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 ).

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: 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...

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

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...

Herlock Sholmes: Ok, but it's not a new way of playing. Strategies are exactly the same as regular chess. The most you can expect is to have some errors made because of the new board layout but even that will go away with a little bit of practice... after a while, they won't be any more common than the errors you can make on the regular board...

Herlock Sholmes: Wouldn't the fact of the two kings being next to each other kind of make it an invalid starting position?

gogul: For mobiles you have Opera Mini, which is even better. Though I can't really use BK on my mobile for too long - try fitting a Ludo board on such a small screen and make a move and you'll see what I mean

gogul: The new Opera beta has a feature that works just like that - "heavy" things, like flash and large images are not downloaded (or at least converted to a "lighter" version) to save on bandwidth. If you want to, you can still see the flash by clicking in it.
If you use this browser (or are interested in it) then you can upgrade to this new version...

ChessVariant: If 3 exists, then why not abolsih 2 altogether? Why choose a piece if it can change in that same move by chance? Why not just leave it to chance in the first place?
Also, if pawns can't be on the 8th row, why not simply state that a piece in the 8th row cannot be converted into a pawn? Why complicate everything talking about promotions if the piece simply can't remain in that state?

Anyway, this variant seems awfly confusing to me. It's even worse than Behemoth or Dice Chess, when it comes to leaving things to chance... You can hardly plan anything because you never know what your pieces will turn into.
I may change my mind after playing it a few times but, for now, I hope it gets tested by a few players before getting implemented here...

jessica: Even so, white will start

When trying to look at a player's profile for more information about the way he plays Ponds, I could only find the list of Ponds he participated in.
As it is now, it's a simple list of ponds/torunaments that I need to click into each one to get any kind of usefull information at all... the only information I can get from that is if the player has entered a lot of ponds / tournaments or not...

I'd like to make a few suggestions about this matter:
* maybe split ponds and tournaments into different tabs?
* for each Pond add the total number of players, days per round and the round (s)he fell in (if applicable)
* for each tournament add the tournament type (single elimination or normal), starting number of players, round that the player has reached and final position, if it can be calculated (or at least if (s)he won the tournament).

coan.net: And a few more tricks so that those ghost losses don't mess around with ones BKR...

nodnarbo: I'm guessing he meant that unless pawns get to play in ponds, paying members will have a hard time finding a 100 player pond to join, let alone a 200 player pond!

joshi tm: Speaking of which - I'm starting to think that getting 100 players to sign up for a pond should be an achievment as well
Charco para Façanha

MadMonkey: The older checkers variants don't have that feature and it would be welcome as well

How about the possibility to see the list of players that got a particular achivement?

Ceiter: If you're worried about not entering the nexxt stage of the tournament you don't need to be. whenever BrainKing automatically creates new games for you, you can go over the 50 games limit. You just won't be able to create any new games from that point on until you get below that limit again.

When we post a link to a message (or click on the Link on the top right corner of one) we go to a page that displays that message as expected.
However, I think it would be better to be forwarded to a page where all the messages around it were also displayed, like this one.

My feature request is more modest - show the "Context" link underneath it like when we do a search.
Using the thread is not always the answer because it only works when people reply to the message, sometimes the thread is broken and looking at the context just makes more sense and is the only way to get it all...

coan.net: It's also a non issue for me, but I think that's the way it works right now... I was just pointing that out as a possible reason for MM's problem...

MadMonkey: maybe one of you wrote something? That prevents autopass from playing so the other can have a chance to reply...

Or maybe you have the option to double?

joshi tm: Better post a link to the fellowship. The link you posted is language dependent, I see no results.
Aventura

But Abigaill's suggestion would make it easier to enforce the "must play all" rule and find out the global winner of the tournament.

wetware: currently tournaments don't have that, why should individual games?

Someone at http://brainking.com/pt/Board?bc=80 suggested that it would be nice to be able to bet Brains when creating a new game...
Like: I put in 20 Brains, my opponent puts in another 20 and the winner takes all...

coan.net: Disallowing changes in vacation days is not a good option in my opinion. There are always mistakes or last minutes change of plans and being able to unset vacations seems quite natural to me.
What I don't get is why is it that the system should account for vacation days that haven't even been set. I understand it comes from the old vacation system but the way it is now you can't timeout on a vacation day anyway...

coan.net: another one is playing around with weekend days and unsetting previously marked vacation days (if you set 20 vacation days and make a move on a 1 day game it will only timeout 20 days later. If you then unset the vacation days, the timeout is not changed - if the timeout date was set to only 1 day this wouldn't happen - currently if, when timing out, there is a vacation day set the timeout is already postponed 1 day)

I don't even know the game or the name of the player so I'm only guessing...

rod03801: imo you shouldn't even be able to get extra vacation days... but I'm not the decision maker around here, so no point in going any further with that...

coan.net: You get extra vacation days if you renew your membership (or buy another for someone else in case of Black Rooks).

