pauloaguia: I haven't been able to figure out how to comment on the blog yet, so I just vote on the "karma".

On the public waiting games board, is there anyway that the games in Itallics ( bkr not being calcualted for that game) can be in a different colour than blue.

On the right site my main page I have Favourite boards & Fellowships.
I'm a member about 40 felloships.
Between Friends online & Fellowships I have about 50 favourite boards (40 from fellows & 10 from main discusion board).
It is possible to make RED NUMBER (new messages) in Fellowships column?

Could we have the possibility to hide ponds in the main page, like it happens with games

Is it possible to show, on a player's profile page, the number of own turn games, next to total started games (like 25/73), sometimes I go to my opponent's page, just to see if it is expected that (s)he makes the next move quickly, or not, and to know that I have to load the page with ALL the started games (it could save bandwidth, in a case like 100/3500 games)

I would like to see a "Private Tournament list", like our "Friends list", where we can add players for future private tournament invitations. Often I play certain fast-playing amiable players of the sort that I would like to invite to private tournaments. It would be nice to be able to add them to this sort of list. As it is now, it is very time-consuming to personally invite certain players to a private tournament. Also, it is impossible to remember all of the potential players that one would like to invite. An option when creating a private tournament could be: "Invite the members of my Private Tournament list". Then you could check the boxes next to the names of the individuals that you would like to invite, so it is more of a one-step process.....
Under each player's profile, where it says "Add this person to my Friends list", we could have a box saying "Add this person to my Private Tournament list."

Teams that do not have a Captain can not send out a challenge match
In any other Team that has a Captain the Big Boss can send out challenges, which is right as they should have access to all Fellowship tools.
So why, just as a Team does not have a Captain can the Big Boss not send out challenges ?
I only noticed this really as the Team that has no Captain CAN be challenged by another Fellowship, but it will have to be up to the Big Boss to accept or reject it.
Second problem, the Big Boss will not know they have been challenged, unless they happen to be looking at there Fellowship page or get a PM (like i just did, thanks labbeda).

Could it be made so the Big Boss also send out challenges for Teams that have no Captain and also could the challenge automatically be sent to them if there is no Captain

MadMonkey: That is just like the Big Boss taking on captain on all teams. I saw that with a fellowship recently, and the Big Boss gets overwhelmed with many teams to answer and challenge for, even up to two or three dozen teams.
I wonder why so many players on a team with no captain refuse to take on even one captainship. I recently took on several teams as captain, even teams I was not playing on before, just because of the apathy among the players. It is hard to understand teams of five or six players and no captain.

emmett: I totally agree with you. I think some people think that being a Captain means a lot of work, which of course it does not

The Big Boss should have all tools open to him anyway. I mean, he can accept any challenge anyway if he sees it waiting. It just seems silly he can not send out a challenge because there is no Captain.

I am lucky in the Madhouse really, with so many Teams, it is rare to find one without a Captain

OK, a lot of players like dice games - and chance games - well here is an easy one.

Even-Odd

Game is played with 2 dice, to 10 points.

Game starts.

Player 1 picks either even or odd

Dice are rolled

Add the total - if player 1 was correct, they get a point - if wrong, player 2 gets a point.

Next turn - Player 2 picks either even or odd

- - Repeat until someone makes it to 10 points.

Simple easy chance game - and even though it probable sounds stupidly silly to some, some of the most popular games on the site are (1) Simple, (2) Easy, and (3) are chance games.

coan.net: I'm not overly fond of this game since it seems to involve zero skill.

gambler104: Yup, just a totally fun luck game. Probable not for everyone - but after seeing other luck based dice games on the site be pretty popular, we would probable be surprised at how well this would do also.

coan.net: How about this: Random numbers assigned at the start of the game, and the winner is the one closest to 5.8. We'd get through the games quickly.

coan.net: But all those luck based dice games require at least a little bit of skill - in every of those games you have to make decisions about probability - and you can make good and bad decisions. In Even/Odd there are no good/bad decisions. Just lucky/unlucky ones.

Gordon Shumway: That was my basic point. All of the other dice games require some (although sometimes minimal) skill. even/odd as described has no skill. I guess some people may still enjoy it though.

gambler104: Isn't Roulette kinda like that? There's no skill involved in it, is there?

Eriisa: Nobody plays roulette for fun, only for money. Playing for money is not possible here.

Eriisa: The only skills I've seen in roulette were possessed by those who recognized and exploited non-random elements in table games.  Their schemes and stories are legendary.

wetware:

people have written even whole books about roulette-strategies...

diogenysos: Dostoevsky - The Gambler

We're getting off topic here. can we take it to another board?

