reza: I do not know which database Fencer is using for BK, but I am working with several databases (from dBase III+ to Oracle) and I know, that such SUM-operations generate high overhead.

I think it will be possible, but in my opinion the "output" does not justify the "input" in this case.

chessmec: Oh then, I guess I take my request back!

say.. Happy Daddy's Day and Thank you To Fencer..

Fencer and Liquid, Thankies for making this site like it is.. you put so much time and heart into this site.. I just wanted to say that..

I continually see the "I WANT!!.. I WANT!!.. I WANT!!".. and I never see the .. "What Can I Do For You?" I just want you two to know you are much appreciated.. :)

reza: The counter thingy.. sounds like a kewl idea.. :)

LOL... I want, I want, I want, seems quite appropriate on a Features Request board!!

Hmm... a board for Fencer's requests of US, might be interesting.. LOL...

rod03801: Or probably a board for what we don't want!

Reading what we could have asked for but have decided no to should be comforting!

LOL reza ... a board for what we don't want? Cloak mode would have been a lively discussion there too, I imagine!

Any chance the link at the bottom of the page for the web usage statistics goes to an english version of the statistics site?
Or there isn't such a thing? :(

Is the site really getting 28000 page hits at peak hour? (over 7 pages per second, if I got it right)

What do 'Zobrazené stránky', 'Návštěvy' and 'Návštěvníci' mean? (just curious that's all)

pauloaguia: The link is only for my personal usage and I'll remove it soon. BrainKing already has its own traffic measure system.

Fencer: Ok then...

Hey all,

Due to teh current bug in Dark Chess games players can see what moves their opponents have made.

redsales named it 'grey chess' which I think is a good addition to the site!!!

What's more, based on that, I have a new game type in my mind named red chess.

When a piece is captured, its blood will split on some squares of the board randomly and both players for a few moves will not be able to see those squares and therefore, they'll have a good chnace to move their pieces in REDNESS.

I'll have to work on details more of course!

Fencer: with the crowding over in the main profile page, why not post the big picture directly, instead of the mouse-over-the-little-pic routine?

rabbitoid: Good idea.

Fencer: But I think some players' big pictures are different from the smaller ones of theirs. This way they'll have to choose one I suppose, right?

rabbitoid: Big pictures take more screen estate, which leads to more scrolling. If I go to a profile page, I'm interested in the numbers, when did a player last move, how much vacation days left, how many running games, ratings, wins, losses, etc. I'm not really interested in their pictures, and certainly not a second time. Little pics is more than enough for me.

When a player is hidden on a message board, it's presumably because they are a pain in the neck. So to have their name then prominently dispayed in the "Remove" list at the top of the message board is rather adding insult to injury.

A workaround is to block someone innocuous whose name is lower in the alphabet (it sorts with Z at the top for some reason) and their's will be the one visible.

But better, I reckon, would be for that Remove list to be at the foot of the message board, or, perhaps more logically, on the Blocked users pages.

As a Knight I can only play in one tournament per game type at a time and that's fair enough. But in the hyper tourney that I joined, I've finished all my games and will not be able to progress to the next round, which is a face-off between the tied leaders. As I can't start a new tourney while this one's still running, I'm forced to wait as a non-participant until these players finish a three wins match. :-((

Please sir, can I be excused?
;-)

playBunny: If you are talking about this tournament:

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?tri=46466#1

It looks like it is complete and you should be able to signup for another Hyper Backgammon tournament.

playBunny: Well, it's only hyperbackgammon, which is often played in about a dozen moves. Just be glad it isn't anti-backgammon tournament.

In a Crowded Backgammon game, when i'm being hit or if i hit my opponent, it would be very useful and in fact it should be a standard feature, if i could recognize the bar-checkers that come from a hit, from the one that are there from the start of the game.

Because when i open a Crowded Backgammon game, i have to go back one or more moves to see if i or my opponent has (and this is more difficult to find-have to go back in game history) any checkers that have been hit........
But we should be able to know ALL INFORMATION about the current position without having to investigate the game history. It is simple: Just highlight the checkers that have been hit. Then we would know with just a glance if we or our opponent have any "captured" checkers........

Could there be a way to filter the pond list by game type, please?

The description text area in the edit profile page could be a bit bigger... or it's size be associated with the new setting for the new message area size on this page.

pauloaguia: I actually use my Notepad ( http://brainking.com/en/Notepad ) to make my profile - make it like I want where I can edit small details and view what it will look like..... then submit it as a new profile.

The problem: In many games rankings (notably near the top of the rankings for that game but not necessarily just at the top) there are some people who just stay there without playing. Perhaps when they joined they got lucky in a few games against some medium to high ranked players, got themselves a high BKR and thus a high ranking, and then decided not to risk their positions. Or perhaps they have not played any games for a year or more. Whatever the reason, very many other players find it frustrating that this 'deadwood' clutters up the ranking lists, especially when they don't respond to challenges or consistently decline them.

