diogenysos: Winning 28:22 instead of 25:23 doesn't mean you have a better strategy. Mancala isn't about scoring as many points as you can - just more than your opponent. It would make for a totally different game.

I don't think 'counting points' variations work as well for perfect knowledge games like mancala as for games as backgammon where there are unknown factors (die roles for instance).

nabla: I wouldn't say that the rules are wrong for Mancala - if there's anything wrong, it would be the name, as Mancala stands for a large family of 'seeding games'. There are probably as many mancala variants as there are chess variants - although in mancala it's not variants of a specific game.

Given the large number of rules (i.e. different amount of pods, different amount of seeds, different rules for reaping, etc), you cannot call it wrong. Although I don't think anyone has found the exact game whose rules are implemented here on any of the lists of mancala games out there. The closest game I have found is the one that is implemented on Nokia phones, and there you also get the seeds in your own pods if the opponent has no moves left.

I'd say, leave the rules as is (or make them the same as in the Nokia game), and add some other Mancala games where white doesn't have the overwhelming advantage.

On a more general note, I think that we need a defined procedure for changing the rules of a game. It has been done in the past with new games that had an obvious defect (e.g. Cloning Gammon), but since then Fencer has been very reluctant to make changes, even when there were strong arguments for them (promotions in Recycle Chess come to my mind, but also suggested changes in some unbalanced games).

I am aware that changing game rules doesn't go without short-term problems (mainly, some people won't remember whether they are playing under the old or the new rules), but I think that on the long term the quality of the games offered here is much more important. After all, aren't the games what makes us come here ?

That White seems to have an overwhelming advantage in "Mancala" could be that the "no moves" rule was set backwards. Indeed, I always heard that when one player had no stones left in his side of the board, HE captured all of the opponent's pieces. In other word, it is of the player's responsibility to ensure that the opponent can always move.

I wikied Mancala, and although it is a wide game family, the rules played here seem to be the rules of "Oware" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oware) . Here is the part of the rules that deal about having no moves :

<quote>
The proscription against capturing all an opponent's seeds is related to a more general idea, that one ought to make a move that allows the opponent to continue playing. If an opponent's houses are all empty, the current player must make a move that gives the opponent seeds. If no such move is possible, the current player captures all seeds in his/her own territory, ending the game.
</quote>

Not the most enlightening way to write it, but I think it means that the remaining seeds are due to the player who finds himself without a move.

MadMonkey:



maybe we will find out in a while, with more experience, that the black mancala player has all jokers in his hands...

but the idea of counting the points still remains interesting...

diogenysos: Could not of put it better myself

Fencer: The point about the points is that, with our existing system, there is "just" an 1:1-draw after two games.
If we counted the points within one game, it would make clear who won the single game "better".
E.g. in Mancala lets say white wins with 25:23 and in the second game the former black player wins, by the better strategy, with 28:20. Finally, the score of this 1:1-game would be 51:45 and a winner would be determined.

- This may be the fairer variant in some games with a visible advantage for one colour!

I still think you need special buttons to push, for people like me. :O)

diogenysos: I don't get the point about the points.

MadMonkey: yes.
Fencer - is this possible? 

KJ:

I like ugly.... 
And dice on top would be good...

Why ugly? Just change them around. The other players are on top already and its not ugly. :^)

diogenysos: I agree, a much better and fairer way to determine a winner

emmett: Yes and I say it again.

KJ: I used to say that, agreeing that the dice should be at the top, but someone said that it would look ugly there....

KJ:

Would sure like to see my dice on top of the board. Hate all the scrolling for every roll.

as there is an advantage for one colour in a couple of games (mancala, pah tum) it would be interesting to not just count the wins in a two-game-match (1:1 is always a loss for the higher rated player) but the points... ;-)))

how about that feature in the new-games-room and especially for the stairs matches which are mostly two-game-matches?

can it be realized by our  high-level-programmers...??? *g*

Gordon Shumway: I almost never click on "choose another piece" but hit the back button if I didn't like a move. But I do always use the "choose another piece" button if I want to start the move over. I agree that something like "restart turn" is more accurate, but I figure that was entered when he was writing the site with a chess program.

Gordon Shumway: 100% agree

I think the Context Menu is the best way to move about brainking myself, when not on the main games screen. As long as you take a bit of time to set it up with the links you use, i find it a great way to jump about the place

MadMonkey: You're right about that BB example. The button should be named "restart turn" and not "choose another piece". And you're right, an additional "undo last move" might be helpful for some.

