A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Friday 2nd November 2007, 6:00 - 7:00 GMT+01:00 because of configuring important backup services. Thank you for understanding.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Saturday 20th October 2007, 9:00 - 13:00 GMT+01:00 because we will be moving our servers to a new location. When it is done, BrainKing will automatically suspended the game time for 24 hours, in order to avoid timeouts in games with low time control (1 hour and similar). Thank you for understanding.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Thursday 12th July 2007, 18:00 p.m. GMT+01:00 due to the database server upgrade. The action should not exceed 2 hours. When it is done, BrainKing will automatically suspended the game time for 24 hours, in order to avoid timeouts in games with low time control (1 hour and similar). Thank you for understanding.
The February Action for the first ten subscribers was a nice success but its disadvantage is obvious - the users from different time zones didn't have the same chance to take advantage of it. That's why the current action introduces the system of color codes which are activated randomly and nobody can foretell the time and type of the next bonus activation.
Please read the Bonus List page for more information. When you see a small flashing light bulb on the Main Page, you know a bonus is active and can be used. But don't hesitate for a long time - some bonuses (especially the one which adds 100% to the subscribed period) can be active only for several minutes.
The bonuses can be used only if a purchased membership is for 1 year or longer period and it is not a Brains payment.
For this month, we are experimenting with Action Points again and the winners of this contest will be awarded by a free membership as usual. In order to make the system a little different, there is one new rule: the first two points of the list of options (move points and win points) are valid only for one game type. The game is selected randomly by the server and is automatically changed every 12 hours. Please read all rules here.
1. place: 1 year Brain Rook membership
2. place: 6 months Brain Rook membership
3. place: 3 months Brain Rook membership
?. place (randomly selected from the 4. - 50. positions): 9 months Brain Rook membership
If you want to participate, please make sure (on your Settings page) that you are eligible to receive the Action Points.
Well, we are going to give something for free in February because we think it is a good idea:
The first ten users who purchase at least two years of any kind of a paid membership (or renews the current one by at least two years) will receive one year of the same level for free.
The second ten users who purchase at least two years of any kind of a paid membership (or renews the current one by at least two years) will receive six months of the same level for free.
And everybody (including those who take advantage of the mentioned offers) who purchases at least a year of any kind of a paid membership (or renews the current one by at least another year) will receive a full retail version of ArchMage, a new game by 300AD.com. The game would be available in both PC and Mac versions.
Just a year ago we started the system of regular monthly actions which motivate people to upgrade to a higher membership level because they always get something more as a free bonus. This year is not an exception and I would like to begin with a new product promotion of one of my friends.
Everybody who purchases at least a year of any kind of a paid membership (or renews the current one by at least another year) will receive a full retail version of Phantasia 2, a new game by 300AD.com, which is worth 20 USD. The game is available in both PC and Mac versions.
Christmas Special! Like every year, we launch our Christmas action:
1) Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends their current membership) before the end of this year (2006), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.
2) The last chance to purchase a Black Rook (which never expires) and get the second one for free! It means that you pay for your own Black Rook membership and then you can choose another player who gets the same membership as well. IMPORTANT! This is the last offer of this kind. After 31st December 2006, there will be no more special actions concerning Black Rooks.
Võib-olla olete märganud, et lippude ala, mis peegeldab kõiki BrainKing'i toetuskeeli, on muutnud oma kuju: kolmes reas 15 kujutise asemel on kena ruut 4x4 lipust, millega tõlgete koguarv on suurenenud kuueteistkümneni. Uueks on nendest eesti keel. Meie tänu tõlkijate meeskonnale, kelle leiate siit.
BrainKing's November Action has been launched and it is not about Action Points:
1) In order to make the set of chess pieces completed, Brain Bishop is the new level of membership and it has been just released. Its capabilities are equivalent to Brain Knight but it can be purchased as a monthly subscription for 2 EUR. It is a good option who want to try a paid membership for a minimal price.
2) Since we like to introduce new features with something special, the new membership level is not an exception. Everybody who purchases the Brain Bishop membership during November 2006, will get 1 extra month for free as a bonus.
