Howdy,

Any plans on plans on expending the availability of shogi variants on BrainKing like Chu Shogi?

grenv: As i see it.To many pawn,s have dropped done from a higher membership.Creating problems all over.

rabbitoid:

I think a better rule would be that if someone doesn't play then force a maximum possible bet for that player - which would reduce their total to 0 next time giving everyone equal information.

Games really require everyone have equal information to be a good game and since there are different time zones and everyone has different ability to be online a different amount of time - there is not equal information in this regard, giving some people an unfair advantage.

grenv: "wreck the game": No. It's one of the factors to be taken into account. Same as, for example, if you are in a 2-day pond, checking people's profiles to see if they've been online the last 2 days to place their bets.
By the way, it can backfire: I remember a pond where I placed a "surefire" bet and found myself swimming along with others when the so and so renewed his membership an hour before deadline

grenv: I think you are missing the point. No one is complaining about the change. People just want it announced, when it happens, so they know not to play that way. It is a major change.

grenv: Here ( Chugach #5 ) is a good example of how that works. Already three rounds can one go for 246 points, a bit boring, huh?

coan.net: You guys can try to convince me all you like, but I think such a rule is silly and wrecks the game, not that i care since becoming a pawn myself, just an observation.

grenv: No, at the time ponds were a "member exclusive feature" - so when people dropped their membership level, they are no longer able to play. (just like pawns are no longer to do much in a fellowship once their membership drops.)

I think it is found now that ponds are a little "stale" with all the same players, so allowing pawns to play a limited amount - in my opinion - will be a nice thing. (again, like others said - Fencer needs to make sure people are aware of the change since it can affect game play in a big way as explained already.)

rod03801: Still a bug, just injected in the design phase :)

grenv: No, that is how it was intended.

rod03801: seems like a programming bug.. if you start a game you should be allowed to finish.

grenv: Pawns were not allowed in ponds. If someone became a pawn, part way through a game, then they stopped being able to bid. It was a known strategy that if you saw someone become a pawn, you knew they couldn't bid anymore, so it was safe to bid one point above that player.

The point is, to make sure people realize that this strategy would no longer work, because pawns would now be able to bid.

joshi tm: I'm afraid I didn't parse that explanation, can you try to phrase differently?...

you are saying that pawns and non-pawns had different rules about what they are allowed to bet.. but that could be solved by just making the rules the same for everyone? Therefore I presume you meant something other than what you actually said?

grenv: Because the Pawns can post moves again. Pawns were before eliminated by posting an easy bet of 1 more of their last bet.

joshi tm: Why would allowing pawns to play a pond constitute a "rule change"? Who cares who the entrants are, it's the same game with the same "rules". Good grief.

rabbitoid: Yup, ythat's why I'd like to give limited play to the Pawns. They will surprise us, and of course, this rules change must only apply to the new generated ponds after them or announced with a bling bling flashing message box on the main page ;)

El Cid: Yes, was me

As a Big Boss i need to know which Tournaments my Fellowship has Teams already signed up for (whether i am in them or not) without having to open each Tournament. Thats the main issue.

As you say, a dot to show which Tournaments we are Captains of a Team in as well would be good.

I think this has been asked, but how about something like a blue dot on "team tournaments" page, on those tournaments where we are captain of a team

coan.net: That's exactly what I had in mind. As for allowing pawns to play a pond, or 2, or 5, I've been suggesting that for a long time now. The ponds have been drying up because lack of new faces for years. Remember when I used to start a daily one-day pond? I had to stop, because not enough people showed up at the end. There are only so many rooks, and most of them lost interest.

joshi tm: I think what he means is if a current rook drops to a pawn, they know to just bid 1 more then their last bid. If Fencer changes it so they can play and does not let everyone know, then they will fall in the pond because of the rule change. (at least that is what I took from it.)

My opinion - let pawns play, but limit to 5 ponds at a time (5 ponds where they are still running - if they fall in, let them join another) (and if they are a bishop+ and have more then 5, and drop down to a pawn - let them continue all that they started.)

rabbitoid: I do not think so. Strategy's will change a bit indeed. I think the game is better to play and the ponds will be filled up faster.