I just have a different opinion on the value of "Back" and "Forward": Everybody who uses a browser knows them, uses them and has the same mental model of them and what to expect from them. A lot of sites that use forms for navigation or that use AJAX or whatever hip thing break this model and make them useless, leaving the user alone with nothing than the - often badly designed - navigation tools the site offers them.

I am so glad that BrainKing is fully Back button compatible! The Back button is always at the same spot, it is available and in place even if the page didn't fully load, I can easily click it 3times in a row to go 3 steps back without waiting for the "undo" button to be rendered, it offers a menu to go back for example 5 steps in one, and for me it is just a 4mm movement of my right thumb. I would never use anything else just to go one page back - what an overhead!

So the question is, Do we need all these different options on brainking about navigating the site to boards, next games, tournaments, ponds etc..etc... the answer is no in your case as there is always a way to get there anyway.

The question is a definite yes for me. I don't see any convenient way to perform the mentioned navigations other than by the options offered by BrainKing. It would be very cumbersome. It just doesn't have anything to do with the Back button :)

That doesn't mean of course, that everybody has to use it, and that the other buttons are useless. They seem to be useful for some, if not many, so the changes you propose are reasonable! If we have the "restart" button we should have the "undo" button also. And they of course should be named properly.

Gordon Shumway: I did not say BugCafe was user friendly, just they have 2 buttons that do things that are useful, BugCafe is very basic compared to brainking but as a user i would rather have options to do things rather that go backwards & forwards in my browser.

After all thats the idea having various buttons and options is it not OR why bother at all if you can always find ways to get by without them ????

Maybe we should stop asking for options here as there are always other ways around a problem, BUT that does not make for site friendliness & usability.

What is wrong having 2 buttons / options that do what they say, rather than ONE that does not do what it says (depending what game you are in). If i hit 'Choose another piece' on my 4th move in Battleboat Plus, i dont select another piece at all, i restart my turn, but anyone new to brainking would not know that, they would go by what the button says it does.

So the question is, Do we need all these different options on brainking about navigating the site to boards, next games, tournaments, ponds etc..etc... the answer is no in your case as there is always a way to get there anyway.

Personally, i want brainking to carry on improving and would rather the way we have it now and the way we are heading.

If something makes sense and it is possible, why not have it ??

MadMonkey: I don't find bugcafe userfriendly at all ;) I feel lost in this terrible cloud of something. BrainKing is very much clearer to me. And I have to back grenv in this point: Back- and Forwardbuttons are two fundamental functions that every browser has, that every user knows how to use, and that every site should use to actually send the user one step back or "back forward".

grenv: One of the companies that i do work for (when i am not building) is actually used by site owners / builders to review there websites for user compatibility and friendliness.
Guess what one of the gripes that they get pulled on all the time is ? Navigation of a site
Sites that use the back & forward buttons to navigate dont get great reviews i can assure you.
That and not enough or easiness of help facilities.
Brainking would do very well with things like the context menu & game pull down menu, but not inside an actual game. Take many sites a lot more basic then brainking (bugcafe springs to mind as i was just there) when playing moves in a game there are always 2 option available to you - Undo last move & Restart turn, quite simple, clear and useful things to have, especially in multi-move games like Mancala, Logik, Battleboat plus etc....

MadMonkey: I disagree. Back and Forward buttons in the browser have the same functionality for all sites, therefore making it easy to understand and use. Additional buttons don't add anything in my opinion.

MadMonkey: Sorry, reading is not my best ....

joshi tm: Try reading my first post, i did put that.
Sadly i dont think its a very user friendly way to navigate round a site, why have any buttons

MadMonkey: There's another solution. Use Firefox's Back button to go back one step :)

Firefox is #1,

Gordon Shumway: I trust you, but there is something there that dont work, as earlier i tried to remove a piece and it would not let me, so i had to choose another piece (or restart turn as it should say).
Anyway, it does not work in Mancala, that is restart turn.

MadMonkey: you sure can, let me assure you that:)

Fencer: 1) Agreed, not that i can see many people doing that, but you still do not need to roll the dice

2) I havent got a game where its my go right now, but i am sure you can not click on a piece just played. I think thats what made me take notice lol, will check when i get a go back

MadMonkey: 1) But you still have an option to offer a double. 2) Why don't you click on a placed piece to remove it?
http://brainking.info/archives/191-BrainKing-button-for-Google-Toolbar-again-and-something-for-Logik.html

Two small things that may have been mentioned.
1.One concerning this doubling dice that i have only just got the hang of and started using. Why if we can not make a legal move, does it still make us roll the dice
2.In logik (and other multi-move games), could the 'choose another piece' button, do exactly that, just remove the last move or piece played, rather than go back to the start of the whole turn. In logic, its rather annoying placing 4 pieces, making a mistake on the 5th, and having to go back to the start.
Be nice to have 2 options really, 'select another piece' or 'restart turn', be covered both ways then.
Yes, i know we have a back browser button, just trying to make things user friendly & understandable

Didier69: That's right. If it were easy, I would have done it myself a long time ago.