3) Other paying members can take advantage of the action as well. Everybody with Brain Knight or higher level, who purchases a Brain Bishop membership for someone else (during this month), will receive 1 extra month to his own membership level for free. It means that, for example, if you are a Brain Rook, you can get another year of this membership for only 24 Euro (instead of 30) by purchasing a Brain Bishop level for twelve users. If you are not sure how to buy a membership for someone else, please read the detailed instructions on BrainKing.info blog.
The last quarter of this year has just started and BrainKing announces its October Action:
1) Action Points - this popular (and cursed) contest continues, but the prizes are a little modified:
?. place: 2 years Brain Rook membership
The rest of 1. - 10. places: secret prize
What does it mean? This time the first prize will be given to one of the first 10 positions. It is already set which one but it will be revealed when the contest is finished. And the other prizes for the first 10 positions are not known. They might be better, they might be worse.
2) Write interesting articles and get a free membership! - after the last month's great success of this new opportunity to share interesting thoughts and experiences, we have decided to extend the option of Brains awards for original articles. If you are not familiar with it yet, please read all information and rules here.
3) A special prize - is waiting for the clicking maniac who breaks the limit of 10,000 moves a day.
The summer holidays are over (for us who live in the Northern Hemisphere) and BrainKing announces a new monthly action for our users:
1) Action Points improvements - the secret points algorhithm has been modified, in order to become more convenient to all users from all countries. Starting today, you can find them on many more pages than before, even on the blog site BrainKing.info, and their location can be slightly changed every day. Moreover, the earned points won't show up in your stats immediately - the process is delayed due to a new method of their calculation. Please read the Action Points page for details.
1. place: 2 years Brain Rook membership
2. - 3. place: 1 year Brain Rook membership
4. - 5. place: 6 months Brain Rook membership
6. - 10. place: 150 Brains
50 Brains for all users from the top 50 places
One important point - who won a membership at the August action points contest, cannot win it again in September.
2) Write interesting articles and get a free membership! - September is the Month of Articles which I want to collect from you and publish on a brand new site, to be launched later this month. Please read all information and rules here. They are only in English at the moment, but I want to add all possible translations as soon as possible.
4) Free Game Bonus Bonus - when this month is over, we will ballot one user who used the previous 3) point and he will receive one more free game: Jets'n'Guns or Undercroft. The game bonus is the result of our cooperation with 300AD.com and Rake in Grass.
August Action! This is the biggest monthly action so far and it contains four points:
1) More Action Points - we have increased the number of points for new users/members links and added secret points. There is also a new rule - the points can be given only to users who didn't disable the banner ads appearance (in order to test improved features). Read the Action Points page for details.
1. place: 2 years Brain Rook membership
2. - 3. place: 1 year Brain Rook membership
4. - 5. place: 6 months Brain Rook membership
6. - 10. place: 150 Brains
100 Brains for 10 randomly selected users from the top 50 places
One important point - who won a membership at the July action points contest, cannot win it again in August.
2) Black Rook Special - due to a good success of the May Action, it is here again with a small improvement. Everybody who purchases the Black Rook membership (which never expires), can either choose another user who will receive the same membership for free, or ask us for a new BrainKing feature (except auto-pass) which would be implemented with the highest priority. Of course, such a feature request must be reasonable and possible to do.
4) Free Game Bonus Bonus - when this month is over, we will ballot one user who used the previous 2) or 3) point and he will receive one more free game: Styrateg, Jets'n'Guns or Undercroft. The game bonus is the result of our cooperation with 300AD.com and Rake in Grass.
1) Good news! Thanks to Eriisa we could reactivate the PayPal option, so there are no more problems to use PayPal for any payments on BrainKing.
2) July Action! Let us try something different this month. In order to test what our site is capable of (and to give our users another chance to compete), July is the Month of Action Points. If this test period produces good results, the system of points can continue in the following months as well. And let us start with some attractive prizes:
1. place: 3 years Brain Rook membership
2. - 3. place: 2 years Brain Rook membership
4. - 5. place: 1 year Brain Rook membership
6. - 10. place: 200 Brains
Please read the rules and other information here. As you can see, the system works separately for paying members and pawns, which means there will be 20 prizes to award. It is also possible to give the prize to another user if you win and do not want to use it. And, of course, suggestions to improve this system are welcome.
