Bernice: If you read my response carefully, you would know that I actually checked my PayPal account. The history shows only one payment (3 EUR) sent by you, which is correct. There is no way I could pull money from any other account, so any accusations of doing something on my side are just preposterous. Let's see how the mentioned events could probably happen:

1. You tried to pay for the membership on PayPal. The account was either empty, or you selected the option "bank account" by a mistake. PayPal, logically, attempted to pull 3 EUR from the bank account linked to the PayPal account.
2. The bank refused the transaction for some reason. So, PayPal received an error message, and re-tried the operation after some delay. And again. And again. Many times over before it gave up.

It could be a different scenario, of course. Anyway, whatever happens after you place an order on BrainKing and get redirected to PayPal is only between PayPal and your bank. If there was a glitch on the PayPal side, causing multiple requests to your bank, that can hardly be my responsibility.

Just in case anybody else has this issue:
1. Log in to your PayPal account.
2. Check the list of active automatic payments at https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/autopay/
3. Cancel everything that shouldn't be there.

Just returned from a long vacation. Hmm, interesting. BrainKing doesn't pull money from anywhere because the BrainKing account (I suppose that PayPal is meant by "BANK") doesn't use any automatically renewed subscriptions. We used to do it in the past, but it was deactivated many years ago due to some issues.

To be sure, I've just checked the PayPal account. There are eight subscription plans in the archive, and all of them were deactivated in 2009 or even sooner.

In other words, all payments for memberships must be activated by the respective PayPal account owner. And if someone creates a recurring payment, it is their own responsibility to cancel it in their PayPal account.

Geomomo: Send me a message with your email, I will send you a new password.

MadMonkey: It seems I forgot to remove that. Sorry.

Papa Zoom: Thank you! There is more on Facebook or YouTube. Updated daily.

__chess__: I prefer my own solution, which is also fully automated - just input the game IDs and let the engine do the rest. By the way, if I had the same attitude (there are other game sites, why to create a new one?) 19 years ago, this site would not exist.

Furthermore, this is just a PoC (proof of concept) and there are endless possibilities to improve the former idea.

Okay, the FINAL final version (notation added below the board). I will stop spamming here. Thanks everyone who sent me their feedback, much appreciated.

https://youtu.be/_NVECmY1gl0

MadMonkey: Yeah, I thought it might be better to choose a game which I didn't lose. However, the video generator is quite CPU-consuming, so I don't think we would ever add something like "create a game video" functionality to BrainKing. Maybe as an external service in the future.

SL-Mark: Captured pieces added.

https://youtu.be/Efr1hW3BaxU

MadMonkey: Yes, mesmerizing. My wife had a similar comment.

Walter Montego: Hmm, that's unlikely. I don't plan to host any videos here, and I don't think it's possible to replay videos backwards on YouTube (or is it?).

I created a simple application that takes a PGN file (chess notation) and generates a MOV video to replay the game. It's just a side project, something like a programming exercise.

This is a sample output from the BrainKing database: https://youtu.be/OA73wSwNbHE

Any feedback would be appreciated. (Too fast? Too slow? Some info missing?)

P-G: It used to be something for a Facebook app which is no longer active (and hadn't been developed by us). You can just ignore it.

Marshmud: That's right.

Hmm, looked like a transitivity issue of the sorting algorithm. Should be fixed now.

Aganju: That's right. They either use it as a prize for another tournament or donate it to someone else. Or keep it at their profile for a later use.

Thanks! Actually I was a little nervous after the guys from Web4U serverhousing company told me "hey, we must disassemble your server, put the components to a protection wrapper, move them to a new data centre, assemble everything and hope that it will start up". But I guess it was just a one-off operation and won't happen again.
And you can follow me if you want to: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7xtwaIP9g8objfjAIF2Esq

Yes, we are still here.

And finished! You can release it, furbster.

10 questions left. Almost there.

MadMonkey: I don't say it is a final decision, just the most probable one. I guess that nobody expected me to run this site for 50 years just on my own. There are several reasons that led to this announcement and some of them are quite important to me. Life goes on.

Papa Zoom: We'll be still here in March, so who knows? Anything can happen.

In fact, BrainKing will be 15 years old this year and it is also the last year with any support from me. After that, nothing will be guaranteed unless someone else buys the site and takes over.

I will post an official announcement about it at the News section very soon.

Bernice: Nope, unlikely.

Thank you.

ThunderGr: "Hey, I was just thinking about posting some kind of announcement." - where can you see something about "big"? If you don't get what you expect, it's not my fault.
Anyway, problem solved.

ketchuplover: Ha, you have noticed. Actually, I added a special warning to the membership order page a month ago, and the warning shows up above the "Order" button if someone has a lifetime membership in the shopping cart. It clearly states that there is no guarantee that BrainKing will be there forever, so the order is at your own risk and there will be no refunds.

So, I was quite surprised that someone still paid for a black rook and I messaged this person with a question if he really meaned it. I even offered an instant refund, just in case that he didn't understand the warning. Still, he wanted to keep it. Such things happen.

"On the other hand no definition of lifetime and or guarantee of time has ever been given" - of course it has never been given. If I get run down by a bus tomorrow and spend 6 months in a hospital, there would be nobody else to keep an eye on the site. I am not sure if I ever mentioned it but I am the only one who maintains BrainKing since 2008. The other guy (Liquid) had decided to pursue his own projects and does not work with me anymore.

