nobleheart:
...hey, I guess your right and he is good too... he responded or shall I say answered my question before I ever posted my comment... I found this( Fencer BKR and Backgammon 27. September 2005, 00:24:39
Well, as you might know, BrainKing is and always will be mostly focused on Chess, Checkers and similar non-dice games. I don't say I will never improve the rating formula for Backgammon and other dice games but the priority of this task is lower than average, at the moment.)
on the BK.com boards by typing in the word dice and then searching related links... I suppose I should do a little homework first and find out what position or stance BK policy is around here before I ask questions... guess I'll be renewing my membership elsewhere and be happy with the few games I am able to play here...
...bottom line is BK is catering to the serious chess players and not the serious backgammon players...

pgt: yes sure,i've said the same thing..you should direct your comments at some of those who dont realize this.

nobleheart: I originally bought a paying subscription in the hope that my support would help to get these deficiencies corrected. No matter how responsive Fencer is, we should not lose sight of the fact that this is his business and some of us are his paying customers. But this customer, for one, will no longer support this site when his subscription expires unless some of these matters are attended to. Being a customer is entirely a voluntary matter. There are plenty of sites where backgammon is played according to well-established conventions (note that I have been careful not to use the word "official rules" so please no more protracted discussion of that).

playBunny: Actually both of those requests make sense and would be simple to implement. I second both of them :)

"fencer is responsive to questions asap"

That's the exoperience of the ones who get their questions answered. The ones who don't, or who get silence, or a "No" or even a verbose "No, No, No" don't quite share your enthusiasm.

I've got a stack of ideas building up but I've stopped posting any here because I've only seen one taken up. Even the simplest and easiest of ideas get ignored.

I reckon if a question or feature request is responded to then it's just coincidence of timing. I guess I've become cynical. [shrug]

LionsLair: well maybe BK is on a chess kick for now,but this is a great site.
I have seen this site grow & add features much faster than many other sites.
and fencer is responsive to questions asap.
this is definitely not true with many sites.

Vikings: Thank you. I don't know why I never saw that... I guess I need new glasses

tinksbell: on settings page sort games by time left, ascending

Not sure if this has been asked...

Is there anyway to make it go to the next game to time out, not the next game with the longest amount of time left?

LionsLair: hear hear, i agree!

LionsLair: I agree. All it really needs is the bug fixed and the doubling cube added. We don't really need new variants.

it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that BK is dedicated more towards development of chess variants(25 and counting)than it is gammon variants(6 and stagnant)

I bring this subject up at least once a year(when I concider changing my membership from other sites to this one) also, to try and get more people behind the idea and suggest to BK that it offer more gammon variants(ie; 'pro' variants of backgammon, backgammon race, nackgammon and so forth...)
also, to fix the glitch in the dice program that will force an opponent to make a move when it can be made(using both dice whenever possile)

for 3 or more years now,the only responce I have gotten is "it's being adressed" or "it's in the works" ...my question would be "when"? ..."what year"?

I'd really like to become a member here, but I have reservations about it because BK seems to want to cater to chess players and not gammon players... oh well, maybe by next year when I concider doing the same...

what do u brats think for a multi player game if parcheesi?

Walter Montego: Problem with those games witch contains luck is that the system is made for chess. Because that system is made from statistics. It should be done to every game own, that it will be perfect. The hyper backgammon is the most problematic i think. There player with random moves can even won. It contains nearly pure luck if both think for while the maximum thought winrate should not be higher 75 percent or something like that.
For me this is pretty same. I do not play for rating. I play to win.

ScarletRose: yes ma'am

nobleheart: Ah, but wins-losses-ties are kept track of on this site. It's Your Turn (IYT) does it by winning percentage only, or at least they did when I used to play on that site. In Dark Chess on IYT I am over 95% in side games and tournament games. That sure sounds great, don't it? The thing is, who are my opponents and how well have they done against others? I did well in Keryo Pente on IYT too, but when I played certain people it was obvious I was not in their league. Some of those people only played players as good as they or near so. They had a lower winning percentage than I did, but they were, with no argument from me, better players than I. This is what a rating is for. Anybody can win every game if there's no luck in the game played and they are the better player. Games like Chess, Checkers, Atomic Chess, Extinction Chess, and Keryo Pente have no luck in them. Games like Dark Chess, Crazy Screen Chess, Backgammon, Poker, Bridge, and Battleboats have varying amounts of luck in them. As good or as experienced as I might be at Dark Chess, I have had players who have just learned game defeat me. It's a game that you can outsmart yourself in or fall into traps of your own imagination, let alone what your opponent might be cooking up.