IMPORTANT NEWS: Due to continuous problems with PayPal, this payment method will be cancelled on BrainKing as of 20th June 2006 (it will be the last day to accept PayPal payments here). If you plan to use PayPal to pay for a membership, please do it as soon as possible. All other ways of payment (wire transfer, MoneyBookers, American Express, money order) remain unchanged and a brand new one might appear soon.
June Action Reminder! This month is dedicated to a 2+1 action. Everybody who purchases a new two years membership or extends the current one by two years, can choose another user who will be given one year of the same membership level for free.
June Action! This month is dedicated to a 2+1 action. Everybody who purchases a new two years membership or extends the current one by two years, can choose another user who will be given one year of the same membership level for free. I have also added a new game (two weeks ago ) of Ambiguous Chess which was invented by nabla.
Thanks to Groucho's idea, who has already taken advantage of it, the May Action is about the Black Rook membership (which never expires). Everyone, who purchases this membership (on the Paid Membership page, option "forever"), can choose another user who will receive the same membership for free. And I almost forgot to announce a new game Lines of Action, which was added a week ago.
BrainKing brings, after a long wait (yes, my wife wanted me to add it since December 2002, so it is for her now), one of the oldest and most popular games in the world - Go - and its two smaller variants, Go 9x9 and Go 13x13. Please read the BrainKing rules of this game, even if you know how to play it. And, as a small bonus, the game of Connect6 as an addition to the pieces-in-line family.
Since the current BrainKing system of colours of game pieces (white player always starts a game) is not suitable for all game types and more games will be added soon, I have decided to fix this problem globally for all game types. When the fix is applied, some games would be started by a black player (checkers, pente, shogi, go, etc.) or red player (xiangqi) and this feature would be highlighted in game invitations. It will also affect all other games (running or finished), so don't be alarmed if the colour of your pieces changes from white to black etc. It is just a visual fix, nothing else will be modified. This improvement will be active in a day or two, along with the release of the game of Go.
April Action! This month is dedicated to free advertising on BrainKing. Everybody who purchases a new membership or extends the current one, can place a text advertisement to the right column (see BrainKing April Action box) to promote own site or any other favourite pages for free. The duration of showing this advertisement depends on the length and level of the purchased membership:
2 days for 6 months Brain Rook, 5 days for 1 year Brain Rook, 12 days for 2 years Brain Rook.
1 day for 6 months Brain Knight, 3 days for 1 year Brain Knight, 7 days for 2 years Brain Knight.
Other kinds of membership will be sorted individually.</ul> The promoted sites must be legal, of course - no porn, warez, terrorist etc. pages are allowed. The click statistics page of the advertisement will be provided to the corresponding person as well. The advertisements will be "serialized" - a new one appears after the previous one expires.
March Action! BrainKing offers a very special bonus this month - everybody who purchases a new membership or extends the current one, can create a prize tournament with the same membership as the prize for a winner for free. In order to create a tournament, you must have a Brain Rook level or higher, either before the membership purchase or after.
1) BrainKing introduces Fellowship team matches - a similar system to team tournaments but based on individual challenges from one fellowship to another one. The challenges can be created by team captains on the fellowship pages.
2) A reminder of the February action! Like in every month of this year, February is no exception, speaking of something extra about the paid membership - everybody who purchases a new membership or extends the current one, will have a 50% chance to receive a 50% bonus for free. For example, one year membership can be changed to one and half year (6 free months), a two year membership payment makes a good chance to get the whole year for free, etc. The probability of the success will be determined at the moment of processing the payment by an absolutely independent and fair algorithm and no user will be privileged.
3) Last chance to get a membership for the current price! According to the changing exchange rate of foreign currencies and growing expenses it is necessary to adjust the membership prices accordingly. As of 1st March 2006 the prices will be increased by 2 Euro - Brain Knight would be for 20 (1 year) and 12 (6 months) Euro, Brain Rook for 30 (1 year) and 18 (6 months) Euro. Considering this and the mentioned February action, it might be a good idea to make all planned payments as soon as possible :-)
BrainKing would like to pay its respects to a much loved and valued member of the site who sadly passed away yesterday (February 14th 2006). Bumble was a shining light here and he will be missed by many. Our deepest condolences go to his family.
