Sometimes I want to play Chess-games only, or BG-games only since I have the thoughtprocess in chess (or whatever group). Would be nice to sort the games on a group of games. Today, BG, Nackgammon and crowded are impossible (?) to get in a row if you have many games. Either predetermined groups (chess, bg, checkers etc) or userdefined groups (max x groups to decide in the settings)

I've recently learned about this game, and it seems to be a nice game, so I'd like to see it on BrainKing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gess

pauloaguia: Wow, you think starting 1 live pond every hour would be too many - Heck, I was expecting to hear complaints about it not being enough - that people would be done with their pond at 10 minutes past the hour, and have to wait 50 more minutes for the next live pond to start.

Yes - A Optional Pop-up to remind you to play would be great. Not sure if a pop up to put your bid in would help much since you would probable want to go to the page and take a quick look at past bids & totals left & such to make a good educated bid.

pauloaguia: Yeah, the pop up idea would be good. I was about to comment that I think 1 minute is too short, because personally, I doubt I would just sit there waiting. I would probably make a move in a game or 2 and come back.

A pop up would solve that though. Especially if you could make your bid right on that pop up!

coan.net: I LOVE the strategy war idea. I hope the big guy will consider that one someday.

coan.net: I don't know if such an abbundance would be good. Take a look at the poker tables - you can go in and out when you feel like it, but there's usually only 1 or 2 tables with players at most...
Now, think about people signing in for a game that starts in 10 minutes, keep playing the rest of their games, and when they go in to play in the pond, find out that either they have just timed out, or go in advance and wait 3 minutes staring at a page, waiting for the pond to start...
Doesn't seem like it will be very popular to me...

Suggestion to add onto this, if they are implemented this way - If I'm in a live Pond, have something popup on me when the time comes for me to make a bet no matter what page I'm at (as long as it's a page in BK, of course ).

I mention this game idea every once and awhile, and I know there was interest in it in the past, but thought I would mention it again:

http://www.coan.net/strategy-war.html

The game would be set up similar to ponds (multi-players, 2-10 players) - and could even work pretty well as a live game also.

.... anyway, just wanted to throw out that idea again.

I think Live Ponds are a good idea (AS LONG AS the normal ponds keep working the way they do)

My thinking on the game:

1. Only SYSTEM live ponds – no user created live ponds (if you make only certain system ponds, the hope would be enough will sign up for those, where if you start creating a lot of them… it might dilute the players.)

2. Live Ponds – System starts a new one EVERY HOUR, on the top of the hour. So 24 ponds a day. Starting at 1:00am, 2:00am, 3:00am, ….

3. Live Dark ponds – System starts a new one EVERY HOUR, on the ½ Hour. So 24 dark live ponds a day. Starting at 12:30am, 1:30am, 2:30am…..

NOTE: By starting it on the top of each hour (and ½ hour for dark), it will allow the users to know EXACTLY when the next pond is starting. If I know I will be here at the top of the hour, I know I can play through a live pond pretty quickly.

TIME PER MOVE.

I would suggest that the time for each move is 1 minute to place a bid. EXCEPTION – for the FIRST bid, maybe make it a 2 or 3 minute time frame to place their first bid. This is so people won’t time out if their clock on the wall is a little fast/slow. After the first bid, the limit goes down to 1 minute per bid.

IF everyone who is still in has placed their bid before the 1 minute time frame, then PROCESS the round and go to next round. (no point in waiting.)

NUMBER OF PLAYERS:

I would say as long as 5 players join the live pond, then start it. It won’t be as fun as bigger ponds, but still something.

STATISTICS:

1. Keep stats SEPARATE from normal ponds.

2. Keep 3 different stats for live ponds. (Live ponds under 10 players), (Live ponds 10-19 players), and (Live pond 20+ players) So a Live Pond rating would look like:

Live Pond 1768/1819/2012

(with the 1768 as the under 10, 1819 is 10-10, and 2012 for 20+ players)

Why different stats for number of players – Because the game is played very differently depending on the number of players. With less players, you need to be aggressive and take chances… with more players, it is more of trying to wait out some of the other aggressive players & know when to make your move with your own aggressive play.