Can a team match page please reflect the expected BKR change in case of victory, draw or loss?
Now that the Team's BKR is independent from its members BKR I'd expect this to be relativelly straightforward (that is, at least as much as it is in a regular game's page, between two individual players)

MadMonkey: Yes, that too.
And, while I'm at it, I'd like to see a better way to get in/out of severall teams at once, without having to click through each one as well.

But, since this may be harder to implement, I'd be happy with just knowing which ones I'm in/out of.

Could some sort of indication be made to let us easilly find out which teams we are NOT inscribed in any given fellowship?
I'm thinking the easiest way is probably to add some mark on the teams combo box (like an asterisk by the teams we're in or something).
This would make it much easier to manage our own teams at a glance...

Any chance the game type lists get sorted by name? Like the team selection list in the fellowship page, for instance... It's getting harder and harder to find a particular team in such a big combobox...
Surelly it won't take more than 1 hour to change it?

There is a very convenient option to enter multiple games at the same tournament at once... could we have a similar option to get out of severall games at once in a tournament? Entering 123 different pages to click the corresponding link doesn't seem very appealing right now...

We have the option to filter the unrated games from the Waiting Games list. Can there be an option to prevent people from directly inviting us to unrated games?
I usually don't like to play an unreated game (unless in special occasions, where I aggree to it to teach someone how to play, for instance). It's very disappointing to spend some time in a good game only to get to the end and see it counted for nothing.
The other day I had severall pending invitations for me to accept. Since there were a few, I accepted / rejected the ones I wanted directly from the MainPage (very convenient - I can see the time settings, the opponent's name and the game type and send a greetings message to all of them at once). But there is no indication wheater the game is rated or not (and quite frankly I didn't even remeber it).

So, can there be an option to prevent these invitations, like one can prevent invitations in particular game types? Or at least some warning about the fact that the games are unrated in that MainPage list...

AlliumCepa: Another thing about the wall page: you can see a text box to write some graffiti on someone's wall on the left side and the actual grafiti on the right side of the page. On pages with lots of comments, there's just a lot of wasted space on the left as you scroll down the page.
Why not place the text box above the part that is currently on the right?

When receiving a "public friend" request could there be an option to accept/decline right there on the message page? As it is now, I open the Friends page on a new tab, select the appropriate option, submit the change, close the tab and go back to delete the message... too many clicks for me
As an alternative the option to approve/decline a batch of them would also help a little. Right now, even if I choose the option in each of the comboboxes, I can only submit one change at a time...

I have two feature requests about checkers:
1) post the rules... preferably with a short description of the main features in each one and not based solely on references like "same rules as Internacional checkers but with a larger board". With so many similar variants being able to find the basics of the rules on a first click is a must

2) make a different border color for Czech Checkers and Corner Checkers (and possibly others). I just found myself playing CornerCheckers thinking I was playing Czech Checkers...fortunately by the time I noticed it I was winning already

Fencer: That would also help to visually understand why you can't capture a specific piece because usually you can't capture the same piece twice. If it's highlighted somehow then you immediately know why.

On a tournament page you can see the list of game types allowed in that tournament.
It seems to me (though I may be mistaken) that that list is sorted by game type and then by game id.

The problem is there are 120 games (and counting). On tournaments where the creator selects all game types it can become hard to find your favourite games to sign up for... Worse, if (s)he selects all but a few it can become hard to find out if you don't find the games you want in a list of over 100 because they aren't there or just because they're so in front of your nose that you can't see them. Here's some possible implementations that I think could help with this:

1. Sort the games by game type and then alphabetically (and not by id)
2. Add a search field to that page - type in a search and only the corresponding games are displayed
3. Create a feature like "automatically select these games when I sign up for a tournament". When coming in to a tournament page to sign up, the corresponding check boxes would be checked automatically (the user could uncheck them before signing up, or sign up for others, of course).

Snoopy: I second that... maybe using a color for the text background, to make sure the foreground contrasts with the background.

Also, is there any chance the "pairs" of the squares we can move to be highlighted as well? It makes it hard to try and find a number between almost 100 others when they're spread out randomly... I remember someone suggesting it using javascript when you over each of the possibilities... butI think it would be fine if the possible pairs were just statically highlighted using plain old HTML... at least they'd be easier to find.