Thanks

emmett:

in the late 70s, some scientific students ruined a couple of casinos after studying and exploring the chaos-theory very successfully... . - its said that at least determining the speed of the marble thrown by the croupier and the speed of the wheel as well may increase your possibilities to win in roulette. - of course, this ain't possible with a "virtual croupier"...



@tazman: which board do you prefer?

Anyplace that doesn't say "feature" requests:)

tazman7474:

please allow some chaos... .
changing the group would normally mean to kill the issue.

and - you may know - discussing about changing the board is not a relevant issue for this board either ;-)))

Further off topic posts will be removed. Thanks.

diogenysos: FYI, that was a request from a board mod:)

diogenysos: I'd like to take a moment to direct your attention to the upper right hand corner of this board. There you'll find the names of the moderaters of this board:)

a feature request:
highlighting the moderators names in a different colour
in order to avoid such misunderstandings... ;.-)))

in ice-age-chess, pieces are removed from the board after move 20 - 40 - 60... when not surrounded by any other piece.

it would be good to have those pieces displayed as "being captured" like in normal chess.
right now, players do not get any information like that!

I'd like a button to retire from all Stairs, either on our profile page or on the myStairs list page.
Oh, and another to get out of Retire, for when I'm back

"Anti 5 Shot"

The object is to outline your opponents ship without hitting it... if you hit you opponent ship five times the game is over....
I created this variation 15yrs ago...

Blue Duck: That sounds really good 

how about dominoes or scrabble on the site? what do you think?

ScorpionOct64: I agree, but scrabble would be difficult because of different languages and dictionaries

nodnarbo: Actually if I remember correctly, Fencer liked the idea to make scrabble - well not scrabble, but a scrabble-like word game.

languages & dictionaries would not be that hard of an issue - I know in at least English, and probable other languages - there are "free" dictionaries that can be used. Basically at a start of a game, someone would just have to choose which language/dictionary to use. (So you would have to play someone with the same language.)

Of course I'm not sure if Fencer is planning to make this game or anything, but just remember he liked the idea of the game.

nodnarbo: but scrabble would be difficult because of different languages and dictionaries

Why? Technically, it isn't that difficult, most of the code will be language independent. The language stuff will be just a dictionary, and a mapping of letters to frequences and points. There may be some tricky policy decisions, for instance whether you're going to consider scrabble in language X a different variant from scrabble in language Y or not (and hence have separate ratings and tournaments), or whether the language played is like the number of points to play to in a backgammon match (which is all lumped together in ratings).

That is, if you are going to make scrabble versions for all languages. But many languages only have a handful of active people. One could just recognize that English is the most wildly used language here (by a large margin) and just offer scrabble (or a similar game) in English. And yes, it would be unfair for the person who only speaks Tiki-Tiki, he wouldn't be able to play. But he won't be able to play if the game isn't there, so it's hardly a loss.

coan.net: The official list of words for French Scrabble can be downloaded here : http://perso.orange.fr/ledefi/ODS4.TXT

I would think that the Scrabbles in different language should better be defined as different games, with different rating lists.

Of course playing only in English is feasible, but not very fair. My French vocabulary should be around 50000 words, while my English one is probably around 2000 words. I can probably still have some fun while playing in English, but considerably less. And if I play both in English and in French for the same rating list, I will screw the ratings.

By the way, competition French Scrabble is almost never played by the original rules, but almost always in the duplicated form : both players use the same letters on the same grid, and are aiming for the all-best score for the current turn, without any strategical consideration. Then either the best word of the two is placed on the grid, either the all-best word according to the computer. This variant is supposed to get rid of the big luck factor that "family Scrabble" (the name of the original game) has.

I suppose that duplicate Scrabble would be feasible on Brainking, using the no-computer rule for choosing the word to place, and having players search for their word in turn, without seeing the choice of the opponent.

nabla: personally I am not a huge fan of Scrabble online because of my experiecne with it over at iyt. I played a couple of times over there and I found that many players were using a dictionary to help them (granted iyt did not heavily discourage this). for me, this takes all the fun out of the game. I'm not saying that this will happen at BK but I think that it is a consideration that must be taken into account.

gambler104: I hope we leave scrabble out of this site.

gambler104: Sadly there is no way to guarantee people not using a dictionary, there are so many on line even without the ones on Scrabble sites.
Its easier to just leave it that anyone can use it, because after years of running Tournaments at BugCafe someone always will.
If they want to win that badly, let them
Sad, but true

MadMonkey: Scrabble is *much* more than just knowing which words you can play. At best a dictionary can give you is a list of possible words to play. (Which, assuming the game is implemented in such a way that invalid words are rejected, can be gotten from the system as well, with some patience). A dictionary doesn't give a suggestion what a good move is. Unlike, say, a chess or backgammon program.

