Fencer:  Awesome!  It works now!

i just changed my weekend days to Mon Tues
and all of a sudden about 50 of my games are at - 1 day 23 hrs

i should add that isnt really a problem has i can easy move on them
im just wondering why it happened

TheCrazyPuppy: And what's the problem with that?

Pedro Martínez: there isnt really a problem
just never seen it happen before
plus today and tomorrow im using vacation days so its puzzling to say the least

TheCrazyPuppy: The purpose of the system is to avoid cheating with vacation days, not to make absolutely correct calculations in all cases, especially when someone starts more than 3000 games, so it would be too CPU-consuming to recalculate time left values for all such games. Anyway, if you have a vacation day today, the timeout checker will detect it and add 24 hours to all affected games.

Fencer: Some achievement ideas
have 1000, 5000, etc started games and ALL in state of "Opponent's turn"
have 1000 etc games, all in state of "your move", under 1 day timeout, and less than 24 hours later move in all.

Fencer: no its fine i just said i had never seen it do that before so wasnt sure what was going on

In the waiting room, there is a red bullet between the color and time in some games but not others. What does the red bullet indicate?
Jared

Dark Prince: http://brainking.com/en/OldFAQ?ht=24

I'm probably not the first to notice this, but when you put a game on the waiting list with random start position (such as Fischer Random Chess or Knight Fight) the position is shown in the waiting game. Isn't this a clear advantage for the player who takes the challenge? Shouldn't the position be randomized after the challenge has been taken?

pedestrian: The player that started the game can also check the board and withdraw the invitation... it's not such a big advantage for the other player...

pauloaguia: Yes, I thought about that after I posted. Actually you could post several games and delete them until you get one you like, or you could spend the waiting time analyzing the position in depth.

I guess my main point is that it's not equal conditions for the players, and I suppose it wouldn't be that difficult to repair?

pedestrian: And while we're at it: the system permits to delete without BKR penalty until move 4. With obvious consequences.

Pedro Martínez:
Thanks Pedro
Jared

Dark Prince: Actually, you learn all about the red bullet in the new Star Trek movie :)

rabbitoid:That would be red matter :-)

Whatever

I am trying to use the feature to down load a zip file from a players games of dice chess.... but my windows says it doesnt recognize it and cannot open it?

Anyone know what I am talking about?

(17. May 2009, 12:57:57 is the last term before timeout for this move)


To clarify.... This will include any weekend days and set vacation days? Then the only way this will change is if auto vacation day is used or if after this is posted a vacation day is set?

Can this also change if after it is posted weekend days are changed?

Czuch: Yes and yes. :)

Czuch: You have to have a program allowing you to open pgn files.

Pedro Martínez: Thanks! I guess my lack of correct punctuation didnt confuse you or my question....

Pedro Martínez: er.... okay....

Pedro Martínez: Well, not really :) PGN files are just plain text files and can be opened with any text editor, like Notepad on Windows.

Czuch: You have to have a program which is able to open zip files, like Winrar for Windows.

Even if you already have a zip program on your computer, there may be a problem with the download. From time to time I'm not able to download the zip files completely, which also produces an error message that the file can't be opened. You may try to create the zip file again or you may ask Fencer...

kleineme: Right, but I assumed that Czuch had wanted to download the files in order to replay the game in some pgn viewer. My bad, I shouldn't have assumed anything. :)

kleineme: I did now download winrar, and now I get an error message that the file is either unknown or damaged?

Czuch: First you may try to download the file again. Please compare the file sizes, the one which is shown during the download, and the one of the file on your computer after the download has finished. If the size of the downloaded file is less than the predicted size, then the file wasn't downloaded completely and thus can't be opened. If this happens more than once you may try to create the zip file again. If this doesn't help as well then I don't know either... Probably Fencer could check whether the zip file on the server is OK?

rabbitoid:Your lack of precision is not logical ;-)

Czuch: I faced this problem too. It just getting corrupted during the download since the connection speed is not good i guess for some reason.
My son solved my problems when he told me to use a download manager to download the file. He installed on my computer the program flashget and if you try to download with it then you will have your file with no problem.