OTHER RULES:

Everything else, including time outs should work just like the do in ponds currently.

Pedro Martínez: Agree, bringing pawns in would change everything. But that's contrary to the policy of limiting pawns. After all, the site needs to show a profit. I and others had proposed long ago to allow pawns to participate in one pond at a time.

Another possibility is to reduce the holy number of 16, make it a variable. Maybe the 20000 and 500 too, while we're at it. We've always been following the rules defined by, eh, I forgot his name, but...

grenv: I seem to remember Fencer agreeing to pawns in Ponds some time ago... there were some words of caution about how it might change the game strategy and, therefore, caution would have to be taken while the two systems coexisted or if the current ponds suddenly allowed players with an expired membership to carry on playing.
Maybe Fencer's considering it for BK3.0?

Back to feature requests - I tried to search the board for posts using the words "Pawns" and "Ponds" (to check for sure if Fencer had really aggreed to such a thing or if I had just imagined it) but it just won't work like that. So, can we have a better seach feature in the next version? One that accepts multiple search terms...
Also, can the "Show context" link, to display messages around the chosen one (the one with parameter bscx, that you can find in messages from a player's progile page, for instance), be made available also in search results? Sometimes, displaying just the thread isn't enough...
Or just make the "link" link work like that - why would someone want to link only to a single message without seeing what context it was written on, anyway?

rabbitoid: The average pond now has enough trouble collecting 16 reluctant players from all over the planet. for a live game, they'd all need to be present at start.

That is exactly the reason why I brought it up here. My guess is that live ponds would stir the interest and it would not be too difficult to get 16 players for a game. But it's only my "guess" and I wanted to know what other people think of it. Anyhow, I like grenv's idea of allowing Pawns to play live ponds.

may fill up with contestants if you allow pawns ;)

1 minute per move for example... you could even have tournaments - for example say 160 people sign up... 10 ponds of 16, top 3 in each through to semi finals... 2 ponds of 15... top 5 through to final of 10... or something like that. Whole thing could be over in a couple of hours.

pauloaguia: I don't think so. I have stopped even trying to start one day ponds, they take longer to fill than 2 day ones.

rabbitoid: Actually I think live Ponds could attract more players. Nowadays there are many that won't play because the Pond always lasts for at least a couple of weeks and they may not control their availability to play during that period...
For instance, whenever I go on vacation, I have to stop signing up for ponds over 1 month in advance!

Live Ponds might not suffer from this syndrome... Or they may, it all depends on the time limit for each move and of how people decide to (ab)use it...

Fencer: Theoretically yes, but I don't think it would work in practice:

The average pond now has enough trouble collecting 16 reluctant players from all over the planet. for a live game, they'd all need to be present at start.

With poker, it doesn't matter much if someone drops out of the table, but in ponds you need to stay until the end. Difficult too.

rabbitoid: A live solution, similar to poker tables, should be the preferred attitude. My opinion.

pauloaguia: Didn't see that. No, that would work only if all are from the same time zone or night owls :)

rabbitoid: I was commenting on this sentence: however the creator would have the option to set as low time limits as one minute

pauloaguia: But what was suggested is that the pond round is ended as soon as everyone has placed the bet, or until the regular time (whatever it is) elapses. so no one-minute timeouts. I like it too.

Pedro Martínez: as long as the automatic scripts that determine timeouts keep being executed only every few minutes, having a time setting of 1 minute is probably not viable...

Other than that, I like the idea. Though timeouts will be much more easy to spot... and so may rise the number of complaints against people "dragging" the pond by moving at the very last minute just like we have now in tournaments...

