean people can lose achievements? Or does it mean having had the required active chart positions at one point in the past?

Fencer: Hey, I just agreed with beach. If you don't want to hear my reasons, don't ask Why?. Don't complain if I'm polite enough to answer your question.

Fencer: Why? Well, I came (and still am for another year) to BK because I wanted to play turn based games. I want to play lots of them. Smoothly. With as little hassle as possible. I don't care about photo albums. (If I want to share pictures, I use my own photo album, or use Flickr). I don't collect friends (if I wanted that, I'd go to Facebook). I don't have the urge to scribble on walls. Or use yet another chat room (jabber at work and a couple of IRC channels is more than enough). Google gives me more than enough links; why would I turn to a turned based game site to collect links? Achievements? I don't need them.

I realize that for others these are cool things. But I'd happily give up the achievements, the walls, the photo albums, and the chat room for, say, differently marked racing and non-racing checkers. Or for the option to have the computer do meaningless things for me, like moving in a game when there's no choice to be made.

I don't plan to leave at the moment, but if I would stumble upon another good site and I were to make a choice between BK and a new site, the games, the interface, the other players and the price of the membership would be factors for me. Photo albums, walls, chat rooms, etc. won't. Similar when it comes to membership renewal.

beach: I fully agree. There are many game related bug fixes/improvements/features I would rather have seen than archievements, photo albums, "walls" and other non-gaming stuff we've seen lately.