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.

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.

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

jryden: I certainly like this option. I can think of three particular uses but I am sure there are more.

1. For Fischer clock games. At the beginning of the time control, I often do not notice if moves are made in these games and I end up not moving until there are less than 12 or so hours with a bonus of 3 hours.

2. Games with pawns or other people who might want to finish their games quickly for whatever reason. It is often difficult to remember all the games we have with pawns, but I know many players like to move as soon as possible in these games since pawns have game restrictions.

3. for tournaments. either to finish a tournament that is near completion (or game for that matter) or personally, I like to move earlier in prize tournament games since I have more interest in these games.

I know there was some talk earlier about improving the Brains system.  However, for the most part, I like how it is know, but would like to make a small suggestion.  The problem with the brain system right now is that not enough people have them to have many brain tournaments.  My suggestion would be to have a special January action where Fencer set up a tournament for all games with each winner being declared BrainKing Champion for that game and receiving a prize such as 50 brains as well.  I think perhaps that the restriction on tournaments for pawns could be lifted for this special tournament.    

BIG BAD WOLF: Actually the easiest solution is to simply send a message to the player who is slowing down the tournament and ask him/her to play faster.

MadMonkey: I completely agree with request.

tinksbell: There should be a dot or star or something by each tournament you have signed up for.

Mousetrap: Any game that has two passes in a row is a draw I believe. If this is the case, and I haven't missed anything, it could be a good idea for Fencer to program in.

SueQ: You can always look at the move list. An x denotes shooting while ? denotes guessing.

Czuch Czuckers: However, if black sees white's move, he can adjust his move if necessary. It actually gives black a small advantage.

grenv: I couldn't agree with you more. And it is pretty obvious that people do look them up from what I have seen on other sites. The only way I would even think about playing is if it were a 1 hour game.

I don't know if this has been done yet, but if it hasn't, I think it would be a useful feature. What I would like is to be able to combine two different move and go tos: For example, I could combine Fischer game with next game. It would go to a Fischer game if I had one, but if I didn't, it would just go to the next game.

grenv: Correct naturally.

Thad: I agree with the idea. It would certainly help me a lot because with the current system I have no clue how long a tournament has been running and if I am holding it up. I could check every tournament but this takes much longer.

MadMonkey: I would agree. If you have all your games left in a tournament and no one else has any, then I think you need to start playing quicker. Aside from that, I don't think that there should be a major problem.

MadMonkey: I think that the simplest thing to do is to message an opponent or a tournament player if you want them to move faster. More times than not, they will go ahead and move much quicker. I know for me, I might not move in a game every day, because it is too hard to go through and find them. So I might not move too often in games that have a time limit of seven days. But if you message me, I will move quicker and I believe most people do this.

Would it be possible to have different min ratings for each game of a tournament? For example, if you wanted to set up a gammon tournament for the best players, a good rating for many of the variants would be 1800 or 1900. However, this would include almost everyone for backgammon and hyper backgammon. You could set up different tournaments, but this would be harder for everyone to find.

alanback: I completely agree with you. It would cut down on about 80 or 90 percent of the swap dice that we have to use.

King Reza: That sounds like a really good idea.

tonyh: I don't think the claim victory is a good idea (or at least losing double rating points.) This would work in totally lost endgames, but what if it was a position where a player was losing but barely behind. Then this option of losing double rating points simply would not work.

skipinnz: That would nrmally work, but I am ranked number 1 in my stair so I often go a week or two between challenges.

plaintiger: The newer additions such as ludo, or la chess, or ambiguous chess are shown in the order they were created. But alphabetical order would be nice (not sure on different language details though).

plaintiger: Well, I know there was that link. I was just looking for some way to go directly to the second page or for pawns to go to the challenge page of the stair that they are in.

Could there be a link added to get to your stairs from the main page?

grenv: Not a bad idea at all. And it might help players cut down on games which in turn would improve speed.

grenv: All four are reasonable and good suggestions. I personally am happy with any system as long as their is a chance for 1 to meet 2 in the final round. In many games and sports, there is the 1-64, 2-63 and so on. In chess there is the 1-33, 2-34 and so on. And in a game like tennis, there is no set pairing except that the top two can't meet until the final, the top four can't meet until the semis and so on.

grenv: Ok. I think it could be done if there was a constant translation of letters between two languages. If a t in German was always a d in English and every other letter had some corresponding letter, it would work. But I don't think that is the case in any two languages.

grenv: That was more or less what I was trying to say, but I said it very poorly. The letters don't match up so you couldn't do different languages in the same game.

Amandakmg365: Different languages would be practically impossible since the words have to be the same on both boards to continue the game.

Mr. Shumway: It's not exactly uncommon either. It happens after you have a lot of pieces off but get one knocked back and then completely blocked.

grenv: I completely agree. If you play a game, you should know all the rules no matter how recent or old they are.

Dogod: They use that system over at dailygammon.com. I like it for the most part. The only detractions is that you often have to be online for a longer period of time to make a set of moves in a game.

grenv: White has a small advantage since the get to roll first, but it is small. Most games last 40 or more moves so it helps lessen the effect. But it is still an advantage.

volant: sure. when you set up your games, click the number of games you want and then click the box that says "alternate colors".

Daniel Snyder: In a way, you can't play a simulation in turn-based games. The nature of a simulation is that one very good player plays lots of average or good players at once. Theoretically, this gives the lower players a chance since the very good player has less time to spend focusing on each of his moves. But on a turn-based side, this is impossible.

There is a link for each game that shows how many games of that type were won, lost, or drawn. I would like to have a link that would take us to those games.

Fencer: One reason to see the rating at the time of the game is to better understand why a player has a certain BKR. I saw one player with a rating of over 2000 after four games but he had not beaten anyone over 1500 and had lost one game to a 1600 or so player. In addition, it would better help players gauge the difficulty of a player. Personally, I would like to see- if it were possible- the rating at the time the game started or ended, and the current rating.

tonyh: If it were all rooks playing, I don't think it would be a big deal. But with knights and pawns who have limited tournaments, it could create a bigger problem. The only way I would support it in tournaments is if everyone in the tournament agreed upon it. I don't want to sign up for a tournament that I think will require a move a day and then have someone change it to seven moves a day or something. It essentially is unfair to pawns who have to plan what tournaments to play in based on time limit and what other tournaments they want to sign up for.

ok, thanks. I just forgot that paying members could look at it.

Would it be possible to list the highest rating a player has ever achieved in a game?

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but it tears at my competitive spirit to know that more than one person could win a tournament. I know the games are just for fun, but it just doesn't seem right to be tied for first. I wish we could change this or at least have an option for tournaments like this.

Would it be possible to play Ludo with a doubling cube?

Is it possible to have them translated to the language of our choice?

Is it possible to see when someone has a planned vacation?

I think it would be interesting to see something like record versus top 100 or some other number. This might be difficult because of the frequent BKR changes, but it's just an idea.

Tournaments only start every hour (I think five minutes after the hour). So you probably just needed to wait.

Summertop: I doubt it could be hidden since that is a benefit of joining.

Stopping players from entering a tournament based on the number of games they have going on is not a good idea. Some players have a 1000 or more games going but move relatively quickly. And this player does not have an extraordinary number of games. I think a better idea would be saying you can only take 10 vacation days or something during one game.