Pedro Martínez: I like it too. Of course there are going to be those who are confused, (LOL) and don't understand the implications of the difference.

I wonder what a good name for these ponds would be? People could post suggestions for that too.

alexlee: I should also mention that this idea is not to be interpreted as an effort to change the ponds as we know them. There would be two types of ponds available: the regular ones and these new "live" ponds.

Pedro Martínez:
That sounds like a great idea, so it would be like a "live" pond and you stay and play or go for a swim lol

There has been a idea of starting the next round in ponds immediately after all players submit their bids. In this way, it would be possible to finish a pond within hours or even minutes. Of course, the maximum time per move would still apply, however the creator would have the option to set as low time limits as one minute. I have already informed Fencer about this idea, but I would like to know how popular such ponds would be. So if anyone would post their comments, it would be mostly appreciated.

I was wondering if it would be possible to limit people with high provisional ratings from being ranked high in tourneys until they have an established Rating. In a tourney we are about to start there is a player ranked #1 (1 game played ever in that game type) and he leaped frogged over six 2000+ rated players. This seems very odd! Even though that player may be an excellent player i think that they should only get this high rating through an established rating!

grenv: There is no need for your final comment. Keep stuff like that off this board.

rod03801: Number of games is a better way to do it for many games, such as chess... since it guarantees equal number of games of each color for each player, hence it is fairer. Still, it should end as soon as someone gets more than half (so 5.5 points in a 10 game match should end it).
Also, it allows a drawn match - which is good.. ***Not very nice comment removed by MM***

Of course, the other thing to think about Brainking, is you also have the # points match option. In this option, draws in individual games can count towards the score. (1/2 points). In a #wins match, draws don't count for anything. The game didn't even happen. I found this out when an opponent and I were trying out a game, didn't want to continue and figured we would offer draws to end it early. Wasn't working! lol.

talen314: But that can be accomplished by declaring the match a # wins match. The point is, it doesn't work that way here, so if you don't want to run into that, don't use a # games match. If your intention is to have a "5 game match", and work the way you want it to work, just create a "3 wins match". Then, it would be a max a 5 games, but would end at the proper time.

rod03801:
The type of match is very much like high level professional matches when a championship is set for a maximum number of games but such matches are ended if a player has enough points to win.
Must win matches do cater to more aggressive players since draws have no impact. It is good to have the different types of matches.
Some choose the number of games matches because it is easy to know how many games you will have to play. I have had several wins matches in checkers where it took several games to get one win.

grenv: When created, if it is categorized as a 3 win match, then yes, it ends when someone gets 3 wins. However, when it is categorized as a # game match, it is handled literally, and it is a # game match. This of course brings on Draws, and and games that are not "necessary" for declaring a winner. I've never understood having the "# game matches". . Some people must like it that way. The "# win matches" make much more sense to me. I think sometimes people don't think about the difference when they make them.

grenv:
No, I have a 6-game match where I have won 4 games and it still is continuing.
Extinction Chess (Hackingnop vs. talen314)

talen314: Really? The match should just end if there is no chance of one player winning. For example if there is a 5 game match, it should end as soon as someone wins 3 games... is that not the case? Can you give an example of a match that continues past the point where we know the outcome?

There are times when a player has several games left to complete a match but has no chance of winning. Since rating points are only given for the completed match and not for the individual games there is often no point (rating-wise) in playing out the match. A possible solution would be to have an option to resign the match which would end the match without playing out games that have no impact on the outcome. (It is true that a player could resign each remaining game individually but this seems to be a tidier way to handle it.)

joshi tm: yes, it tournament and team games it would be nice to have a rating based on the average rating of all games in the tournament

El Cid: Yes, but say you win against the player, what then? does he stay dead? or bounce right back with a new minimum amount? if so, this is the same as to have an opponent with infinite resources.

rabbitoid: My idea was that that player would play with the minimum amount of chips a table demands. Besides, technicaly I also have unlimited amount of chips, since when below 1000, I can "magically" add 500 once a day

El Cid: You have a limited amount of chips. You want to play against an autoplayer, which, I suppose, has an infinite amount of them?
My advice: never approach the state of Nevada.

