coan.net: In ponds, ratings swing extravangently, especially when you fall in an early round.

wetware: I get the same with Dice Chess. I used to think it was just because it was a new game, but as it is not anymore and i have played may games like yourself i do not know why it seems to make huge changes to BKR's

My poor graph looks like a ............ well a upey, downey thing

rednaz23: That had me puzzled for some time too. That different games have different rating scales is absolutely normal, those depend on the skill differences (new games have few experts) and the "skill factor" of the game (a very skillful - and long - game will have bigger rating differences). But the average rating of all players should remain approximatively equal to the entry rating (1400 if I remember correctly).

What happens in backgammon is probably that many players have hundreds of started games when they suddenly leave the site and lose all games on time. As a result they fall to a ridiculous rating, but this rating disappears from the lists because they are not active any more. An average on all players, including the inactive ones, should be much closer to 1400 than the average you see on the ranking lists.

The ratings would be more realistic if they were shifted from time to time to center them around the 1400 value. But it is not really required if you keep in mind that absolute ratings do not necessarily have any meaning, only rating differences have.

wetware : It is not correct that rating differences are capped to 400 in the USCF=BK system.

nabla: I think there should be some sort of cap to BKR changes for a simple reason.

Earlier this year my ratings for Ataxx & Assimilation (among others) were 1800+

Then because my computer had a meltdown, i lost a lot of games (about 600) through timing out.

The problem is, that when i got back i was still in Tournaments i had entered with my high ratings, playing other top players. Obviously, many of them suffered badly (BKR changes up to 200) when i won any games as my BKR was under 1000 by then.

I personally feel sorry for those players as it was not done on purpose, and the same could happen anytime to anyone

Maybe a solution to this is games Won or Lost by timing out should not be counted by BKR.

MadMonkey wrote: "Maybe a solution to this is games Won or Lost by timing out should not be counted by BKR."

Then there would be a bunch of kids timing out intentionally when losing.

MadMonkey:
>Maybe a solution to this is games Won or Lost by timing out should not be counted by BKR.

No way ! I know a lot of players who would deliberately time out in a lost position if it was the case.
I don't think there is any good solution to the massive time-out problem. My philosophy would be that your opponents were going to win their BKR points back soon if they were worth them. It sometimes happen that you play underrated opponents, but don't forget that it also happens that you play overrated opponents - e.g. the ones you timed out against :-)

fakar10: You got me, I am too verbose :-)

fakar10: As it is i get numerous taken out of the Waiting Room by people who never move and just time-out. I get nothing for that

That was just an idea, but i was asked many times by top players what happened to my rating in various games.
Yet, they would still have to play me in those Tournaments and lose a lot of BKR when normally, they would of only changed by 10 or something either way.

Your point is valid of course, people would just time-out when losing.

I just think there should be a better and fairer way

nabla: I am not asking for the rating changes to be less (if i fall early on in a Pond, I deserve the crash in my rating!!0. What i want is for my new rating to be calculated as soon as I fall. Then I can concentrate on winning some Ponds to restore my rating.

tonyh: I didn't say anything against your suggestion, actually I find it valid. Using the info as soon as it is available should be more accurate. Probably it is just more complicated to implement.

MadMonkey: A way to fix the crashing rating prooblem is to keep track of the bkr when a game is started and calculate gain or loss for each oponent right off the bat using the starting value. That way if your raiting crashes by 1000 do to a bad computer your oponent still only loses 10 though you would still only gain 10.

mctrivia: A very sensible suggestion Matthew

mctrivia: A very sensible suggestion Matthew

MadMonkey: Atleast that way when you start a game you know how much it will raise or lower your score if you win or lose.

I've noticed that New Stairs within fellowships can't be defined until members have joined the team of the game in question.

Maybe this is a bad idea, since BK has general stairs for all. But my question is this...

Would it be possible to establish internal f/s stairs not based on team membership? I have a checkers club which is non-team oriented and whose membership makes up the teams of other fellowships.

The Usurper: They don't have to be on the team to be in the Stairs. In fact, all you have to do is create the team long enough to create the Stairs, and then you can delete the team.

rod03801: Excellent! Thanks Rod.

i am currently in a tournament (http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=24546&tri=212476), but have finished all of my games as of more than a month ago, but one of the games(the last one in the round-robin part of the tourney) is still going on. i know that for most people, this isnt a problem, but being a pawn, it means i can't join another tournament.

since i have no chance of making the final game, it would be nice if there was a way to resign from the tourney so i could start another one without having to wait months for two guys to leisurely finish their game

tippyc: I think, but not sure, send Fencer a pm and he might be able to remove you from the tourney, so you can enter another one, but i stand to be corrected though.

Oceans Apart: no need for that anymore. madmonkey just made me a bishop. thanks madmonkey!!

tippyc: Woo - Hoo ... Mad Monkey is the man Would you like a Tourney to celebrate the Bishop? Let me know

srnity: oh yes, any tourny that i like

Welcome to membership land tippyc

(p.s. nice guy that chimp lol)

MadMonkey: I seached high & low, but I couldn't find confirmation of that on snoops.com

oh and woohoo! tippyc!

I sent you an invite to the Zoo Fellowship. Lots of fun in there.

First request: Would like an option to turn off the e-mail notification when the bug tracker is updated. I don't like getting e-mail's when it is my turn, nor do I need e-mails when the bug tracker is updated.

Second request: What would be helpful is a private PM when the bug tracker is updated with a bug that I have submitted or commented in.

coan.net: the bug tracker emails updates????

Eriisa: It does for me - that is whenever there is a reply to one of my bugs, or if I reply to another bug (and others reply to a thread I replied in) - I get an e-mail message about the bug being updated.

