Lots of tough players.

Me too Backoff ... I can hold my own for a while against the better players but eventually those who spend days analysing will find me out ... even the variants are getting harder to win as new players arrive and those that are here develop their knowledge of the games ...

well I'm not one of them lol. I havn't yet managed to beat the top people on this site. I have a 2100+ rating but I never claimed to be a "great" chess player, I just play to have fun.

5 minutes...Backhoff,can you imagine that the top correspondence chess players analyze their games in nearly equal positions 2-4 days,sometimes a whole week or more,again and again the same position to find the best move,although they have a computer?
Against these people you will have no chance,also if you play with 5 engines.

I play two different ways. For my 200+ non-chess games, I play as fast as I can for an hour or so till they are all done. Then I start on my chess games. Those I spend about 5 mins a piece on.

I'm not sure if its been asked before...but on the "move and go to xgame" link....would it be possible to see the "time left to move" on your list of waiting games?

personally i usually have two yo three hundred games at once maybe more , i like to play fast on alot of the games and after an hour or so i run out of moves and are actually waitingf for someone to move , game like chess and go moko pente , do require longer thinking time and are played one after another (in my case) as apposed to playing mixed games in following moves .

Like I said, I'm sure it depends on the type of game. As far as chess goes, 2 games would be way to many for ME!!! lol...

but not in chess or variants,rod03801.And if you find the one or the other with very many games perhaps he copies his moves only from pc..:)

some of the people who have hundreds of games also have some of the highest BKR's, so no I guess some people don't lose context and focus doing that. But I think it definitely depends on the type of games.

I would like to place my "vote" for not changing the vacation time.. It too is one of the many reasons I came here.

But sure,at least a bit.And I have the opinion, that I play better only a few - 15-25 - games and try to play these games as good as I can.But if I have opponents with many games -we say more than 100 - they are mostly weaker players.In chess you cannot play so many games on a good level,if you want analyze correctly.Unless you are playing in a full time job :).

if the games are "brain easy games" such as backgammon, 100's are possible at the same time. Other more difficult games such as chess etc I would guess it is easy to lose touch of these

Which leads me to the question: Don't you lose context and focus playing more than, say, 30 games (I sometimes creep over 30 but not often)?

if someone is in a 5 day tourny, but there opponent has lets say 15 days to move, it's still your responsibility to check your games within 5 days

Hey to all,the vacation feature is a good feature of course and should not be removed.But a bad feature is the fact,that they can use vacations days for single games and in the other games they continue to play at the same time!And then the vacation days are nothing else than an additional respite for those who have running too many (mostly hundreds) of games.This also completely unsportsmanlike!

one of the reasons I joined this site was the vacation days feature... I travel a few times a year to visit my kids and when I do, I set my vacation days so I don't have to worry about making my moves while out there playing with my grandson .. but there are times when I do have time and get a chance to get online and catch up on my games .. I've stopped playing tournaments at iyt because of it's not having this feature ... seems the days i traveled .. I always timed out.. so please Fencer .. don't change this ... vacation days are just that for whatever reason you use them... not everyone uses them to extend play

It's already slow enough finishing some of these tournaments. Any rule that prevented players moving would be a bad rule in my opinion.

I too have used vacation, but actually been able to make some moves. However with no vacation I would have been forced to timeout some games.

That would be frustrating. I have used them when I travel and didnt know if I would have access or not and then got lucky and found a puter and got online. I do understand your point though about just using them to extend their times. Not an easy choice.

I like how it is now - I know in the past when I was overwelmed with many games, and a slow game site - I would put myself on vacation while still trying to play the few games that I could so I could keep up and not time out.

... plus as someone else mentioned, if I know I have a big hot air ballooning event over the weekend - I will put myself on vacation since I don't know exactly how much time I would have to play. Sometimes I can get on and still play some games, sometimes I don't.

One point.... If I am in a quick game with you, lets say a 1 or 2 day game, and You tell me you are on a vacation for 5 days, and the rest of my games have a longer limit, I may choose to not be on site for a couple of days myself, thinking I am safe. But then you come on anyway and make a move I don't know about, and I get timed out thinking you were not around... Just an example, and may not be all that relevant to most situations....

Maybe, If you are on vacation, and therefore cannot be timed out of any games, then neither should your opponents be timed out in your games while you are on vacation either? Just a thought.

I've had to do that once myself...got caught in 3 2 and 3 day tournies and playing the likes of you guys...I need all the time possible!That,mixed with my work load,made it neccessary to keep fromtimeing out.
But that brings up another question...should vacation time be increased with renewwed subscription?

