S O C R A T E S: My suggestion to anyone who hates to play lower rated players and only want to play same rated players, then stairs may not be the best thing.

Unless you want to stay around long enough to climb the stairs - then once a stairs spread out some and you are near the top, then you will only have to worry about being challenged by players close to you - which most likely will also be higher rated players.

BIG BAD WOLF: Why is his opponent not listed on the Fast Stairs (Checkers)?

My sympathies to the topplayers (top dice rollers in backgammon) who must play lower rated players. If they should lose (awful thought!!) they could lose some of their so well deserved BKR. If i was a top dice roller i should absolutely restrict myself to not playing any stairs at all

Andersp: I thought you'd enjoy a good laugh at this one.

Eriisa: That opponent's Stairs (ie. no fast Stairs for Checkers). If you resign from a Stair your matches continue unless you resign those as well.

playBunny: A top dice roller (no name!) said to me not long ago "To play 17-1800 rated players is to steal candy from kids"..then i cant understand the fear for losing BKR...can you?

Andersp: Lol. That's a cute analogy. Taking it further the kids probably throw their rattle and a lucky throw sometimes get our hero in the eye. I guess the pain of the eye poke must outweigh the gain of the candy. Or maybe these babies just don't have enough candy to steal. It's hard to tell without knowing the thinking of this top player (no name). Are you sure this candy actually relates to BKR and not to the experience of the game itself?

playBunny: I suggest you ask the 'top dice roller" im sure you meet him before i do

Fencer: A wee bug in some player's Show all games Step numbers.


Backgammon alanback (1) BIG BAD WOLF (2) 17. 5 days 23 hours
Backgammon heyblue32 (1) lunedith (2) 14. 5 days 21 hours
Backgammon lunedith (1) AbigailII (2) 12. 5 days 19 hours
Backgammon Spiritstorm (1) chattytea (2) 17. 5 days 19 hours

Step 2, 4 players;
alanback (2266), Spiritstorm (2147), 4evolution (2122), lunedith (2122)

Step 1, 61 players;
playBunny (2372), frolind (2291), arpa (2242), qetutor (2190), basplund (2189), Hrqls (2185), WizardII (2178), Ebru (2169), furbster (2164), Zach (2159), incognito (2158), heyblue32 (2156), Hannelore (2148), BIG BAD WOLF (2134), afella (2132), SueQ (2124), Czechgirl (2120), lovelysharon (2120), LuTze (2117), chattytea (2072), AbigailII (2013), ...

The standard stairs match is 2 games -- what happens if one player wins each game? Nothing?

alanback: basicly. It is considered a draw and neither player advances or drops down the stairs.

Hmm... That's going to be alot of draws and non movement.. And with the 2 games being one after another instead of simultaneous, long periods of time between that non-movement..

lol.. oh well.. I'm not going anywhere anyways, so I guess I'm not in any hurry anyhow! :-)

rod03801: But in the Fischer's very fast stairs, it is only a single game match!

speaking of a lot of draws, i know this is far-fetched, but it's happened to me so much that i'm compelled to ask: there isn't some bug or something in the stair code that greatly increases the likeihood of a two-game match ending in a draw, is there? i don't think i've played a single two-game match in any stair that hasn't ended in a draw, and when i commented on that just now to an opponent (with whom i'd just drawn a two-game match), he said he's seen the same thing. whole lotta drawin' goin' on...

When a match is finished, a message is sent to both players stating the outcome of the match. An option is also available to send another game invitation to that player, optionally deleting the message.
In Stairs games, instead of "another game with the same player" could there be an option "challange another player in this Stair" or something similar? Maintaining the option to automatically delete the message, of course ;)

Come to think about it, not instead of... add it as another alternative, since if a player proved a worthy opponent, it's perfectly legit to want to challenge him/her again for another standard game...

If I am on step 2, and I challange someone on step 1. And I win. Do I still go to step 3? If I lose, do I drop to step 1?

(the stair I am looking at, the only open player is a step below me)

Eriisa: Yes and yes.

And with that player just below you, if you lose then you effectively swap places. And if you win you open up a gap.