Old proprosed solution (that I don't support): Periodically purge these non-players from the rankings.

My proposed solution: In addition to the existing BKR, we have an 'Adjusted BKR' and that rankings are based on this Adjusted BKR. The existing BKR persists as "Unadjusted BKR' but rankings are no longer based on Unadjusted BKR.

What's the difference between them? Adjusted BKR is adjusted downwards by a small amount every day that a player is not on vacation or a weekend (and whether they have played or not). Therefore in order to keep your adjusted BKR high and therefore your ranking high, you have to keep playing games and winning them.

The amount can be proportional (like 0.08% per day) or linear (like 2 BKR per day). Since there are 104 weekend days per year and 30 Rook holidays per year, this would mean that a rating that was stuck at 2700 would decay down to around 2240 over a year using those figures if they didn't play in that time. Different figures can be used if those are considered too severe or too lenient. The linear system might be better because (a) it is easier to apply in software and (b) it stops 'bunching' in the medium to lower rankings. The proportional system may or may not be fairer.

I propose keeping the Unadjusted BKR but not using it for ranking. It can still be used to give an opponent an idea of someone's ability. If they are a medium ability player of around 1800 and they are thinking of challenging another player also around 1800, they will know whether they are playing someone about the same as them or whether this is someone who used to be a good player a year or two ago and just hasn't played since.

BKR could in future be displayed as 1800/2400 (= adjusted/unadjusted).

As well as being useful to very many players (from what I've heard) this system would also be an advantage to team captains who want to choose players who both high rated and who are 'current'. Doing this would be easy using Adjusted BKR whereas at the moment you have to use the Unadjusted BKRs plus look at each of the graphs.

Stormerne:

Please note that I am not too terribly concerned with ratings. To the strong and diligent, the ratings and rankings will eventually come..... However, and I hope you'll pardon this if it seems strident, but I find your proposal arbitrary, a bit goofy, seemingly very tedious to implement, complicated to understand for many players, and overall just generally not worth the while.

You twice imply (but don't actually state) that "rankings" should be based on what you term "adjusted BKR", and you'd penalize those who came to this site earlier, and reward those who came later, for doing nothing!!? Tough luck! More players come in over time, both this includes both strong and weak opponents, so who is to say that any given time frame was easier than another to achieve a high rating? Furthermore, inactivity does not serve as a justification for demoting a player's rating.

Ratings are never more than an inexact science at best anyway, and your system would exacerbate this inherent flaw. The remedy for those who are worried about raising their ratings is to improve their game.

Pioneer54: I agree with most points. However, as with the real chess ratings, inactive players should be removed from the list. If they become active they go back.

Stormerne: what about people that play say 27 to 35 differnt types of games and maybe trying to learn more types of games , such people would find it hard to play all the differnt types at once all the time , the only winners would be the ones playing only a few types of games because it wouldnt affect them as much .

BIG BAD WOLF: LOL at profile version 7.8!!!

Pioneer54: I expect we'll disagree on this one. First of all, as someone who's been a software engineer for 30 years, I can assure you this would be remarkably easy to implement. I believe if someone is intelligent enough to use this site and play games, they'll very easily understand it. And there'd be no implicit penalty of anyone who kept playing a game, whether they came to the site earlier or later. And I've spoken to plenty of people here who do believe that inactivity is a justification for demoting ratings. (Personally I couldn't care less, but this is a solution to what seems to be a significant problem for many.) Ratings are indeed an inexact science, a fact mirrored by Fencer apparently using an extremely simple lookup table to calculate them.

Jason: I only play two games here at the moment, but I have a habit of playing a game, say chess, for two years and then giving it up for another five years, then playing it again and leaving it again. Whatever the exact time period, I'm always away from a game for longer than I'm with it. It would give me a similar effect to the one you suggest. I'd build up a rating and then it would decay a long way. But I'd be prepared to take that hit on my rating. It would be my choice. And many have told me they would think it fairer if ratings like that did slip while people were away. On the other hand, I do believe your point about 'concentrated' players doing better than 'dispersed' players is a lot more valid than any of Pioneer54's, and it would be the only reason of those mentioned so far that think I would support against my own proposed solution.

BIG BAD WOLF: Thanks BBW. :-) When I looked at the page it showed whitecobra and Ryan with 3.0 each but no SB or Order values. I guess I was looking too soon after the tourney and misunderstood what Final match type for two player section: 3 wins match meant - I thought those players would have a head-to-head to decide it.

(Interesting that the winning order was almost the opposite of the rating order, lol.)

Abigail: God forbid! lolol.

playBunny: Actually when there is only 1 section and 2 people tie, the game is ended with a tie.