Nothing is for sure except death and taxes.

ellieoop: As long as the site is profitable, I will do my best to keep it going, of course. But since the situation can change every year, it would not be fair to claim that BrainKing would be here forever under all circumstances.

And that's why I am always reluctant to post something what could start an endless argument.

beach: Yes, for at least 2 years. After that, it might go to a lower maintenance mode. Which means that I will probably be here every day as usual, but with no guarantees of anything.

Patience.
Sometimes, more important things show up and must be addressed with higher priority.

Brian1971: Not a big issue but I just don't understand how is a paid membership related to a "respect" to customers. You know exactly what you pay (or paid) for, it's clearly specified at the respective page. If you don't like it, well, there are many other game sites to choose from.

OK guys, a very short version - I don't intent to develop this site any further, unless the ownership is passed to another person with all rights and responsibilities. If someone is seriously interested in that, I'll be glad to discuss details in private.

Gabriel Almeida: Hey, I was just thinking about posting some kind of announcement. But I am not at home now and it is not easy to type long posts on iPad, so I will do it tonight or tomorrow.

furbster: Nope.

Brian1971:
If you do not respect your customers they will not respect you with their money and will tell others ...
Who says I do not respect customers? I keep the site up and running and everybody gets exactly who pays for. I don't remember that the Paid Membership page would ever contain anything about a guaranteed implementation of all suggestions. If somebody does not feel respected only because his idea of respecting customers is different, well, it's not my fault. Sorry.

perhaps you should sellout or hand the responsibilities over to someone who would enthusiastically make the site all it can be
Great idea, I could not agree more. Do you know someone who would take over and meant it seriously this time? It would be quite a change to negotiate with a normal and communicative person who is interested in purchasing the site.

Fencer is just collecting the money taken in and not willing to do what he can to please his customers
BrainKing is my site and I do everything related to it. Nobody is obliged to pay for anything. Whatever I collect, it is only my business what I do with that. If it is bad for business, it is only my problem. Period.

he doesn't need my paying membership to be profitable, I will not be renewing my membership
Everybody has this right. No hard feelings.

Hi guys,

My original intention was to post quite a comprehensive response to most of the questions, which could, hopefully, be helpful to at least some people. However, I didn't feel well during past days, so this is just a short summary:

As it was correctly mentioned there, BrainKing is no longer my top interest. Many things changed in my life since 2002 and I had to adapt to certain aspects that are not directly related to the site but still affect my free time. Furthermore, after 13 years, I am not as enthusiastic about board games as I used to be. But nobody needs to worry about turning off or deleting the site, unless some kind of really bad disaster happens, which is very unlikely in this part of the world. Membership fees are just a small portion of the income that BrainKing generates, so even if those who never stop complaining would finally decide to stop supporting us, the site would still remain profitable.

More info later. And Happy New Year.

ketchuplover: Looks OK to me from one network and a little slower from another one. Could be a network issue somewhere.

ketchuplover: How would you measure an hour of access? This is not a real time site, you can open a game, spend 2 hours thinking of the next move, then click Submit and log out. Was it 2 hours of access or just 2 minutes of server time?

speachless: Actually, I sent you a response (about 3 hours ago). Please check your mailbox for details.

Hey guys, I suppose it is solved now, right? Sorry for the delay, I've just returned from holidays.
Actually, it's fun to try to restart BrainKing from iPad on a hotel WiFi that goes down every 5 minutes.

TomsWife4Life: I've deleted your games. But next time, it might not be wise to start over 100 ten-win matches with the same person.

alexlee: Nope, the daemon has really died itself. It should be OK soon (auto-sync).

Hrqls: Yes, this is what happens when I do it manually in the database.
Btw, there was really an issue with cron jobs and they were stuck for 16 hours. Timeouts should be slowly resolved (as I restarted the server several hours ago).

furbster: A misclick. It should be gone now.

Hrqls: Hey guys, I've never seen anything like this before too, so I have no idea how it could happen.
So, to fix it, I must create missing 9 games manually, one by one. I can take some time because all parameters must be correct.

Can you check it now?

crosseyed: Oops! Due to a misclick in the latest update, some games were incorrectly moved to a database that is reserved for year 2015.
A fix in progress.

BGBedlam: Well, I didn't plan to create any action at all this year, so this one was started without any preparation or detailed rules. Ergo, I would like to keep it simple.
Maybe next time I will define more sophisticated rules, along with an automatic system that would prevent any possible exploits.
I guess that some people won't take it as a real membership promotion because of a "what's in it for me?" problem. It's their prerogative, of course. As I say, this is just a simple "let's try it and see where it goes" action, nothing more. For the time being, I would like to keep it as it is.

I've updated the action description, regarding this issue.

Aganju: Yes, I know that no matter how good a system is, some people will always try to exploit it. However, until it becomes a large scale problem (and I hope it won't), everything can be solved on an individual basis.
But of course, if someone is given a friendly hint "please do not do it" and refuses to cooperate, his vouchers can be cancelled, passed to other people of my choice, etc. But it would be applied only if everything else fails.

Very well, it's been posted.