Thank you everyone for all the messages and support. Please hold any questions about bumble at this time. It is a difficult time. Thank you for your consideration.
BrainKing brings the following news and announcements:
1) Improved tournament system - besides the current system changes and several bugfixes, the support of single elimination and prize with an entry fee tournament types has been added (the first tournament). Moreover, since today it is possible to create internal fellowship ponds and add new game types to the existing Stairs.
2) February action! Like in every month of this year, February is no exception, speaking of something extra about the paid membership - everybody who purchases a new membership or extends the current one, will have a 50% chance to receive a 50% bonus for free. For example, one year membership can be changed to one and half year (6 free months), a two year membership payment makes a good chance to get the whole year for free, etc. The probability of the success will be determined at the moment of processing the payment by an absolutely independent and fair algorithm and no user will be privileged.
3) According to the changing exchange rate of foreign currencies and growing expenses it is necessary to adjust the membership prices accordingly. As of 1st March 2006 the prices will be increased by 2 Euro - Brain Knight would be for 20 (1 year) and 12 (6 months) Euro, Brain Rook for 30 (1 year) and 18 (6 months) Euro. Considering this and the mentioned February action, it might be a good idea to make all planned payments as soon as possible :-)
1) BrainKing is proud to announce its full localization to Chinese, as a result of a great work of redsales and catherineqq. We hope this significant milestone will make our site more user friendly to all board game enthusiasts from the Eastern hemisphere.
2) December is over, let us start another action called January Brains! Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends the current one) and makes it to the end of January 2006, will automatically receive 200 free Brains to be used in the new tournament system, which is planned to be released in February. All details will be posted on the Brains page in advance.
1) The game time will be restarted later today, about 18:00 p.m. GMT+01:00 (10 and half hours after posting this message). Please make sure none of your started games has a negative time left and it is your turn to move.
2) December is over, let us start another action called January Brains! Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends the current one) and makes it to the end of January 2006, will automatically receive 200 free Brains to be used in the new tournament system, which is planned to be released in February. All details will be posted on the Brains page in advance.
Due to a problem with one of our disks, BrainKing was not accessible for about 30 hours. Everything seems to be fixed now, however the game time will remain suspended for at least 24 hours, just to be sure no other problems could occur.
The archive database operations have been successfully finished and BrainKing is working with no problems. The suspended time for games will be started again within a day or two.
1) A planned downtime of BrainKing is scheduled to the 1st January 2006, due to moving data to archive databases. The whole action should not exceed 1 hour. The game time will be turned off, just for a case of unexpected events.
2) There are still several days left for everyone who didn't take advantage of the Christmas Special! Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends the current one) and makes it to the end of this year (2005), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.
1) The announced downtime is over and everything works with no problems. The suspended time for games will be started again tomorrow, 11th December 2005, about 9:00 a.m. GMT+01:00.
2) I have added a froglet variant, which is called Sphere Froglet.
And a reminder:
Christmas Special! Like every year, we launch our Christmas action. Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends their current membership) before the end of this year (2005), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Saturday 10th December 2005, 11:00 a.m. GMT+01:00 due to the hardware upgrade. The action should not exceed 2 hours. When it is done, the game time will be temporarily suspended in order to avoid timeouts in games with low time control (1 hour and similar).
Christmas Special! Like every year, we launch our Christmas action. Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends their current membership) before the end of this year (2005), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.
We are very glad to release the 13th localization of our site. BrainKing is fully translated to Spanish and our thanks go to PhatPlaya, Jofaserimon, Marfitalu, Matarilevich and their assistant diogenes :-)
The time has come to announce and add the 12th language of the full BrainKing localization. Thanks to a great work of ergart and Crasto with a help of Yuri, we are glad to release BrainKing in Russian.
The database system has been successfully upgraded. In order to avoid timeouts due to the downtime, the game time is temporarily suspended. It will be restarted tomorrow.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Tuesday 8th November 2005, 19:00 p.m. GMT+01:00 due to the database system upgrade. The action should not exceed 2 hours. When it is done, the game time will be temporarily suspended in order to avoid timeouts in games with low time control (1 hour and similar).