In the Team Tournament list, could we have another colour dot (blue maybe) to let Big Bosses know, which Teams have been entered from there Fellowship. At present we can not tell, only if we are in a entered Team as a player.
There is no way to know apart from going in to each one otherwise.
Would make it easier to know which Teams are waiting to be entered or may need players.

AbigailII: I agree, as much as I am against using external help, I don't see any harm in using a dictionary, as long as it is an usual alphabetically ordered dictionary and not an anagram dictionary. Using the latter would take 50% of the skill off the game and should be banned in the same way as computer help is.

Scrabble is probably not in the top 100 of my wish list, I would play some if it was here though. I have not been too enthousiastic about the latest games added on Brainking. More and more games with a heavy luck factor, and some of the more interesting ones (Mancala, Recycle Chess) implemented with rules making them less interesting. In comparison, Scrabble would be a good addition.

I propose that we have another discussion board for reporting access failures of the brainking site and exceptionally slow uploading. I've been unable to get onto the site for five minutes (again!). Lately, many people have reported how slow brainking has been over the past ten days. I think it is a symptom of a larger problem. This whole site seems like it is ready to crash

emmett: It was not too bad today (well 10 hours i have been here so far lol), but the last 3 hours or so it has gone crazy.
The downtime seems to be getting longer, it only used to be between 30 secs to a minute for me, BUT last couple of days up to 5 mins at times.
I would like (but do not know how easy it would be) to have a Discussion Board (Simular to the .info Board) separate from the main brainking site (so would have to have a different domain name or that would be down as well lol) that we could goto any time really to find out if it is just 'ANOTHER' few minutes downtime or a major crash , BUT at least we could still have a chat and find out whats happening.
I have a Madhouse one on PalTalk, that i have not opened in a while, but at least could still find people if brainking was down.
I know we could use messengers, but saves the hassle of downloading one or creating new email addy etc...
Saying that, i think Firefox has its own that you can download. I shall look into that

emmett: I hope we leave scrabble out of this site.

I don't understand this sentiment. It's one thing to not like to play Scrabble for whatever reason (for instance, because you don't like the game, because you only speak Tiki-tiki and you can't play it in Tiki-tiki, because you're afraid your opponent uses a dictionary, whatever). But then you can just decide to not play Scrabble. Noone will force you.

But I don't understand why you'd hope this game will never appear on Brainking.

AbigailII: Scrabble is not a strategy game.

Have you ever seen Pogo.com? It is littered with games that draw a huge dice-loving American participation. It is also littered with advertisements. Brainking seemed like a strategy-based site two years ago. It offered classic games worth studying and competing in. The more that brainking tries to add, the weaker and less-focused it will become.

emmett: Scrabble is not a strategy game.

It's not? As opposed to, oh, say, Behemoth Chess? Or Maharajah Chess? Or Dice Poker? Or Ludo? IMO, there's more strategy in Scrabble than in many of the games currently being offered on Brainking.

But even if some game wasn't a strategy game, so what? If you only want to play strategy games, and you think certain games aren't, then don't play them.

As for pogo.com, I haven't seen it. But I can't make heads nor tails from your argument. Even if there would be a connection between dice-loving Americans and advertisements (which I doubt there is), I'd like to stress out that the game of Scrabble doesn't involve dice. Unlike the game you have played most on Brainking, Dice Chess.

AbigailII: Scrabble is all about strategy... which letters should I keep? Should i play the 50 point play and leave myself with crappy letters, or the 30 point play that gives me a better chance at the 7 letter word next time. Should I leave that triple word open because i get a good score doing it? etc etc

Just thought i would ask again for another Move and Goto option.

Could we have, Move and Goto next game with Pawn OR Move and Goto next NON-Tournament game.

I play mostly Tournaments these days(about 95%), but still play Pawns i know or ones that are new to brainking.
It would be a great help to Me, Other Members and Pawns if we could pick these games out quicker

I think it would be a better way to encourage Pawns to join if they spent more time here playing rather than playing a move then having to wait a day or two.

.......pleazzze .......It is such a hassle trying to find the pawns on a list every time I come here so I can play them instead of them having to be bored and leave because they're forever waiting on me to move