As one who never has holidays I use vacation days to releive the stress of the hard games (when they conflict with work) while I still enjoy playing the simpler situations ... so I would be against excluding play during vacation days.

But @all, that`s why you can have longer time limits with we say 5 days. And you can change your vacation status at once or within the next day if the situation is changing? But vacationdays should be vacations for you completely and for all games also,not only for some of them.It should not be a possibility to extend your time in some special games.And it is abuse for me if a player sets a vacation day if he only needs more time in a single game.

I concider myself a reasonably serious board game player. I am also very busy on most days of the week.
On those busy days I usually don`t play games that require lot of thinking and analysing BUT play a few moves in games in which the next move is obvious and/or easy to come up with.
Some moves are easy and relaxing but some moves can feel like a duty IF you have to make them when you don`t feel like it.
For this reason I have sometimes used the vacation days the way Caissus objected to.

That’s a good point, but let me play devils advocate here. Lets say that we are allowed to use our allotted vacation time for anything we want. The last time I used mine was a few months ago when I had to bring my computer to the shop for repairs. Thanks goodness for vacation time because it ended up being a week before I was up and running again… anyway I did have an opportunity to use another computer a time or 2 while my computer was gone, and it felt great to be able to make some moves to relieve my withdrawal;) to my way of thinking, it would be a shame if I had not been allowed to make the moves when I had the chance.

Interesting. It's not a big problem to implement but is it really what people expect from vacation days? For example, one is not sure if he will be able to play tomorrow, so he sets a vacation day, then he actually comes here the next day [because of some reason] and since the vacation day cannot be cancelled at this moment, he won't be able to play. Kind of frustrating, isn't it?
But maybe I am wrong.

In the past I have seen sometimes that some of my opponents have announced their vacations,even so they have continued to play some of their games. So they have used their vacations to extend their time limits in some of their games.
I think,during the vacations the players should not be able to play their games! Either they have vacations or not!

Very good idea MidnightMcMedic :-)

Midnight: I think that's a wonderful missing feature. Would be nice to see it off the MIA list. :)

That's a wonderful idea MidnightMcMedic

that's a good idea. I like that one Midnight

How about a reply individually or in private button. Somewhere say if I wanted to reply to Lythande in private, I could click the button instead of going to his profile and then hitting the send message button. Just a thought.

If someone breaks an agreement such as the one here, they forfeit their rights. Unfortunately it is a legal fact.

How bout this for a 'committee': Can it. 'Committee' action is what caused this fiasco in the first place. Committees are notoriously corrupt cliques. Just put MadMonkey back where he belongs.

"all their membership fees are on the banned name." Then that name should be reinstated or all fees refunded.

They can (and have) signed up with a different name. However, all their membership fees are on the banned name.

it would have to be pretty darn serious to kick someone off a pay site. Also how do you prevent them just resigning up with a different name?

How about we just play games and ignore people who are annoying? It's not possible to actually cause a real problem is it?

Maybe I'm missing something.

Fencer how about an official committee set up to discuss the banishment of players from this site when there is trouble or a problem.
A committee is used for the boost a pawn program. With guidelines in place.All members agree before a pawn is put up for sponsorship. It works quite well there.

Yes...I know the dates are on the "game page", but I meant for them to be on the "finished games page". All of the game info will be on one page instead of actually selecting every game to see the start date! I think the "time" info we could toss out if there isn't enough room, what do ya think?

In our fellowship " The chessclub" we try to organize a team competition against another team of a chessserver/group.
How if we had additional "Brainking teams" for each game to play external competitions?
These teams could represent Brainking worldwide.Perhaps you can mark automatically the best ten rated players of each game (only rooks and knights) as "Brainking team"!

Yes, sure.

When a tournament ends the tournament creator is notified.
Could the winner be notified as well?

rofl Whisperz! :-)

... would be the end of Maharajah Chess.

Not at all, just start a new game! That's what I do.

What!!! And miss out on all that great conversation?

I think resigning should be encouraged. In fact if the game engine was smart enough to know that a win is guaranteed just finish it (as in backgammon for instance - most games this wouldn't apply).

Or just don't resign your games :-D
Yes, I know about this bug. It will be fixed.

Or just turn the refresh off!

one word: notepad lol

Good point! That has happened many timjes to me too. I either have to go change my refresh status, or try to type my message really, really fast LOL... Sometimes I've tried 3 or 4 times before I get it all typed in time!