Tomorrow, my rook status runs out. I've given up on trying to pay via either Moneybookers or Paypal. The former has happily taken my money, but since then tells me my account is locked due to lack of funds. The latter happily takes either a CC number or a bank account number, and while I've been able to pay with them for quite some time, for some unspecified reason, they now no longer the bank, nor the credit card.

So, this is the end of 5 years of BK for me. I do not wish to continue as a pawn.

Pedro Martínez: Why? I can give you two reasons: 1) not having messages means people can't say something to me, and then get all worked up because I don't reply. 2) it reduces the distance between the board and the submit button, which reduces scrolling.

Nothingness: Sure, and if your time control is 15/15/15, it only takes a single move!

rod03801: I'd say, if reading random walls upsets you because you may encounter writings you don't like, don't read walls. If you have children who need counseling after reading a bad word, don't let them lose on the internet. People should learn to take some responsibility, instead of demanding others police the action of yet others.

Nothingness: Yes. It's called "play a time control that one can manage". I repeat, if you need 8 hours sleep, and can manage to be online the remaining 16 hours, play with a time control that allows 8 hours away from the keyboard. I still recommend a time control of at least 24h/move. Because, even if you are 12hours/day online and manage to move instantly when it's your turn (while being online) and your opponent does the same, you still may manage only one move/day.

After all, the earth is a sphere.

Nothingness: No you're not. As you said, you play 10 moves, moving instantly when it's your turn. If you make your first move at 1 pm, and your last move at 10pm, and I constantly move one hour after you move, then I move at 11 pm, after which it takes 14 hours before you make your move. Those 14 hours means your average move time is 1h 24m, while my average move time is 1h. That's what average means, one takes into account all move times, not just the once that make you look good.

In such a scenario, I am the faster player.

Nothingness: Note also that if you move 10 times a day, and your opponent moves one hour after you move, your opponent is a faster player than you. Out of a 24 hour day, it's your opponents turn 10 hours, which means, for 14 hours, it's your turn. On average, he moves faster.

Considering time zones, people needing sleep, and the unreliability of the internet, I'd say that anyone picking a time control of less than 24h/move on average takes a risk. And I've no sympathy if they lose a game because their clock runs out.

Nothingness: If you move 10 times a day, your opponent has moved at least 9 times that day. It's not that you're fast and your opponent is slow.

It's easy. If you're going to be away for 2 days - don't play a time control that doesn't allow for that.

Nothingness: I'd never recommend playing a game where the bonus is less than 24 hours. With ../0.6/.. it means you basically have to be online every 6 hours, on average, just to make sure your time-buffer doesn't decrease. With ../0.6/.., if you sleep 7 hours a day, and be online the other 17 hours, you still may lose the game on the clock. It all depends on when your opponent moves - which is outside of your control.

I'd never play a Fisher clock (or any other clock) with a time-to-move of less than 24 hours. (Not that I ever use the Fisher clock on BK. I'd love to use the FC, but on BK, FC implies no vacation days. And since many of my games last months, if not years (due to slow opponents, and playing games like Anti-Backgammon, or 21 point Cloning Backgammon), playing with vacation time isn't really an option for me).

Herlock Sholmes: Sometimes people just play for the sake of playing. If you don't like the concept of "X game" matches, don't participate in them! There are enough alternatives that come close enough to what you want.

Universal Eyes: Odd game matches can result in draws as well for most games. Odd game matches only guarantees a winner if a single game cannot end in a draw. Most games on BK can end in a draw.

Herlock Sholmes: No, a 10 games match lasts 10 games. If you want a match where the first player to reach 6 points wins, you should play a 6 points match (aka 'best of 11').

Fencer: You want to tell us how the new vacation system is going to look like? Perhaps we'd even give some useful feedback to incorporate in the changes before it's live.

Bernice: If said person had one day of vacation left at midnight today, timed out on another game earlier today, by the time (s)he times out on another game today, (s)he has no days left (subtracted earlier today), but still gets the 24 hours extra (since you don't lose more than one day vacation each day).

IceQueen: Unlike the US, Europe hasn't changed its DST rules for quite some time (last time in 1996). DST starts 1AM UTC on the last Sunday of March, ending at 1AM UTC on the last Sunday of October. From 1996 to 2006, the US started DST one week later than Europe, ending in the same weekend. But several years of Bush policy had fuel prices rocketing, requiring a savings, hence an extension on both ends of DST in the US. In Europe, it's still winter - no DST here yet.

rabbitoid: 6 & 7 March are weekends. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 are non-weekends (5 days), 13, 14 are weekends - it ought to time out at 15 March 5.00. Seems that if a game starts on a weekend, the player on the move gets 48 free hours, regardless of the time it starts (which explains the move before March 16, 01:40:57, which is 5d5h + 2*48h after the start time). I'd call that a bug.