... which of course when I read e-mail, I'm not on BrainKing and don't care about it - so would be much better if those messages were sent to the BK Message Box.

You don't get any e-mails? Is your e-mail address in your profile correct?

coan.net: I dont get emails either , but i took the tick out so i wouldnt recieve them, dont think that will work the the bug tracker thing though

coan.net: yes, email is correct, but I don't have it to send emails "if the opponent makes a move and I am not online"

Eriisa: strange.... I don't have that marked either, but I get them...... Maybe I'm just special... but I don't want to be - I already get enough spam, don't need to know about BK when I'm not signed on....

coan.net: LOL, I dont get any email either!

coan.net: No, you're not special
It's a bug that's been around forever, I guess: http://brainking.com/pt/ReadBug?bgi=463

I would like an option to send a message to all fellowship moderators.

Cheri: send the message to tazman and he can forward it to all the members of the mod squad

Vikings: That wouldn't help for her Fellowship Moderators, they may not be a public board mod.

Eriisa: duh, I guess I read that wrong

Vikings: I would like an option to send a message to all of the moderators in my fellowship.

I sometimes play my games in a block, ie all the Ludo games then Backgammon games, would it be possible to have a games count of the type of game being played at the time ie 12 / 18... 12 games left to play out of a total of 18

I did mention this a while ago, but it may have got lost on your To-Do list Fencer

When playing certain game like Dark Chess & Logik, a lot of us use the Move and Stay Here option to see the outcome of our last move.

It is great having the 'Play the next game of ********' option still on the screen so we can carry on after.

But that is only there IF there is another game of that type to play NOT if that game is over on the last move or there are no more games of that type to play

So my request is:

That we replace it with our Drop Box option so we can choose to go where ever (Next Game, Main Page, Game of Simular Type etc, etc...).....

Most Useful i would say

When I invite someone to play a game by giving their email address, the invitation email does not give my referral URL.

It should contain:

http://brainking.com?refuid=14825

but the email just has the basic URL:

http://www.brainking.com/

gborland: No, it should not. You must place the referral link to your own pages elsewhere. It has nothing to do with emails.

A few suggestions for fellowships I've been gathering for a while now:

1. Add more pages to fellowships Right now there's a Main Page and a Waiting Games page. I think the Main Page could well be split up into 4 or 5 different extra pages
   
2. Let BB know what players are blocking fellowhip messages. I know some users don't like to recive messages from the BB because they read the DBs. I know some don't read the DBs and just get the news from the fellowship from the messages the BB sends them. Thing is I keep having to repeat myself at both places because I'm not sure if I'm reaching everybody or not.
   
3. Small and large fellowhip description. Let us have a small and a large text for the fellowship. Large text could appear on main fellowship page only, and members could have the option to hide it they wish. Some fellowhips have huge descriptions that you need to scroll down every time to get to where the interesting information is...
   
4. Improve Team naviagtion. Right now, if I want to get out of 10 teams I have a hard task ahead of me: select team on combobox, click button, scroll down, click leave team, scroll down, select team on combobox, etc. If I want to get out of most of them, or need to remove someone from all, it's a nightmare. Can there be a page with all teams from the fellowship where a player can simply (un)check the teams (s)he belongs to?
   </ol>
   I think that's enough for now. I'll save the rest for later...
   
   I like having fellowhips on this site and the possibilities associated with them. I think it could be even better if they were more user friendly
   

Fencer: so if I invite someone by email, do I still get Brains if they pay for membership? Or do I only get Brains if they follow the referral link?

pauloaguia: nice list I have one like that as well, but much longer

I think the one that is most important and has been asked for numerous times since Fellowships started is to have a Mini Boss, who has all the power of the Big Boss accept being able to delete the Fellowship.

Then people could ask to join anytime & not have to wait, be turned into Managers / Captains easier, challenges excepted, Tournaments set etc..... etc....

Would save having to Swap Bosses when someone is on holiday or suddenly vanishes

I was asked to play for a Team the other day, but i can not as i can not be invited to the Fellowship as the owner is now a Pawn and not here, but others in the Fellowship want it to carry on

I would request a "Game Request" Discussion Board page. Sometimes I just read very good ideas for new BK games on other discussion board, but they get buried in there and will be forgotten.

joshi tm: I asked for one a few months ago but Fencer said no

He said he did not have time to work on new games and when he did he already had some of his own

I still think the site would benefit by one. Other games do get mentioned all over the place and then lost on boards.

At least if they were mentioned in one place they could be looked at when ever by Fencer or anyone

MadMonkey: you say Fencer has a list of games to work on, wouldn't it be nice if we knew what they were? I think it would be nice to know what Fencer is planning on adding to the site, that way if something is asked for that person doesn't have to feel like they have to repeat it every once in a while so it is remembered.

nodnarbo: Well it would be nice, but then i guess we would get no surprises

I just think it makes sense to have a board about turn based games (old ,new and ones we invent) as that is what the site is about

Recently, I've been playing some Pah Tum, and have just read BK's discussion board on the game--much of which was devoted to finding ways to diminish the first player's advantage (which seems rather pronounced).  I wonder whether some kind of komi--as in the game of go--might help balance the results.  A value of about 3 or 3.5 ought to do the trick, but I'd like to hear some strong players' opinions as to an appropriate point value or the workability of this idea in general.  I think one of the discussion board participants (coan.net) expressed a similar idea.

Could it be possible to show (like the tournament game, on the go to next game list), on the dropdown game box on a fellowship, which teams is a player captain of? Since most of the fellowships have all kinds of games, it would be easier for a captain to to see its teams, to get them into tournaments, or to challenge another fellowship