its always been...if it works in Prague...who cares.
fyi...its been terribly slow for me too,these past three days..till this evening,things run better in spurts.

Bwild: Goldtoken is always here if you want it, but they're having far worse connection problems lately than BK, and most of  their client base is US. And itsyourturn solved the connection problem: no discussion groups, so no complaints! now why didn't Fencer think of that simple solution? 

rabbitoid: I have no problems with connecting to Goldtoken. It's yourturn used to have discussion boards but they were not monitored like they are on this site and things got so bad he removed them. How can Fencer know that there is a problem with his site if he removed the discussion boards? Would he really like hundreds of emails complaining.

Bwild: Yes I was able to play my games without problems for a short time last night. Today so far I am getting the white pages that takes ages to clear.

The site is loading pages fast for me today...so far, so good,

From the feedback so far, it seems most people in Europe but one are doing fine, whereas most people in America/Australia are having problems. Like I said, I'm not a bandwith expert.

It's been poor for me the past several days. I'm to the point of giving up for a few days and hope it clears up by them. Sorry to the players I've timed out onm (and will time out on.)

BrainKing.com (Fencer, 2009-08-17 08:08:37)

Can't the ISP be approached like in the example above to try and get them to sort out something?

badgerboy78: Since so many people are experiencing the same problem. Then Fencer should temporary stop time-outs.

rabbitoid: I'm a member of both and more. I'm sure bk version 420 will have no discusion groups..mearly a place to drop money. sooo glad I never became a black rook.

So far today I am able to play my games without any problems with this site.

crosseyed: It didn't help matters when someone on the iyt board spoiled the end of The sixth Sense.

ketchuplover:

I think Mancala is one of the most skewed games when it comes to first move advantage - 63% - 33%. Does BK ever look at rules tweaks when there is a heavy bias like this?

Carpe Diem: Horde chess is another example of imbalance. I think the only effective solution to that is to only play 2-game matches for those games. Of course that's a problem with random game tournaments.

Roberto Silva: And let's not forget about Maharajah chess... that is probably the worst offender of all the games. If I play the black color, I am 100% guaranteed victory in 24 moves. Anyone who does not believe me, then send me an invite where I am black and I'll prove it to you!

cd power: Maharajah chess would be easy to balance : add two more white Maharajahs. For horde chess, its harder...

Raistlin: I wonder if 3 Maharajahs would be too much? As White, I would try to combine threats against f7, c7 and g7, as a capture on any of these squares with a protected Maharajah would be mate. So Black would have to either protect each of these squares twice, which looks difficult, or create an escape for the king, which looks risky.

Pente is that way too. The advantage is not significant for novice players, but expert players rarely lose as Player 1.

In games like these, I think the BKRs should be calculated as follows:

Calculate BKRs separately for games in which the player moved first (Player 1) or second (Player 2). Calculate the percentage of the player's wins that come as Player 1 and as Player 2. Multiply each BKR by the player's winning percentage **of the other position**.

For example, if player has a BKR of 2000 as Player 1 but only 1800 as Player 2 and was Player 1 in 70% of his wins (meaning he was Player 2 in only 30%of his wins) then his BKR should be 2000 * .3 + 1800 * .7 = 1860.

This system usually produces better BKRs than the curent system. And it never produces worse BKRs than the curent system, at least not in any situations that I can think of. I can think of situations where this system wouldn't give a very good result, for example, when a player plays as P2 exclusively. but the system we have in place now doesn't give a good result in these situations either.

It's my understanding that in Reversi is biased as well but that in Reversie it's actually Player 2 who the advantage.

FWIW, for the games mentioned thus far, the BK results look like this:

Carpe Diem: Add "battleboats plus" to the list.

I also want to point out that those pente statistics are deceptive. It is more like 80-95% wins for player one when top players play each other. Scroll to see the match results thus far in this match: Pente (aleph_1 vs. Brf)

likewowman2cool: Absolutely, but wouldn't that apply to most games? The better the players, the more in-depth understanding they have of the game, and the closer they'll be to optimal play, which will increase any inherent biases in the game.