BTW, if there would be a setting "no-weeked, vacation days-only", I would have created my tournaments with that setting.

Herlock Sholmes: I proposed once and still believe in it: 30 days should be the absolute limit to play any game ...

I think that's unrealistic given the existence of timezones.

Gammonator: Angelstar doesn't have auto-vacation set, so her number of vacation days will not decrease. The upshot is, she'll time out earlier.

But a "mass-kick-out-of-all-the-tournaments-you-created" button would be really useful. She's signed up for hundreds of my tournaments. And since it takes 5 mouse actions and 4 page requests to kick her out of a single one, it's just too much work to remove her.

Maybe we need an "auto-withdraw-from-all-signed-up-tournaments-and-stairs" feature. If a person hasn't logged into the site for a month or 6 weeks (or some other period), (s)he'll be removed from any tournament (s)he has signed up for, and which hasn't started yet. And have retirement kick in for any signed up stairs.

Hrqls: dice games require less thinking .. therefore its easier to make a quick move in those games and more of those games can be played at once

If your opponent is online, yes. But I think most of the "duration" of a game, the game doesn't move forward because the player whose move it is isn't online, or hasn't selected the game yet. Many games last weeks or months - I doubt most of that time one of the player is actively studying the position. Even if both players spend 24 hours in total actively contemplating their next move, that's less than 10% total time if the game lasts a month.

Fencer: Eh, no secondary/ternary DNS server? DNS is designed in such a way that DNS servers going down can hardly noticeable for clients.

MadMonkey: I couldn't the site for a short time either. But I don't feel sorry for timed out games; don't let your clock run down that much while you've used all your vacation days.

I've tried to take advantage of the "code red" promotion. To do so, I created a new moneybrookers account and transferred EUR 36 from my bank account into it (using IDEAL). This was successful, and moneybrookers confirms I have EUR 36 in my account.

At the same moment however, they locked my account for all outgoing transfers. Which means, I'm out EUR 36 - and have no BK subscription in return. Does anyone else have had similar moneybrookers issues? I've used them without problems in the past (using a credit card), but they now wanted more information for a credit card transaction that I was willing to give them - hence the direct transfer route.

MadMonkey: That's why I create elimination tournaments with 1-win matches.

What to do with game 3525524? We've been repeating positions, but my opponent ignores by draw requests. I've repeatedly tried to send a message to Fencer, but that only results in a message saying that it's not possible, and that the Brainking staff was notified.

ScarletRose: I think the only fair way would be something that if you put person A on your block list, and both you and A sign up for a tournament, you would be automatically withdrawn. Otherwise, it's too easily abused.

OTOH, I wouldn't mind if tournament creators could have a list of people that are prohibit from signing on. Currently, one can already remove signed up players, but that's an almost impossible task if you have many tournaments.

El Cid: Well, then don't play games with a less than 1 day/move, or accumulate a bigger buffer (if playing with a Fisher Clock).

Fencer: Thank you. Question though, since the tournament was created with no additional days to wait till a minimum number of players has signed up, how come the tournaments for 2 of the games have been postponed? Some (unintended?) side effect of people not having enough tournament slots signed on? It doesn't really matter to me that it happens, it just surprises me.

Fencer: I don't think I would have joined if BK only had games without timeouts - games wouldn't finish then, would they?

Anyway, I would be perfectly happy if you said "if you have a tendency to move close to your clock running out, do so at your own risk. If you lose a game because the site was inaccessable, too bad. Use longer times/move, move earlier, or don't complain. Except for excessive downtime, clocks will not be stopped". If I were in charge, I wouldn't 'stop time', unless the site was unusable/down/unreachable for at least 24 hours.

This tournament should have started at midnight, but it didn't. It's listed at -9h30m on the tournament page.

Hrqls: If you play games with a time control of 3 days or more, you don't need weekends.

Fencer: Even simpler would be to get rid of weekends. Which, IMO, are a bit silly - if you need them you can always pick a time pace that allows not playing in weekends. But weekends prevent you from picking a time pace that forces "fast games" -- with weekends, you cannot play a game where you have to move at least once a day; it becomes 5 times a week. (Currently, you can pick a time pace that says "no vacation days, no weekends" and "no vacation, but weekends", but "no weekends, allow vacation" isn't available. The latter would have been my pick).