You will only see a playoff when there are 2 or more section winners.

Also, when the next round starts and a pawn/knight is not in the new section - they are "released" right then and does not have to wait until the end.

since we can now add fellowship d/bs to our favorite list...why not have the option to hide our fellowship list from our main page?

baudrillard: I must admit that, much as I think cloak mode is silly, it certainly has no effect whatsoever on me if someone else has it on.

baudrillard: He would have to unblock you to send the message and then put you back on the blocked list...so I have been told.

I don't mean to but in here but since it's on a public board....I think there seems to be a confusion....the message boxes here are NOT the same as an email address, this could be where the two of you are getting mixed up :o)

When it was first introduced a large number of players rushed to use it but once the "two way mirror" aspect was changed only a handful of users remain. They obviously like the feature and I don't understand why that can't be respected without the vitriol a few people are demonstrating.

I don't see a reason to block cloaked users. You can't see what they are doing, they can't see what you are doing, there should be peace... You can send messages to them, so why not allow them to send too. IMHO it's very impolite to send a message to someone without giving him/her a chance to respond. I know what I am talking about, it happened to me too and it was not a good feeling.

OK, people of danoschek's kind might counter cloaked users could see what you are doing when they switch to guest mode, but hardly someone will really use this advantage May be guests shouldn't see users activities then and it would be really balanced.

Can I ask for a clarification? Why would you block someone simply because they use the cloak mode?

Feature Request: Whining and Whinging board. I would of course know never to go there.

Enough, please!!!!

be it know I will say no more on this.and I do not want to stir this up more.I just hope we can spent out time in more positve ways.

The suggestions have been suggested by myself & others on the Froglet board in the past, and i thought I would share them in here. Some of the "top players" are basicly "burnt out" on the game, so some variants would be a great addition.

Mini Froglet: - 8x8 board (32 green, 20 Yellow, 8 Red, 4 blue) - or something similar.

Island (or lily pad) Froglet: - Randomly inserted in 15-20 squares an island. Either make it where you can't do anything with the island, or possible make it so you can jump over the island (no points and island stays there), but it will bring many more jumps to the game.

Bonus Froglet: Include 10 "bonus" frogs marked with a "?". You will NOT know what bonus is under the ? until after you submit the move. Possible bonuses could be:
# 2x frogs - if you jump one of these, your score from that turn is doubled. (or 2 points if single jump)
# 3x frogs - same as 2x except tripled (or 3 points if single jump)
# poison frogs - You get no score for that turn

BIG BAD WOLF: wolfy,good ideas..
I have another idea to add to your variant suggestions.
we could for this & other games consider multi-player games that allow for more than 2 opponents and of course more than 2 colours per game.
this IS a lot of fun from the veiwpoint of strategy & from the viewpoint of good player interface.
but true,the mathemtatics is more complex to program.
I'd love to here if anyone else is in favour of multi player games?

also,if we are to consider variations to refresh burnt outs.
the simpliest thing is to increase board size.

or how about a different board shape.example:
instead of 4 sided squaes,make a board of 6 sixed hexagon

I like to start games by saying hello and good luck to people in their own language. I use a Translator but it doesn't handle Czech, Dutch. FIBS has a version of an International BG Phrase Book. I think it would be great to have one here.

Things that I say:
• Hi
• Hello
• Greetings
• Howdy

- these might seem to translate to the same thing but I'd hope not. I'm sure all the other languages have different greetings for different moods and outlooks. It would be nice to have more than just a formal hello. But if there are variations then a bit of explanation would be handy. Having said that, though, how to explain the differences between "greetings" and "howdy" doesn't spring to mind, lol.

Others
• Good luck
• That was an interesting game
• Aaaggghh!
• Noooooooooo!
• Phew!
• That was lucky
• Dice Gods
• I need a 6, give me a 6!
• Race ya!
• The race is on
• Thanks
• Thank you for the match
• Would you like to play another?
• Another?

nobleheart: Well what is good about the Mini Froglet idea is that it should be pretty simple for Fencer to program - that is it is the same game, just smaller board.

To increase the board size would not help people who are burnt out on the game - I know for myself & others, we are burnt out because it takes too long to complete a game. And to see how popular a quick game like Hyper Backgammon is, a quicker version of Froglet I think would be pretty popular also.

BIG BAD WOLF: I agree the regular Froglet is like a life sentence without the possibility of parole. A much smaller board and an automatic end to the game when someone is too far behind to catch up mathematically.

playBunny: ty for the link,now that webpage ia a good idea.very positive as well.

playBunny: a further thought about this useful link.if anyone knows any other useful utilities or links,please share.these are good:
http://www.stabb.com/tools/convert.html
http://translation.langenberg.com/
http://www.bbsinc.com/iso8859.html
http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm