THE HIT MAN: The Fishers stairs use the Fisher clock

3/0.3/7

It means you start out with 3 days for your move.

Lets say you use 1 day to move (down to 2 days)

-- opponenet moves, back to you --

The .3 means 3 hours are added each time, so now you have 2 days, 3 hours to move.

Opps - you let it get down to 1 hours before you move (1 hour left)

-- oppenent moves --

3 hours are added, leaving you 4 hours total to move.

(The 7 is the max number of days you can get your total moves to. So if you move within 3 hours each time, you will start to increase time)

THE HIT MAN: It's all dependant on the timing. Each of you has a separate clock with your individual times. If your opponent moves 5 minutes after you do then he'll lose 5 minutes from his clock. If you take an hour to get back then you lose an hour. Hey presto he's got a 55 minute advantage.

If he makes a move just before you go offline for the night then that's a several hours advantage.

It's a good strategy to give priority to your Fischer's games and play as often as possible, even popping in for a minute at several points during the day just to check those matches. If you can arrange to get up several times during the night as well.... LOL.

You've got 500+ matches going at the moment. You might want to add your voice to the feature request that Fischer's matches be sortable to the top of the games list.

THE HIT MAN: There is a time limit on the Fast Fishers stairs 2 days i think, but that would be the same fopr your opponent

Could someone explain why games come back to me from these stairs with not much time left on them,while they go back to opponent with lots of time on them.I am starting to loose games because of this,because of timing out

BIG BAD WOLF: Thank you! That's a handy bit of information there.

Pioneer54: Yup, Princess Alison is correct - it is just for the 1 game - not the whole match.

Pioneer54: I think its just a draw for that game, but dont quote me on it.

If your opponent offers a draw in the first game of a 2-game match and you agree, is the match a draw or just the first game?

657: The retired date does not run out. You must finish it yourself and then you reappear on your current position.

Fencer: lol. Phew!

playBunny: Anyway, I must implement it first.

Biggus Baddus: Hopefully not even then. It's nice to have a few emopty steps underneath and take a breather. I'd only want a compression if an unassailable gap opened up.

Princess Alison: Not for long

Andre Faria: Probable once a month, any gaps in the steps will be squeezed - that way no one gets *WAY* out from where they don't have the option to even challenge anyone themselves.

(but I'm not even sure that part of the stairs is working or programmed yet - but I believe Fencer was thinking once a month.)

BIG BAD WOLF: But Fencer said that gaps will be minimized by the system... Once a week or something...

dmk: That is correct. Once you at the top (or even on the bottom), you do not have to challenge anyone - so in a way, you can protect your spot until someone climbs up to you to challenge you.

Is there anything to prevent the person at the top of the stairs to not challenge. No one can challenge him until they reach the same height, right? So they can just chill at the top until someone gets to the same stair and challenges them (if they have an open challenging slot of course)

so the fall will be high... Just joking :)

Im top of the stairs, im top of the stairs

playBunny: aha. thank you, pB.

plaintiger: It uses the Fischer's clock time control which means that the time is for the entire game rather than per move.

what's a Fischer's Stair? how is it different from regular stairs? thanks...

I am one of those new players who almost ducked out but I wanted to play more games than those minimum allowed, and I wound up as a paid member. Thanks for the info playBunny, and I hope I turn out to be one of those Halma players to stirr up a few high rannked players. Stairs--Why can't a castle have more than one stairs for the enjoyment of so many stairs players?

Fencer: What a champion

Fellowship Stairs are planned. So are the Ponds.

playBunny: Hum... A private stair for fellowships.

I would hate to see many more public stairs for the fact that too many will spread people out too much - unless one or a couple were designated as "official" stairs - and that is the stairs you would want to join to play the best of the best.

BBW: I'll second that, though I'd prefer the background highlighting (as per games) rather than a bold font.

Fencer: Is there any purpose for the Creator column? Will anyone else be allowed to create Stairs?

Fencer: So you go to the Main Stairs page, then click on the "Show your stairs only" to get to your own page where you can see the bold for if you are able to challenge.

Any chance to get the same bold feature when you look at your own profile's stairs section?

This page shows [in bold font] where you can send a challenge [without examining the Stairs one by one].

WhisperzQ: Look again.

Fencer: So many little tricks ... and the total? :)

Fencer: I've seen that one before but I'd forgotten it.

The 30 days value is about 4100. It doesn't seem to discount the non-countable one-peekers, though, so I'd say my estimate is more accurate as an active players count whereas the languages page (and the raw players list) is a logins count.

WhisperzQ: The link is below the language flags.