Fencer: It happens to me with an older version of firefox as well. Although it usually takes a few days to get there (faster if there's flash involved). It typically means it's consuming (and using) lots of memory which will not get swapped out.

cd power: If someone doesn't like the guy, put him on block and don't join BG Race tournaments that he's in.

The latter is harder than it sounds. You can only make sure that happens if you're the last person to join a tournament (it's full afterwards), and noone else has joined who is already on their limit of tournaments. Otherwise, such a person can join a tournament after you.

rod03801: I am in the same timezone as the site uses, and what I saw happened on Friday server time. Also, I would normally see which vacation days a person has set, or whether a person uses auto-vacation. This wasn't show for the person discussed - perhaps this piece of information disappears when the number of vacation days is 0?

Perhaps Fencer could add a little tidbit of information which indicates whether a player has taken a vacation day (be it by setting the date, or auto-vacation kicking in earlier that day) "today" (A dot of some colour next to the number of vacation days remaining will do). This can avoid confusion in the future.

Still, what I don't understand is, if a person who has Saturday and Sunday set as weekend days, times out on a Friday, and Friday is either a vacation day, or autovacation kicks in, why does that person have 24 hours added to the clock, and not 72?

(V): Actually, I did check her weekend settings: it's Saturday and Sunday. And today is not listed as a vaction day for her. Nor can today be an autovacation day for her, as she timed out yesterday, and hasn't been at BK since Tuesday - she cannot have changed her setting since her last timeout.

alilsassy: Looking at your profile and running games, my guess is that the player you're talking about is a female player from France. I've just been watching her "started games". And I've seen her games go from "1 min" to "-5 min" to "23h 50m". With her weekend days Saturday and Sunday. And it's not that today was her last vacation day - she timed out some games yesterday. (But amazingly, several others timed out against her later yesterday as well).

She also has some games where she has to make a move before tomorrow morning (Saturday). Which shouldn't happen, as Saturday is one of her weekend days.

I'd say something is wrong. Either the timeout system is broken, or the display of the time-left column is wrong.

MadMonkey: I haven't seen anything strange with my clocks. I did notice that in quite a number of games my opponent timed out the last few days. But in all those cases, they are players who make it a habit to only move if they have a few hours left to move. The past hour, 3 games where I made the last move in June 29. And earlier this week, a handful of games against a famous player who was spending a fortune buying vacation days. So, *I*'m not complaining. If the side effect of a few hours of down time is that snails are timing out, I can only wish for more down time.

rabbitoid: That number doesn't consider reflections or rotations.

tfra11: Here in the USA, if we quit, even if we're mathematically eliminated, we're called sore losers.

That's why in America's national passtime, baseball, all 9 innings are always played fully (there's always a bottom of the 9th), and the World Series is always exactly 7 games. And it's easy to pick out the American chess players in tournaments - they always play until mated.

tfra11: You want me to drag on a lost game for god knows how long, on the off chance that my opponent may get an archievement? Get real. If that's going to be the effect of archievements, I hope they'll disappear as soon as possible.

I play for as long as I think there's a realistic chance of archieving a result other than a loss. Otherwise, I resign. I'm here for the game play, not for pushing buttons or archievements.

Bluefin: N game/win matches already alternate colours. No need to specify this again.

ChessVariant: 30 days should be absolute maximum for a game

Well, that may work if you play most of your games against your buddies at school, who are available to play for about the same hours as you do. But on a global site as BK, any game that moves faster than 1 move/day is a bonus. Even if you spend 12 hours a day, from 9 AM to 9 PM monitoring your game list, moving within a minute if you have games to play, and your opponent also spends 12 hours a day doing the same, there's still no guarantee the game moves faster than once a day. People live in different timezones, and play during different times a day. Some people only play from the office - others do actual work and only play from home.

Czuch: It looks like things will sort themselves in the next round.... that nobody will get a bye then,

Incorrect. For the first tournament, there are 2 matches, and 4 byes. So the round will have 6 players (winners of the two matches, and the four people with byes). That means there will be 2 byes. Now, it may very well be that the two byes actually "play each other" ("winner" of 13 against 14 against "winner" of 15 against 16), but that means there's still a bye in the round after that.

It's a complete mess.

