Justaminute: It's below the member list in each fellowship. I think you have to check each fellowship separately.

Hrqls: A lot of topics in one thread here... 

Fencer: Works for me now - thanks Fencer.

happyjuggler0: Exactly. It used to be above the game board, now you have to scroll way down to check if you're playing a match or a single game. I'd like it back the way it was, too.

happyjuggler0: I miss this option too. Any particular reason why it was removed?

Orlandu: You're not allowed to have more than 50 games on the 'waiting games' list. I think if you try to make more than 50 new games, the last ones are simply not created.

El Cid: We're discussing several different things now. My biggest concern is with people (especially new members) who sign up for more games than they can handle, thus spoiling the fun for themselves, their opponents and to some extent the other people in that tournament. That's why I tried to propose a formula that forces people to prove that they can handle a lot of games before they are 'let loose', so to speak.

coan.net: But if you were already playing close to 2000 games, then one single forfeit would effectively mean you couldn't start any new games for 6 months. Isn't that a rather draconic penalty for only one time out?

Fencer: I didn't know it had already been a rule. I'm still a newcomer, I guess!

grenv: Thanks for the kind words... I've never played more than about 400 simultaneous games myself. Would that make me 40% genius?

happyjuggler0: I second that. Another possible formula would be something like:

I'd like to get a message when a tournament section that I signed up for is deleted due to lack of sign-ups. I might want to go looking for another tournament when this happens.

AbigailII: Ok, that's probably better. Or maybe 'number of checks' would be even more precise than 'number of kings in check' ? One king might be in check from several pieces.

I'm also not sure I understand the purpose of rule 12. It could complicate the whole 'number of kings in check' issue, but maybe that's the point? Consider a situation where your knight and king both threaten my king. The dice tells me to move my queen, and as it happens, my queen is placed in such a way that it could capture both of the threatening pieces. According to rule 12, I would have to take the knight because it gives check, although capturing the attacking king makes more sense.

AbigailII: Rules 10 and 11 may contradict each other when you have three kings. What if you can only eliminate a check to one king by moving another king into check?

Undertaker.: I think the best solution is to implement better search options, rather than restricting the tournament creators. For example, a search for a specific game type should give you a list of only the relevant sections of each tournament (rather than the current list of tournaments, where you have to click each one and look for your preferred game). That way, you could compare your options more easily. Add to this an option to search for those tournament sections that only need a few players, and I think the problem is more or less solved.

The real problem is not all the empty tournament sections, the real problem is that we can't get rid of them in the search.

AbigailII:
you cannot see it's beneficial for the trailing player that draws won't count?

I think that's a valid point - that's actually how it works without the doubling cube, too. In my defence, I'll say that I covered this possibility when I said that I didn't see any serious drawbacks. Let's take your argument a step further:

If I'm trailing in a match, and the current game is likely to be a draw, there shouldn't be any hesitation to double if that means the game effectively won't count, should there?

Why is that a problem? Most likely, the game is going to end in a draw. In that case, both you and your opponent gets the double of 0, which is 0. So you can double, but it will only have consequences if there are indeed other possible outcomes than a draw. Which I guess was sort of the intention of introducing the doubling cube in the first place. Or, in other words: If there is even the slightest possibilty that you might lose, there should also be a slight hesitation to double. And if there's really no such possibility, then as you say, there shouldn't be any hesitation. I think that is how it should be. I don't see a problem.

AbigailII:
Draws are a fundamental part of the game of chess, and very common. Scoring a draw as a loss is a big change of the game. You might as well replace the rooks with diamond aces. It just doesn't make sense.

Giving both players 0 points in case of a draw doesn't equal "scoring a draw as a loss", and if the game is played as part as a match, it doesn't change the game at all. It simply means that draws aren't counted, and the match continues as if this game wasn't played. World championship matches have been played this way (but not with the doubling cube, obviously!).

As you pointed out yourself, when draws are scored as 0.5 there's an undesired side effect of the doubling cube: The leading player can double the effect of a draw, thereby bringing himself closer to winning the match. This can be remedied by not scoring draws at all, and I really can't see any serious drawbacks of this solution.

Btw., how do diamond aces move on a chessboard?