Fencer: Great link Fencer ... never seen it before. Can I suggest a further line at the bottom which would be a total (yeah I know, get the calculator and add them up yourself, but I am a lazy sod :)

BerniceC: The idea about ratings is that they are a gauge of ability. (Not strictly true but we won't go into that). A high rated player is deemed stronger than a lower rated one. The thinking then is that if a weaker player draws with the stronger player then they must have played better. (Pretty much true in Chess, not so true in Backgammon). But that means they played better when the rating says they should have played worse, so the ratings need to be adjusted to fit reality. Thus the lower rating goes up a bit and the higher one comes down.

playBunny: Why don't you use the more about languages page instead?

Pioneer54: Regarding that 20,000 players value: Go to the Players list and sort it by Last action so that today's action is shown. Then go to about page 85. That shows the players whose last action was about a month ago. There are 50 players shown per page so thats about 4250 players in the last month.

If you examine that page you'll see that there are a lot of Pawns who joined, had a look around and haven't been back since. The number of those decreases as you come further towards the present day. I counted 20 on page 85, 30 on the previous page, 35, 34, 33 on previous pages. On page 70 it was down to 20 non-countables, page 60 had 13... So let's say about 600 players in all. There are those who were active more than a month ago but who will be back sometime, but probably much fewer than the one-peekers. That's then roughly 3700 active players.

Pioneer54: It's very much too early to think that anything has settled down (unless few new players join!) but you're right in thinking that the stairs will stratify. That's the whole point of them! ;-) ("Cliques" isn't quite the right word because there's no collusion or relationship between the players, their positioning is the result of their playing strength.)

Strong new blood will cause a minor stir as that player rises through the ranks but for the players in the regions below their destined destination it will only be a passing excitement. Weaker new blood will reach its level sooner.

I imagine that the Stairs will grow as a kind of pyramid. The players at the top can only go up when there are challengers below and they may be in short supply (either absent because the higher player has climbed too high, or too busy with each other and those below). This limits the absolute growth rate of the Stairs. For each succeeding lower level there will be a wider and wider choice of players. I suspect that those on the uppermost levels will be able to make a complaint about stagnation but I doubt that many players below would.

BerniceC: right - what Fencer said. because Your rating is well higher than SandyH's, the system (quite logically) regards Her drawing a game with You as something of an accomplishment on Her part (and thus something worthy of reward) and conversely it sees Your drawing a game with Her as - shall we say - an incidence of Your not playing up to Your potential (and thus something worthy of demerit). She's rewarded with some points; You're demerited some. and there it is.

BerniceC: Because you've drawn a game with a lower rated player, you lost some points. I see nothing stupid on it.

Isn't there going to come a point in time when the whole 'Stairs' project will become saturated? That is, everyone who is going to join has, and certain game types will end up with cliques of sorts that just keep cycling each other. I wonder if we are near or at that point already. If not, where will new blood come from?

It seems that Rooks are the only ones with options to enter a high number of different stairs. I suppose it could be argued that, with over 20,000 pawns, there are at least that many possible entries into the experiment, but that is not happening, in fact not even on a scale anywhere close to it.

I have just finished a game with SandyH...one game each......she GOT 5 points and I LOST 4 points....it said the game was a draw....why would I lose and why should she gain....this is stupid in my book :(

here are the final results....we both should have stayed where we were :(

The game is a draw.

SandyH: old BKR = 1914, new BKR = 1919 (+5)
BerniceC: old BKR = 1992, new BKR = 1988 (-4)

Game type: Backgammon
Stairs: Fast Stairs

plaintiger: If the players are equally matched, the probability of a split is 50%. So, if you are seeing nothing but splits in a lot of matches, that may indicate a glitch somewhere. However, I can't imagine how a bug like that could work its way into the system, since (among other things) the dice generator must be independent of the match format. So, I suggest that what you are seeing is purely the result of chance. In time, every event that is merely improbable must happen.

Marfitalu: Pardon my grammar, I should have said "each player wins one game."

Eriisa: Yes and yes.

And with that player just below you, if you lose then you effectively swap places. And if you win you open up a gap.

If I am on step 2, and I challange someone on step 1. And I win. Do I still go to step 3? If I lose, do I drop to step 1?

(the stair I am looking at, the only open player is a step below me)

Come to think about it, not instead of... add it as another alternative, since if a player proved a worthy opponent, it's perfectly legit to want to challenge him/her again for another standard game...

When a match is finished, a message is sent to both players stating the outcome of the match. An option is also available to send another game invitation to that player, optionally deleting the message.
In Stairs games, instead of "another game with the same player" could there be an option "challange another player in this Stair" or something similar? Maintaining the option to automatically delete the message, of course ;)

speaking of a lot of draws, i know this is far-fetched, but it's happened to me so much that i'm compelled to ask: there isn't some bug or something in the stair code that greatly increases the likeihood of a two-game match ending in a draw, is there? i don't think i've played a single two-game match in any stair that hasn't ended in a draw, and when i commented on that just now to an opponent (with whom i'd just drawn a two-game match), he said he's seen the same thing. whole lotta drawin' goin' on...

rod03801: But in the Fischer's very fast stairs, it is only a single game match!