MadMonkey: That looks very wrong to me. The first tournament has only 8 players - there's shouldn't be any byes to begin with. The second tournament has 10 players - 6 players should have byes, the four remaining players should play the two matches in the first round. Ideally, the two matches should be distributed over both halves of the bracket; that is, if the winners of the first round matches keep winning, they should meet in the final.

If you use the schema below, and fill in the participants in order, then there will not be byes, and first round winners will meet as late as possible.

 1. ------+
          +------+
16. ------+      |
                 +------+
 8. ------+      |      |
          +------+      |
 9. ------+             |
                        |
                        +------+
                        |      |
 5. ------+             |      |
          +------+      |      |
12. ------+      |      |      |
                 +------+      |
 4. ------+      |             |
          +------+             |
13. ------+                    |
                               |
                               +-------
                               |
 3. ------+                    |
          +------+             |
14. ------+      |             |
                 +------+      |
 6. ------+      |      |      |
          +------+      |      |
11. ------+             |      |
                        |      |
                        +------+
                        |
 7. ------+             |
          +------+      |
10. ------+      |      |
                 +------+
 2. ------+      |
          +------+
15. ------+

This also easily generalizes to 32, 64, 128 participants (and to 8).

Considering that there are prize tournaments, and that prize tournaments can be restricted to paying members only, there's some shred of truth about paying money to play games of skill for money. Although PayPal's emails are most likely triggered by the existence of Poker, and possibly the links to other pay sites from the front page.

I can understand why PayPal is playing it safe. BK probably doesn't make enough money for PayPal to spend a lot of time investigating what exactly it does (and doesn't). I can also understand why BK is dropping PayPal.

pauloaguia: Also, if it's not the player's turn, the time settings shouldn't be changed

Of course they should! Suppose you have 2 games running. In one it's my move, and you have 5 hours left (assume Fisher clock). The other times out at noon. Now, you want 24 hours on both your clocks, otherwise, I make a move at 1 PM, and you'll time out at 6 PM. Since you've already spend your vacation day this day, you would lose the game. That's why all clocks should get 24 hours in my scheme, not just the ones where it's your move.

pauloaguia: That's not how I would do it. What I would do is: if one times out on a game, and the player has set that date for a vacation day, or has autovacation set (and still has vacation days set), I'd add 24 hours to the clock on every game the player has running, regardless whether it's his/her turn. Then subtract 1 from his number of vacation days for the year. You only need to do this at most once every 24 hours. After a player moves, check whether his clock is above the max. time that the game setting allows (this may happen after a player was on vacation while it wasn't his move) - and set the clock to the max if over.

The key point is that 24 hours only get added to the clock when the number of vacation days in decreased.

Resher: Game length achievements regardless of the game just don't make much sense. Many games cannot even be finished after 10 moves (not taking resignments or draw offers into account), while for others it's impossible or unlikely to go beyond 10 moves.

For instance, having to take 10 guesses in Logic is a disgrace, but you won't be able to win a Halma 10x10 game in less than 10 moves.

But even if you make different game length achievements for different games, what to do with resignments? Surely, you don't want to give an achievement just for someone resigning early in the game; OTOH, you don't want people to get pissed at you for resigning a lost game (and they feeling bad for not getting some kind of achievement).

Hrqls: there are some people who dont read this board as they are only interested in the games and not in the site itself ... those people might miss the discussion about the specific game

That, IMO, isn't a good enough reason. If people don't want to read board X, than that's their loss if there are a few posts on board X that they might be interested in. Hey, I don't read the music board, but that doesn't mean I'd like a thread to be continued on a board I do read if it's about a subject I might be interested in.

There will also be people who are interested in starting colour effects that do not read the Knight Fight board, and you'd hurt those people.

And, finally, one should spread threads out over boards too lightly. It becomes harder to follow a thread - specially if people search for it. One board will have a thread without an end - the other a thread without a beginning. A lose-lose situation. Considering there were only a few posts about Knight Fight in the general discussion about starting colour, I'd say keep the discussion together. If you don't want to read it, just scroll up.

Undertaker.: You're free to have your opinion like me too. You defend bkr rating calculation and i defend other system...

Where the hell do you get that impression from? If you think the system I'm "defending" looks like BKR, then I don't understand what your problem with BKR is, because obviously in that case, you don't know what BKR is.

BKR isn't Glicko. Nor Glicko-2. BKR is what we have, and of which Fencer has stated repeatedly in the past is what we will have now and in the future. But don't get the impression that just because I see drawbacks in your suggestion that I defend BKR.