Cloning Backgammon (diogenysos gegen dr_Brainsurfer)

Wow! A cloning gammon game "gifted" to me 300 points in one move.
Well I am not reporting this to the bug-tracker as I know now we are just paying people without any rights!

Aah, by the way, before someone is mentioning "flame wars" against Fencer now (again) I have to tell you I was writing him a fair E-Mail a couple of weeks ago but - as always - there is no response.

For me as a 12-year BK member, long-term-non-profit traducer and helper (well, many of us helped this site grow a lot without getting back a lot of respect) this is more and more disappointing because a game site without fair games is no longer a game site. Not many places in the business world give the boss the opportunity to treat his clients that bad without consequences :-(

So as a "feature request" I am officially requesting a money-back-system and/or the change of the ownership!

I am not happy to write this, but I am not the only one who tried to communicate with respect and moderately with the "servide provider" and one day even the best patience must have an end.

I do not see any flame war here and there is no need for something like this anyway. But it must be allowed to write honestly about the disappointment of a paying customer. Personally, I would sugggest employing people - for free or not - in order to guarantee that BK is working well.

Fencer: Well. It is great to be here. Some of us are here for quite a while, some of us even helped translating. We helped to make the site what it is right now!

Leaving us "alone" with bugs and disappointment just because a lack of enthusiasm is not acceptable as we put money in it and are deserving a professional treatment.
As the site is working well more or less there is no big complain, but some things like the bug tracker are essential and should work.
If this is not possible (but seems quite easy to realize), one should think about some moneyback-offers for those who already paid for the upcoming years. And, as a minimum, about lower rates for all those who are thinking of becoming members right now.

Fencer: Thanks for the honest answer!

So what do the players do who experience a bug that destroys their effort after competing? This is frustrating for the players and of course unreliable work.

You may engage someone with some more enthusiasm, for example.
In order to keep the site respectable!

Fencer: why that if I may ask?

Is the Bug Tracker inactive?

Undertaker.: I totally agree! The game is interesting and funny and I often decline because of being sure I will lose with black!

It is quite difficult to reach the higher rankings in some games. Some players, who certainly deserve their ranking by playing well within the years, are very alone on their top rankings.

How about changing the BKR system in order to get more movement in the rankings: Lets look for example at the ranking system in professional tennis: The points you earn count for one year and not forever. This makes sure that players are on the top, who play well and who are doing it "now"... .

This fearute would encourage more the players who play much and who want to get to the top, even if they are not as "experienced" as the long-term-best... .

ketchuplover: yep!

brain008: very good idea!

Fencer: yep. you are right :-D
as brainking is played all over the world - I just thought about the poor europeans who suffered from such a long winter!

now its the 1st of may and the castle is still in the winter mode...
I guess Fencer does not believe in something like the "global warming" :-D

ketchuplover: we have to get rid of the snow!

...it should be springtime now on the brainking castle walls! With flowers and butterflies...

rabbitoid: yep!

Aganju: yep! very good idea!

I am sure this has been discussed before, but I can not remember ... why not putting this small and useful red number of games waiting etc. next to the poker-tables, too (number of people sitting at the poker tables) to make the poker-section more attractive?

joshi tm:

well, 20 piints for a one-move-checkmate and 10 for the very poor two-move-finish :-D

Checkmate in 2 moves!

Irres Wandschach (diogenysos gegen KATIKA)

...think i deserve some extra achievement points, dont I?

joshi tm: the point is getting - or losing - those points quicker.

Backgammon-Pro-League:

Risky option: To play for double/triple BKR

So your BKR increases double/triple and you not just get 2 or 3 points for winning the game... . And the BKR of he opponent decreases twice/three times as much as in a normal game... .

Would make the hunt for being under the top rated players much more interesting - and as the gammon varaints are very popular here it would make sense offering this.

People could decide before starting the game if they wanted to chose this option, like outopass... .

Fencer: this does not work at least sometimes!

There is the score of games shown which are finished with one particular player. But not the draws.

Say I played three games against somebody. Lost two and drew one. The score still shows 2:0 and not 2,5:0,5.

I would like to see the exact score instead of the gap between the players, because the drawn game, "winning" half a point maybe against a much better player, should be "respected too... :-)

Dont think it would be lot of programming to change this easy function, hm?

Aganju: thats exactly what happened to me and therefore I decided to put it in here for discussion - because the less exact time control removes this advantage...

Fencer: I see. Yes I can imagine that BK is growing and after a while some components do not work well with each other any longer.

I would appreciate a revision, as I think that an exact time-control would give those fast games more thrill and as many players calculate with their opponents timing out and do, for example, strange and difficult moves just in order to make their opponents think longer and use more time.

Just realized that a timeout is not a timeout

Playing an one-hour game with six minutes left and the opponent was at zero.
The game continued with me - well - not watching the game any longer with full concentration, just waiting for the opponent to time out. Finally, I lost by a sudden checkmate which was to be avoided easily by playing a little more defensive.

My feature request is more a question:
Isnt it possible to make a better and more exact programming in order to play games with clear and exact rules?

pgt: Well, sorry to say that, because its not a solution and looks more like a "discrimination" - but especially for pawns (like you) being stuck in such a tournament is very bad because it blocks a free gme-space. So maybe pawns should be excluded of "more-than-x-point-matches"???

Nope. No way. But this leads me to another option - like fishers clocks there could be a tournament option which defines the "complete-match-time": We have had it 30 years ago when we played chess by using postcards. One game had to be finished within, for example, one year.