BrainKing releases Stairs - another system which sorts players by their skills, as an alternative to tournaments and BKR charts. Please find the rules here.
As some of you already noticed, I have added a doubling cube option to all backgammon games. If you are not familiar with the doubling cube, please read the updated Backgammon rules for details.
As I promised to do it in September, Capablanca Random Chess has been released as a replacement of the removed Gothic Chess. And since I don't like to release only one game, I've also added Los Alamos Chess, in order to align the number of Chess variants to the nice number 25.
Since a small bug in the rating system and calculation has been found, the BKR history will be generated again. Due to this, a scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Tuesday 27th September 2005, 7:00 a.m. GMT+01:00. The action should not exceed 1 hour. After it is done, the BKRs would be slightly different (smaller) but definitely not incorrect.
I have created and released a shopping cart system for all payments on BrainKing (paid membership, t-shirts etc.). It makes the transactions much easier, allows to track the payments and their status, and should eliminate all previous problems.
Please visit the Paid Membership and Brains pages for details.
1) After some experiments and successful transactions from several countries (United States, Germany, Slovakia, South Africa) I am glad to announce a new way of payments on BrainKing which can be used especially by people who don't have a credit card or a PayPal account. Please read the Section 4 - Wire Transfer (International) for details.
2) Due to permanent problems with the creator of Gothic Chess, I have decided to do the following actions:
a) After 31st August 2005, no new games/tournaments of this type can be created. The games started prior to this date will remain without any changes.
b) As of 1st January 2006, the game of Gothic Chess will be removed from the site completely and replaced by Capablanca Random Chess which is very similar to the Gothic one but comes without any licences or patents, thus no possible problems in the future. It is very likely that Capablanca Random Chess will appear here during September 2005.
I would like to point out that it is an exceptional situation which can never happen with any other game on BrainKing. However, the integrity and future of our site is always our highest priority, even for a cost of losing several players due to one missing game.
As you might already noticed, there are several new improvements of the rating and chart system:
1) The limit of maximum value of BKR (formerly 2700) has been inactivated. There is no point to keep it and have strong players stuck on that level.
2) In order to keep the BKR charts more accurate, all players who don't actively play the particular game anymore are removed from the charts. The inactivity period is measured by the date and time of the last finished rated game of the corresponding type and it was set to 1 month for non-paying members and 6 months for paying members. This feature simply avoids inactive players with high BKR to occupy the tops of the charts forever.
BrainKing brings five new games today - Legan Chess, Knight Relay Chess, PahTum, Hasami Shogi and Grand Chess.
A short downtime (about 1-2 hours) is planned for Wednesday 24th August 2005, 7:00 a.m. GMT+01:00 due to improving the rules of BKR calculation (removing the limit of 2700 points, removing inactive users from BKR charts, etc.) and regenerating the BKR histories.
BrainKing introduces two new games which are already very popular around the world - Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) and Shogi (Japanese Chess). Since these games are quite new on our site and some bugs can easily appear, I recommend to test them with a higher number of days per move, so I would be able to fix possible bugs in time :-)
The games are presented with westernized pieces (which should be easier to learn for players who are not familiar with Chinese and Japanese symbols) at the moment. I will add the original Chinese and Japanese ones later, along with customizable sizes of the pieces and boards.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Wednesday 10th August 2005, 9:00 a.m. GMT+01:00 due to an installation of improved backup system. The action should not exceed 1 hour.
The game time will be running again tomorrow, Friday 29th July 2005, 18:00 GMT+01:00. Please make sure no games of yours (with your turn to move) show a negative time left (if so, I recommend to make a move). Tournaments and ponds should be working today.
Due to recent changes on the application server, all timeouts and scheduled tasks (tournaments, ponds) have been stopped. This test period should be over tomorrow. Thanks for understanding.
A scheduled downtime of BrainKing is planned on Friday 2nd November 2007, 6:00 - 7:00 GMT+01:00 because of configuring important backup services. Thank you for understanding.
) which would be implemented with the highest priority. Of course, such a feature request must be reasonable and possible to do. 
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