Carpe Diem: Ah yes, you are correct. I guess it is just that I am not familiar with those other games so that hadn't occurred to me.

For anyone looking to play a pure skill game that is essentially 50-50 even for top players, then I suggest trying connect6.

likewowman2cool: Haha, funny you would mention Connect6 - I just edited my last post to say that using the same idea as Connect6 does for the first move might help with the Battleboats Plus problem.

Carpe Diem: I like your suggestion for battleboats plus. I would love it if they changed it so that for the very first move of the game that player one gets only 2 moves, and then for the rest of the game it is 5 (or fewer of course once ships get sunk) for both players.

after the first move the players would move twice each turn.

likewowman2cool: A simple way to take away any bias is Battleboats would be to have 'simultaneous' moves like in Logik: Even though the players take turns, the outcome is only revealed after the second player's move. And the game is drawn if they use the same number of moves to reach the goal.

pedestrian: Great idea!

Carpe Diem: You forgot one way checkers. Easy win for white. In 3 moves it get a huge advantage...

Gabriel Almeida: Didn't forget; I've never played it. ;)

another example is connect4 : player 2 has a big advantage there as well

Hrqls:
white 34313 (51.78 %)
black 31472 (47.49 %)

You sure about that?

Roberto Silva: hmm just a feeling .. i like it best to start as player 2, and i think i win more when my opponent has the first move

will have to check my games to be certain

Roberto Silva: Those stats don't tell the true story. In Regular stack4 the 2nd player has a huge advantage. In the variants, like spider 4 The player who goes first has the advantage. Such an advantage that a good player will seldom loose.

Marshmud: Concerning spider line4: true about the huge advantage, but the game is complex enough to be fun even as a second player.

Marshmud: No turn-based game is ever balanced. For every game either moving first or moving second is a better option, and master players will exploit that easily. Even chess is unbalanced in favor of white, and between grandmasters a black player can be quite happy if he gets even a draw.

However, if you check the stats for the other games mentioned (Maharajah, Horde Chess, Battleboat Plus, etc.) you will see that those games are so unbalanced that one side automatically has a huge advantage. It's not that a highly skilled player can exploit a bias in the game, but that the game is heavily loaded against one side regardless of skill or ability.

Roberto Silva: I would argue that in Espionage and its variants, its makes no difference if you are white or black.

SL-Mark: Maybe. I've only played any variant of that game once or twice I think, so can't really say anything about it.

Roberto Silva: Stats can be misleading. loop chess has a significant advantage to the player with the inititive (white). Never the less it is far from a forced win and a stronger black player can neutralise the advantage and go on to win.

Progressive chess is a chess variant in which players, rather than just making one move per turn, play progressively longer series of moves. The game starts with White making one move, then Black makes two consecutive moves, White replies with three, Black makes four and so on. Progressive chess can be combined with other variants; for example, when circe is played as a game, it is usually progressively. Progressive chess is considered particularly apt for playing correspondence chess using mail or some other slow medium, because of the relatively small number of moves in a typical game.
What about making Progressive Chess on the Brainking...

Energizer: I love progressive, and play a strong game. Would recommend adding a Fischer Random option for it, as (IMO) the standard variant's openings are deeply analyzed, and don't offer much opportunity for original analysis.

You might have noticed some connect problems that started about an hour ago. I have already notified the ISP (the issue is on their side), so I hope they will fix it soon.

Fencer: Thank you for informing us. Yes I am having difficulty playing my games this morning.

crosseyed: Since the site itself is fast and running without any problems, it seems that only some routes are affected. It usually means that there are problems with certain network nodes which is out of our reach (so we can only wait).

Fencer: The site appears to be working well with me now. Let's hope it stays that way. This morning I could not make any moves in my games.

Wow, it looks like you can't play a match that's longer than 255 games. Our match just disappeared from the main page without any warning or message or anything after game #255. Open Pente (Thad vs. JackS)

Thad: lol.
Looks like the coder saved memory and used a one-byte integer to count them. 80ies style.

Aganju: In Brainking's defense, I'd think "no one will play a match with more than 255 games" was a reasonable programming assumption... You'd need double server capacity to store the games on a 2-byte counter right?