All the same, the amount of luck in Dark Chess is a lot less than the amount of luck in Backgammon. This is the whole point about the ratings. The few of us that play Dark Chess aren't complaining about the rating system used here for Dark Chess, though I think it could be better, it is those of us that play Backgammon that have a problem with how this rating system works. Going strictly by winning percentage won't really tell you too much except to tell you who wins most of their games. This is already kept track of on this site and it is a chart that I try to stay on. If I never played Backgammon, I'd be doing real well on this chart, by the way. :)

nobleheart: it's okay dear.. you and I play to just have fun and good conversation.. Did you find my gmail??

The chess one seems to works well enough for chess and the backgammon one works well enough for backgammon. ;-)

I know,its just hard find a rating algorithm that reflects fairly under all parts of the "spectrum".

nobleheart: But definitive of what? What would a 60% win percentage actually mean? If two players have 60% wins which is the better player? It'll be the one who's got 60% against the strongest set of opponents, of course, but how can you tell which of them it is? That's what ratings help determine.

geesh maybe we should forget ratings & just keep track of wins-ties-losses.at least it would be definitive.

<Diogenes> how are they confusing?

diogenes: Sure, it can be done.

well, there are some people i am playing and talking with, who sometimes make their moves while confusing their opponents in order to make them think longer. if those people win a short game by timeout, its part of their strategy... . sometimes, even with "-6min" their opponents are still playing. hot to stop that? it means, if someone times out after "zero" he has to lose the match!

Given that the BKR spread is now only 200 points from average to top in some games, could the BKR filter on the New Games page be calibrated in 25s and 50s in the upper middle range (perhaps 1900 to 2300), please. The ends of the existing list could be chopped - for example below 1200 and above 2400.

It is not count, that is the problem
Walter Montego:
"Salkkuman: I completely agree with you, but didn't it count as a win when he deleted the game?"

grenv: What he means is ya gotta win by two. If it's best of five, two all, you'd have to play at least two more. 3-2 doesn't win it. I believe volleyball is generally scored this way. I think it would be a nice option.

skipinnz: Nitpick: Best of 5 means first to 3 wins. First to 5 wins is "best of 9"

Marfitalu: I'm quite happy playing best of 5 to mean the first to five wins wins.

nobleheart: He meant that this site does not use the technology required for real time games and is a turn based site.

Of course other sites have real time games.

playBunny: there are real time games
there is even real time games on IM at ICQ

playBunny: Touche' :)

playBunny: Oh.. well that makes sense then.. bummer

ScarletRose: As hard as it would be to get realtime game playing. Both of these need client software downloaded and installed on your own machine. That's a contradiction of the web-page method currently used. Possible but very radical.

It'll probably be done before anything to do with Backgammon, though!

How hard would it be to get a Instant Messenger on your site?? just curious..

Fencer: perhaps it would help to narrow it down to those peeps who really feel the need or have the desire to watch who is the best..

There are alot of us here.. that play.. just to play. I know for one thing.. I don't have time to sit and study each and every game and calculate this and that.. so maybe a checkbox on their profile page stating if they are relaxed or not about their level of board games would help ease up those rows to where you could preform this task..

Just a thought..

Fencer: and... ahm...ahm... (offtopic) - how about my super-old wish to bring this powerful and highly confusing version of froglet called "cylinder-froglet"??? ;-)

pleeeeease...

Fencer: good ;-)

Fencer: Ok, thanks for the reply. It's not a very strong necessity anyway

pauloaguia: It would take some more work because the table of BKR history is huge [over 2 million rows] and it doesn't contain game IDs associated with the changes. I must think it over.

Fencer: Could you point it out to me? I still think those charts have too many points

Well, is it easy to do? Or would it take some more work?

pauloaguia: Aha, I see your point now.

Fencer: Maybe... but how do I know which of those many points is the one for the game I'm looking for?

pauloaguia: It's in BKR history graphs, isn't it?

diogenes: Yes, this option is planned.

Can we see how many points each of the opponents won/lost on finished games? I mean, I don't keep them all game over messages but every now and then I'm curious as to the outcome of this or that game in terms of how many points I won / lost with that particular game.

Is this possible? (this has nothing to do with the recent changes - it's a wish that comes from some time back and has just been remembered in the portuguese forum)

hello altogether,
imagine two people starting a game with one hour time per move, thinking to be able to finish that game within some hours. later they realize they cannot finish it and want to set a different time-control. if both agreed, it would be fine to have that option: one player asks the other for a change, and if the other agrees, it would be possible on another form to set the changes...

tycho: "International checkers" is big in Russia, The Netherlands, France, and certain parts of Africa (Senegal for instance).

Just to mention that the French-speaking community (and other ones, no doubt!) would like to see "international checkers" on 10x10 boards implemented.

NOT a floosie: We can talk more about it on the Backgammon Board

Copy of problems is that if you can not see where your opponents pieces are, then how do you know not to move your own pieces there? (Answer would be if you land on a spot that has 2 of your opponents pieces, then your piece goes to the board)