Is it possible to create a "phantom" poker player, that would appear when there are no real players on any of the tables. This way we could play whenever we want (specially if we wanted to try and get achievements in the limited tables).
That player would disappear once another player joins the table, or we leave it.
Of course this would need a little AI programming, but as I asked in the beggining "Is it possible?"

MidnightMcMedic: that would work. I need all the help I can get :)

Artful Dodger: Or maybe a little popup confirmation window.

I love the notepad feature here and use it a lot. Tonight I was moving a few things and accidently deleted a couple of things I wanted to save. grrrr

Here's my request: Could the delete button be moved more to the right? As it is, it seems natural to set the drop down to the file area you want and then click the button to the right. But that's the delete!

Moving the delete button would help. Maybe I'm the only one that does this. Twice! ;)

DeaD man WalkiN: Also, what annoys me is if some games start within a Tournament the check boxes vanish, and you have to go into each one seperately to sign up.....a pain as well

I was just wanting to know if there is a way to add something to Tournaments, we have a box that lets U "Select all on this page", is there any way to put another box letting U remove from all on this page?

Y I ask if this can be done is today I clicked on Select all on this page, and it took me over an hour to remove myself from all of them.

Thxs for Ur time and any help that can be done.
:o)

grenv: Same here

I notice performance is slow (about 30 second page refresh on Backgammon). Am i the only one? It's been like this all day and no other site doing this, eliminating my connection as the culprit.

Fencer: Yes. In fact, that's how I would handle vacation days in all situations. If a person runs out of time in a game, and still has vacation days left, add 24 hours to the clock of all games the person has running, including games where it's his opponents turn. This may cause a person to have more than time on the clock than the maximum, but that's ok; resetting to the max (if necessary) will happen as soon as the player moves.

Let me try to given an example. First note that "non"-Fisher Clock games are actually Fisher Clock games. If you have a game with 5 days/move, it's just a 5/5/5 Fisher Clock game. Say I play three games A, BC, and D B. A, B and C are regular Fisher Clock game: 10/1.12/10. D is 5 day/move game, 5/5/5. I'm on vacation, I run out of time in game A. It's not my move in games B and C. Assume I have 48 hours left on my clock in game B, and 240 (max) in game C. I have 120 hours in game D (5 days). If I have vacation time left, my clock is set to 24 hours in game A, 72 in game B, 264 hours in game C and 144 hours in game D. After 2 hours, my opponent moves in game B. 24 hours later, I time out again. Clocks for games A, B, C and D are reset to 24, 74, 286 and 168 hours. 12 hours later, I come back from vacation. I have 12 hours to move in game A, and 62 in game B. If my opponents move in C and D, I will have 286 and 168 hours, more than the max, but once I move the clocks are set to 240 and 120 (their max).

Note that I assumed weekend don't exist. (Weekends are just periods clocks don't run).

”Warning: This is a turn-based game site. The game you are about to start may take days, weeks, or even months to complete, depending on the time control used in the particular game. If you start a game, your opponent may not respond right away, in fact they may sometimes take several days to respond. You should not start a game unless you’re aware of this and prepared to finish the game.”

I suggest something like this should pop up the first time a new member tries to start a game from the waiting list. It happens too often that somebody creates an account, surfs around the site happily for a few minutes, finds the list of waiting games, starts a few games, then sits around for a few more minutes wondering why nothing happens, logs off, never comes back…

Of course, when I create new waiting games, I could just limit them to rated or paying players and avoid playing new members at all. I actually do that some of the time. But if everybody did that, how would new members ever get to play? If these ‘ghost players’ were scared away with a warning, I expect that more old members would be willing to play new members, and everybody would benefit :-)