ChessVariant: some links to illustrate my idea:
http://gameknot.com/mt.pl?id=35733
http://gameknot.com/mt.pl?id=35088
http://gameknot.com/mt.pl?id=35098

ok, we have thousands of chess variants plus 960 or Fisher Random Chess ... I would like to introduce the whole new Class of Chess Openings, where figures stay in their traditional positions but PAWNS can (and must)be positioned anywhere (still chess rules apply though) on players half ... it's more like topical playing and for every white pawn black pawn is positioned symmetrically on the board ...
thje smallest number of pawns used for these games should be 3, the biggest 8 ... it's very creative approach to the game, everyone can be a creator of his/her game
and the number of different starting position is astronomical ... I play this kind of game on internet ...
it's never boring and even Fisher Random looks like it's younger brother ... I wish we could have this feature on brainking ...
Andy.

: i love the new poker game,,,kudos''' However two things i can think of that would be nicer,,least for me. In the scrolling box with actions,,"blue lines" and black for player chat. Its hard to keep track on just the winning hand..like say make it dark green "(player) wins with two pairs. etc"... Also the second countdown clock for player to do something the color would catch the eye more, even tho that one is not much of a big deal.

AbigailII: I don't know if it will help you, but I had a similar issue. If I lowered the size of everything (Ctrl and scroll), just slightly, it fixed the issue.

Could the box showing icon/name/chips at the poker tables be make a little taller? Currently (on my browser), the number of chips a person has falls halfway below the box, making the number hard to read if the person doesn't have cards, and almost impossible to read when the player has two cards (as the cards obscure the chip number).

rabbitoid: True.

Fencer: But if somebody does, I hope the somebody will give warning before, since the non-participation of pawns is an important part of the strategy

joshi tm: Because nobody made a change yet.

Well, since Brain Pawns can join poker tables, why pawns cannot join ponds still?

Artful Dodger:

Pedro Martínez:

Pedro Martínez:

"GERRY": Tomorrow, 5 p.m. ET.

When are the cheater,s on this site going to be BANNED?

could fellowship tourneys be allowed to make changes without administrator approval?

I deleted a fellowship a time ago but it looks like I cant join other teams anymore because I joined the teams of the deleted fellowship! What should I do?

For those who still see some parts of the site loading slow, check out this post:

Computers (coan.net, 2007-03-12 20:16:01)

I posted some information awhile back about things in the settings you can turn off. (for example, not having every menu load on the game pages allows the game pages to load quicker.)

Just some general tips which may help.

Fencer: I see the page show, but only half the board displays, then the page slowly fills in the details. Actually it's faster today than yesterday.

Perhaps capturing the move in a text box would be a good option... instead of needing to refresh the page each move (i'm thinking of backgammon where i need to refresh the page 4 times if I roll a double, but if there was a text box i could type 24-20 24-20 18-14 18-14 or something like that it would be quicker)

"GERRY": The whole BrainKing is pop-up free. Guaranteed.

Fencer: Mine works good for awhile then a pop up show's. Try again.Other then that its good.

grenv: Is your browser slowed down or is it just waiting for the server response for a longer time?

Fencer: When I make a move the board takes a long time to refresh with the new position.

grenv: Nothing is slowing the site down. According to our stats, it is fast as usual.

Seems to me the site has slowed down to a crawl recently. 5-10 second page refreshes even with the "lite" checkbox checked.

I therefore request "fewer" features.. can we eliminate whatever is slowing the site down?

any speed indication would have to be per game type as people play certain games faster than other games (i sure do :))

MadMonkey: Put us monkeys in charge and everyone goes bananas 

joshi tm: "...show a graph of a players move history" --> That's right. It was discussed too, but nothing happened.

coan.net: the "speed rating" limit --> great idea, I like it. Another way to sift out those obtrusive players.

Artful Dodger:

MadMonkey:   I could  help with writing the code but that would cause a huge problem as nothing would then work.