Then you need winzip or winrar to extract the games of the file into PGN format.
Unfortunately for example for Loop Chess the games are 20000 so when you extract them in a folder Windows are very slow to handle and anyway it's just too tough to do anything with them having to open each one separately each time.

So my son saved me again by showing me a way to join all these PGNs with single games, into one big PGN with all the games.
Just create a BAT file and write:
for %%f IN (*.PGN) DO type %%f>>collect.out
ren collect.out FINAL.pgn

Don't ask me what are all these, i don't know. But it does the work.
Then inside the folder with all the games run the bat file and at the end you will have a PGN named final.pgn with all the games. Now you can delete of course all the 20000 single PGNs.

And then you can handle this PGN with ease.

Constellation36: WOW!!! Thanks so much.... when I have more time I will give it all a try!!

can somebody tell me how to find my photo album?

it doesnt appear to be on my profile....I have asked another member and they can;t see it either.....any help please?

Bernice: You don't have any photo album. :)

Pedro Martínez: Actually she does have one, but it looks like it is "private" so you can't see it

Bernice - go to the main Photo albums page and see if it shows near the top:

http://brainking.com/en/PhotoAlbum

yes I can see it there.......but why cant I see it on my profile?

alanback: My ears belong to another species... What's up, doc?

I have created a tournament, and wish to give a small prize in Brains to the winner.  However, the tournament's current status description reads "The prize for this tournament has not been provided yet.  It won't be started."

Must I take some action to provide the prize, or will this be done manually by the owner of the site?

MrWCF: send Fencer the tournament ID and he will add the prize to it

MrWCF: Yes, the prize must be provided first. The reason is that we had had problems with prize tournaments in the past because of users who disappeared from BrainKing shortly after the tournament start and when it was finished, there was nobody to provide the prize. This is the proper action to do:

1) Create a prize tournament and describe the prize in the tournament name or description.

2) Use the "Paid Membership" page to pay for the prize. Don't forget to check the "Select if you want us to process it manually" option before placing the order.

3) When the payment is received, I will click the "prize provided" button.

I know that this system is not too straightforward but I want to make it a little more automatic in the future.

Fencer: Perhaps I have misunderstood  how one can contribute a prize for a Prize Tournament.  My profile shows five Brains. (I would have more to offer, but the 40 Brains I've won in another tournament will not be awarded to me until everyone finishes playing their games, years from now.)  Anyway, can I not use those five Brains as a prize in a tournament that I've created?  Or must I purchase something in order to offer a prize?

MrWCF: Of course, if you want to give Brains as the prize, just send me the tournament ID (or URL) and I'll do the rest.

This may be a dumb question on my part but if you reject a public friend invite, they are locked out of further requests.  If a person rejects someone but then later decides to accept, can the lock out be changed or does it need an administrator?

Artful Dodger: Good question. I am not sure. Should I have a look at the source code?

Fencer:   sure  ;)

Fencer i have used Pay Pal since coming back to this site.I have sent you alot of payment's in the last 6 month's,, not hearing one word from you about any kind of problem. They have treated me as a valued member of there service.There payment's to you clear within 6 to 8 business day's acording to my bank statement's.So let's hear what your problem is Posted on this board

Although I am a life time member, I to use Paypal. Have for a long time, and have never had problems. I even recently received money from someone through them and it was plain and simple. Perhaps it is an international thing??? I live in the USA.. The man who sent me money for membership for our Pin Traders Club is from Australia. He used them so he didn't have to mess with converting money. 

He already wrote he was going to write more tomorrow in the blog section.

I myself have not had any problems with PayPal, but I know of many who have. Here are some sites with some "horror" stories about other people's "bad" experiences. PayPal has gotten so big, and does have a lot of bad users trying to take advantage of others through PayPal. here are some sites if others want to have some good reading:

http://www.paypalsucks.com/
http://www.paypalwarning.com/
http://www.aboutpaypal.org/

Of course feel free to search "PayPal Problems" or something similar to find even more stuff. Some very interesting reading.

coan.net: If you would could you post some link's of Fencer's horror stories here so we could have a better understanding of his problem's with Pay Pal