Fencer:

I find message notifications that were introduced recently most usefull in many situations. But I'd like to suggest some improvements:

* Bug notifications - I don't need to be notified of my own posts in bugs. I mean, I know I posted there :)
* Board replies - I'd like a new "sub-option" when activating these notifications to activate them only for boards that are not my favourite boards. I read my favourite boards every time I see a red number indicating a new post. I need to be notified of replies to my messages on other boards, that I visit less often.
* Board replies 2 - same thing as with bugs. If I reply to my own message (sometimes I do that, to keep the message in the same thread) there's also no point in sending me a notification about my own posts.

While I'm at it, I think it would be interesting to add another option for bug notifications - the hability to subscribe to a bug. This way people could be notified about the bug's progress without having to post there. Let's suppose my opponent finds a bug in our game and posts a bug and then informs me about it. I could just subscribe to it and be automatically notified about its progress... especially since I may be an important part into clarifying some aspects of the game as well...

Thad: Right now you can make the same invitation up to 9 times at once - there's a "number of games" option just below the time settings and above the number of games in match option.

As to a game template, I think that it would be useful (and more or less easily implementable) at least when challenging someone for a rematch (when you get a message with the outcome of the game and then have the option to send a game invitation for the same person)

I would like...

1. a place where I can see a list of my fellowship's BKR at all games, and the standing position as well without having to set some setting that is related to the main page and whose side effect is activating this information in fellowships as well - I like to keep my main page clean


2. that the fellowship's information wasn't all cluttered in one page. We have so many pages with severall tabs already, why not the fellowship page too? (I find that Waiting Fellowship Games tab rather silly all alone by itself when there is so much information that should be in its own tab as well)


3. to be able to create a fellowship tournament without having to look for a link for it in the teams section. Most tournaments are created with more than one game type anyway - why keep it in the teams? Why not in the tournaments section, bellow? If I'm grabbing stats from past tournaments and want to create the next month's tournament why do I need to scroll the page to a more or less unrelated area?


4. to have checkboxes by the list of challenges from other fellowships so that I could easilly accept / reject a batch of them


5. the hability to define a fellowship as an ALL GAME fellowship, so that when new games are created, the teams are automatically created as well


6. a quick overview chart so that I'd know at a glance what fellowshi members are in what teams and I knew what teams I'm not yet registered with; or what teams need more players; or how many games a certain player has played by a specific team so I'd know not to always call the same ones over and over; or...


7. for a BigBoss to know how many members a global fellowship message was sent to or how many have that option disabled even before sending such a message. In some fellowships, many players have them disabled so the BigBoss will think he's alerting many people for something when in fact he's just talking to himself.
   

Ok, I think that's enough already (for now, at least). I know I'll never get to see them all implemented but I'd really like to see some of them (especially the ones I've already asked about in the past).

Fencer: Actually I stand corrected. Seems like I picked preciselly the wrong types of games. Attax, Backgammon, Ludo and Minishoggi are perfectly playable (though in the later case I can't see the captured pieces properly when in compact mode).
So it seems like it's not a long way to go - just some adjustments in particular games...

Fencer: since you're talking about mobile browsing, i've tried to see how the site looks like in my perfectly normal mobile phone. I'm using opera mini. I can read boards just fine. With some degree i can even play ponds. The game boards, however, simply suck. I can only view them properly on normal mode, but then i can only see a small portion of the board at a time. I've tested frog and dice games, i still need to check out chess boards. As it is now, there's still a long way to go...

AbigailII: And any rating system worth its salt should not consider a match won 6-4 to be equivalent to a match won 10-0.
In theory I agree. But in practice, I'm not so sure: when on a 10 game match, if I win the first 6 games in a row my opponents may choose to forfeit the rest of the games in the match by resigning early. If their BKR will be adversly affected by doing so, then they will prefer to take all the games through the end, trying to get to that 6-4. The outcome of the match will be the same (I win) but I'll just have to wait a lot longer to get to it.
And if Fencer ever gets to implement a ResignMatch option, that doesn't make you go through every single game left, how would this score be counted then?

Fencer: It worked. Thanks

Fencer: I'm sure that's it...
This may sound silly, but how do I do that? I can't figure out where to do it...

Here's another feature request from long ago - reorganzie the fellowship page

joshi tm: That's it. It's the same as Frog Finder but in a cooperative / competitive sort of way. You must try to find the most frogs while, at the same time, avoid revealing their exact location to your opponent so he can catch them before you do...
The bottom of the New Game page has a summary of the rules.