Fencer: thanks for your link. So "the idea is not buried". Great :). I don't have time now for doing such work, but as I have looked in extension code, it will take some time to make such extension ;).

joshi tm: nabla can still set one up, it just won't me highlighted as a Prize Tourney.

nabla: this could even evolve into a system where people could contribute for one prize (so, instead of having someone pay for a maharajh prize in a tournament, you could have 10 different people pay for 1/10 of that prize).
But a simple automation on the current system would go a long way. The other day someone asked me how to provide the prize for a tournament. After my reply (send money to Fencer saying it's for tournament X) I got a reply that went like "Oh, thank you. Never mind then". I got the impression that, since it wasn't automatic, she just didn't want to go through with it anymore (which doesn't make much sense, since Fencer is the one having to do most of the manual work anyway).

joshi tm: Well, just have Fencer add some support for some cheesy prizes then

nabla: Darn! I´ld like to win the cheese, for I loooooooove French Cheese and Cloning Backgammon :)

pauloaguia: Hmm you're right ! And now that you make me realize that, I hope that I will be able resist the temptation to create a 21-pointer Cloning Gammon tournament with a big french cheese as prize

Your suggestion is probably close to the ideal way. Some programmation work, but definitely a bigger incentive to create a prize tournament. Too bad for the cheese !

nabla: the way it's set up now, you'd have to send that big french cheese to Fencer in advance so he could set the "prize has been provided" flag. And then he'd send it to the winner when the tournament was over.

Since the subject has been brought up I'd like to make a sugestion:
When buying a membership, besides the target player option have a tournament option, where you could buy a membership as a prize to a tournament (when selecting, only the open prized tournaments would show up on that list). The new membership would be added to the shopping cart and the association with the tournament made automatically (no intervention from Fencer). This would also allow for a separate field to be displayed on the tournament details page, with the prize that had been paid (weather or not it matched what was said on the tournament's description).
On the tournament page itself, while the prize hasn't been paid, a link to pay the prize could be visible. This could allow to buy a money prize, or a membership prize, or brains prize or whatever (the big french cheese option may be a bit hard to implement in this system, but the current system would still be available for any option, naturally).

nabla: or a big french cheese

harmy: I think that it was part of the idea that prizes weren't formatted. Maybe I want to create a tournament where the prize is a big french cheese (sent by boat).
Now, maybe there could a new free-style field for the prize, that could be displayed in the tournament list. For the moment, all we see is that the tournament is in bold, whether the prize is a Brain Rook or a Brain Bishop subscription.

For "free prize" tournaments, the tournament announcement should automatically say what the prize is. Now, it seems to only says if the prize has been provided, but not what the prize is. To find out what is being given away we have to rely on the description written by the tournament creator.

Fencer: My average changed three times today. But I don't understand programming.

I guess the reason for the request, and my earlier request for a horizontal red line on graphs indicating the average BKR, is that I often wonder if I am playing above or below my own average. With some game graphs it is difficult to tell just at a glance. I acknowledge that this is only a minor request, reinforcing the depth that brainking offers in terms of statistics.

I love the statistics portion of the gameplay on this site.

Speaking of that, I noticed that Recycle Chess just moved about twenty notches on the list of running games after the Invitational tournament I set up just started. It is interesting to see the difference that one tournament can have on the popularity of a game. I hope that at least one fellowship creates a Recycle chess team so that "Le" Club will have another team to have a match with. Our team is ready for a match, but there is no one to play!

Didier69: http://brainking.info/archives/289-BrainKing-gadgets.html

emmett: How would the graph values be calculated? The normal graphs form nodes on BKR changes but there are no "average changes".

It would be nice to have a graph for the average BKR stat listed at the bottom of "Finished games".

Hi,

is there anybody who think about making a firefox extension to follow games and to see when you need ?

Regards.

Jason: and if we hit the dragon it would crash and stop flying for the session or until you hit the reserect dragon button

I would like a cannon at the bottom of the screen then i could shoot at the dragon

edit , or in keeping with the theme an archer would be better