Fencer: "breaking the record of the longest option description" should be awarded with at least 20 achievement-points

seriously, you could bring some extra achievement-points in, or simply some of your personal choice, to award some of the most creative feature-requesters...

talen314: i totally agree. Hope we can see this here soon!

Does the pond automatically go to the next round, when all players have made their move?

Or do the players have to wait until the regular "deadline" is over?

Bwild: yep. its a shame that the poker section seems to be asleep nowadays...

Maybe a small but useful change, in order to vitalize the poker-section of this site:

A red number in the very left column, like the number that shows how many games have to be played - this number may show how many people are currently on the tables...

I spend some minutes from time to time to check out if some of us are playing poker or waiting - just to realize there was nobody. Then i leave this section and forget the idea...

grenv: have to look at it... Nh2...

grenv: yes. correct. but i appreciate it was posted here cause i wouldnt have seen it there...

grenv: nice one...

happyjuggler0:

yessss...

grenv:

nice bug anyway if it is a bug...

plaintiger: yesssssssssssssss!

Black is obviously in disadvantage in this game. Black has to checkmate white, this is only possible if white makes a couple of bad moves... . - How about giving black the win when, for example, two of the pawns reach the last row?

Fencer:in order to make it clear:
its not about general disadvantage because your opponent moves first. its very special in halma because strong opponents often get home with the same amount of moves. this is not like this in chess, not even in mancala, maybe sometimes in pah tum...

this is not really a feature request...

but a silly little  idea i just discussed with an opponent:

THE TIME-OUT ALARM CLOCK!

many plaers lose their games while sleeping and timing out.
lets create and sell a this alarm-clock, which is connected via router to the internet and always wakes you up when youre about to lose a game without vacation days and so on... ;-)))

many psychologists around the world may have more to work -

there are many games around the world that allow a draw when the amount of moves is the same... we shouldnt change them all... - but in halma its all about this very special skill...

can we change the halma rules a little bit???
- black is in disadvantage, we all know. white starts and if both make same amount of moves and both need one move more
(which happens quite often),
white wins by the advantage of beginning...

MadMonkey:

yes. of course you are right and it would be interesting to have all that discussed here.
i just abused your thread to spread my opinion to the others... lol...

but in fact maybe some sophisticated game-players around here may enrich that new-born "news-section" with critical comments - so we do not just follow the mainnewsstream here... - i would, at least, read the comments of that discussion board even with more interest that watching the "real" news on TV... ;-)

MadMonkey: well - I will agree on your request for a discussion board about "world news" as soon as the chosen news really represent the "real world".

How do i mean that?

As an example, my now 7-year-old daughter does not want to catch the schoolbus for a while now. And why not? Cause she is linked to the "real world" by watching some news on a TV-channel every day - and no she is thinking that in the real world there is a bus-accident every day and - logically speaking - her schoolbus must have a daily accident, too...

Stopping my offtopic-opinion by telling all how angry I am on the people who are responsable to tell us what the real world is.

KnightFighter:

Although i agree with the idea of more competetion, i would find it unfair to remove the option of vacation.

If my priority will change temporarily tomorrow due to the circumstances of life, i am still happy
to stay here and play slower tourneys,

like Bobes right now - he used to be a smart, quick and competetive player here but now he decided to
slow down in order to have more time for his baby. Thats how it is - and he is right.

All usere here are free to chose how they want to play, to start fellowships that feed their needs etc., like Marfitalu did, for example.
The "here-and-now"-players can come together and play here and now, but it wouldnt be good,  neither for a paid-site-owner nor for its various members, to disable a good feature named vacations... .

KnightFighter:

I lost a cruel high amount of self-created "one-day-per-move - no-vacation-days" games... ;-)

i created them because i like those games with players who put their priority on the "competetion here and now".
and if i finally lose by timing out, i deserve that loss because the game was not so important for me then for my opponent.
(of course there are exceptions: three years ago my home burnt down and i didnt play for a couple of days, that was bad luck...
but this is life).

for the same reason, being focussed even more on one game, i created the idea of those new time-limits i mentiond at the beginning of this thread, by the way... ;-))

but of course it is not the solution to cancel the vacation days completely. the players who want the competetion here and now should create and sign in in more tourneys with no vacation days and/or simply _not_ play the vacation-tournaments... ;-)

Fencer:

Well, we all know the internet and we all know our computers (that might crash in such a situation, too ;-)) )
Such a thing can happen all the time, and the user who decides to play such a game knows about that possible risk before.

It may be interesting to give it a try
and a very special amplification of BK's power!

...and btw. we already have a similar risk here, on one-hour-games...
the ones who like that take that risk!

Fencer:

This is exactly why i asked.
Knowing that an idea may not but into life easily.

But i still might not have been able to show my point: Its a time-setting system which does not affect the game-time-limits.
But a limit, a countdown that counts backward _as soon as you accepted to move now_.
By clicking on a certain game, the time you have to think for one move starts counting.

The downtime is n ot affected, because if the server is down, noone can accept to make a move anyway...

MadMonkey:Aaah! Now i can see _your_ point at least and yes, this should be fixed in a way!

But i still believe my request was a different one: if a player _accepts_ to move by clicking on the game, then the countdown counts
and the timing out may happen within that move, e.g. after 10 seconds for _oned_ backgammon-move or three minutes for one logic-move. or lets say there is a 7-day time-limit for a chess game but as soon as you move, you can not exceed ten minutes moving time for the whole match.

And fencer, i agree that the option "no vacation" excludes the discussed problem - but tell me what dou you think of the mentioned idea of mine!