Herlock Sholmes: Sorry, but I don't think funny money would work for me. What happens if I win funny $1600 rather than funny $100... would I have to pretend I was sixteen times more happy? I just chipped in here because I thought the theoretical discussion was fun, but I think I'll leave it at that.

Herlock Sholmes: Hmm... I'll have to admit that it was those 'technicalities' that caught my interest, though - I've never played games for the money, so I was responding to a situation where the game is a part of a match, rather than a single game with a stake. In that case, I suppose the stronger player should double - and the weaker player shouldn't have made the bet in the first place.

Off the top of my head, I'd say the draw problem could perhaps be solved by counting draws as 0 points instead of 0.5. Wouldn't that cancel all speculations about doubling in a drawn position?

AbigailII: Interesting discussion. In your situation, I would actually do the opposite. Consider the two extremes:

If both you and your opponent keep redoubling, the entire match will be decided in just one game. That means that you're just one mistake away from losing the match. More specifically, you would lose 26% of the time in this case (not considering draws).

In the other extreme case, if nobody doubles and each game is only for one point, your chances of winning a long match are significantly higher. I'm not going to do the math, but the more games you play, the smaller the chance is that your opponent will win more games than you. Your risk of losing the match will be significantly lower than those 26%.

In general, I would say that the stronger player should be conservative in using the cube, while the weaker player should be eager to use it. I even have a feeling that this is true in backgammon as well, but I wonder what stronger bg players would think about this?

AbigailII: No, tournaments are sorted according to their deadline. Some tournaments start immediately when the maximum number of participants has been reached, even if their deadline is years into the future. I find myself sifting through those tournaments that 'start in the far future' all the time, because in reality they don't.

Hopefully, we'll get better sorting/filtering tools in the new BrainKing 3.0.

talen314: Agree with all of your suggestions.

Slightly related, it would also be nice to get a notification when a tournament you signed up for is cancelled due to lack of players. Bishops and Knights can only play one tournament at a time of each game type, so it's relevant to know when you're free to pick another tournament.

”Warning: This is a turn-based game site. The game you are about to start may take days, weeks, or even months to complete, depending on the time control used in the particular game. If you start a game, your opponent may not respond right away, in fact they may sometimes take several days to respond. You should not start a game unless you’re aware of this and prepared to finish the game.”

I suggest something like this should pop up the first time a new member tries to start a game from the waiting list. It happens too often that somebody creates an account, surfs around the site happily for a few minutes, finds the list of waiting games, starts a few games, then sits around for a few more minutes wondering why nothing happens, logs off, never comes back…

Of course, when I create new waiting games, I could just limit them to rated or paying players and avoid playing new members at all. I actually do that some of the time. But if everybody did that, how would new members ever get to play? If these ‘ghost players’ were scared away with a warning, I expect that more old members would be willing to play new members, and everybody would benefit :-)

This idea is not fully developed, I just wanted to put it up here and see what people think.

A cheshire cat dice has the special feature that whenever it lands on one side, that side disappears and you can't land on it again. That means that a cheshire cat dice can only be rolled six times, then it's used up. It also means that the more times it is used, the more predicable it gets.

Now, what would happen if we played some of the dice games here with cheshire cat dice? Backgammon? Dice Poker? Do you think it would change the strategy in an interesting direction? I imagine that the dice would be replaced every sixth move, and you would have some kind of special graphics to show which rolls are still possible.

ChessVariant:
I think this "protected chess" would be confusing enough without special rules for the pawns. Consider, for example, a position where white has a pawn on d3 and bishops on e4 and f6. Assume that the bishop on f6 is unprotected and moves like a cardinal, giving check to the black king on g8. Now, provided that the d3 pawn is the only piece protecting bishop-e4, black may parry the check by taking this pawn. Be4 now becomes unprotected and moves like a cardinal, so Bf6 is protected and moves like a bishop, and there is no check. I imagine that this kind of chain reaction could become extremely complicated and create some insane tactics - so please, just let the pawns be pawns :-)

ChessVariant: Special rules for promotion doesn't seem to make very much sense in this game, since the pieces change with every move anyway. A pawn on the 7th rank would have gotten there by accident, because you never hoped for it to become a pawn when you moved it there. To simplify, I'd suggest that any piece or pawn that is moved to the 8th rank will crossdress like usual, except that it can't become a pawn in this case.