Marfitalu: Pardon my grammar, I should have said "each player wins one game."

plaintiger: If the players are equally matched, the probability of a split is 50%. So, if you are seeing nothing but splits in a lot of matches, that may indicate a glitch somewhere. However, I can't imagine how a bug like that could work its way into the system, since (among other things) the dice generator must be independent of the match format. So, I suggest that what you are seeing is purely the result of chance. In time, every event that is merely improbable must happen.

I have just finished a game with SandyH...one game each......she GOT 5 points and I LOST 4 points....it said the game was a draw....why would I lose and why should she gain....this is stupid in my book :(

here are the final results....we both should have stayed where we were :(

The game is a draw.

SandyH: old BKR = 1914, new BKR = 1919 (+5)
BerniceC: old BKR = 1992, new BKR = 1988 (-4)

Game type: Backgammon
Stairs: Fast Stairs

Isn't there going to come a point in time when the whole 'Stairs' project will become saturated? That is, everyone who is going to join has, and certain game types will end up with cliques of sorts that just keep cycling each other. I wonder if we are near or at that point already. If not, where will new blood come from?

It seems that Rooks are the only ones with options to enter a high number of different stairs. I suppose it could be argued that, with over 20,000 pawns, there are at least that many possible entries into the experiment, but that is not happening, in fact not even on a scale anywhere close to it.

BerniceC: Because you've drawn a game with a lower rated player, you lost some points. I see nothing stupid on it.

BerniceC: right - what Fencer said. because Your rating is well higher than SandyH's, the system (quite logically) regards Her drawing a game with You as something of an accomplishment on Her part (and thus something worthy of reward) and conversely it sees Your drawing a game with Her as - shall we say - an incidence of Your not playing up to Your potential (and thus something worthy of demerit). She's rewarded with some points; You're demerited some. and there it is.

Pioneer54: It's very much too early to think that anything has settled down (unless few new players join!) but you're right in thinking that the stairs will stratify. That's the whole point of them! ;-) ("Cliques" isn't quite the right word because there's no collusion or relationship between the players, their positioning is the result of their playing strength.)

Strong new blood will cause a minor stir as that player rises through the ranks but for the players in the regions below their destined destination it will only be a passing excitement. Weaker new blood will reach its level sooner.

I imagine that the Stairs will grow as a kind of pyramid. The players at the top can only go up when there are challengers below and they may be in short supply (either absent because the higher player has climbed too high, or too busy with each other and those below). This limits the absolute growth rate of the Stairs. For each succeeding lower level there will be a wider and wider choice of players. I suspect that those on the uppermost levels will be able to make a complaint about stagnation but I doubt that many players below would.

Pioneer54: Regarding that 20,000 players value: Go to the Players list and sort it by Last action so that today's action is shown. Then go to about page 85. That shows the players whose last action was about a month ago. There are 50 players shown per page so thats about 4250 players in the last month.

If you examine that page you'll see that there are a lot of Pawns who joined, had a look around and haven't been back since. The number of those decreases as you come further towards the present day. I counted 20 on page 85, 30 on the previous page, 35, 34, 33 on previous pages. On page 70 it was down to 20 non-countables, page 60 had 13... So let's say about 600 players in all. There are those who were active more than a month ago but who will be back sometime, but probably much fewer than the one-peekers. That's then roughly 3700 active players.

playBunny: Why don't you use the more about languages page instead?

BerniceC: The idea about ratings is that they are a gauge of ability. (Not strictly true but we won't go into that). A high rated player is deemed stronger than a lower rated one. The thinking then is that if a weaker player draws with the stronger player then they must have played better. (Pretty much true in Chess, not so true in Backgammon). But that means they played better when the rating says they should have played worse, so the ratings need to be adjusted to fit reality. Thus the lower rating goes up a bit and the higher one comes down.

Fencer: Great link Fencer ... never seen it before. Can I suggest a further line at the bottom which would be a total (yeah I know, get the calculator and add them up yourself, but I am a lazy sod :)

WhisperzQ: The link is below the language flags.

Fencer: I've seen that one before but I'd forgotten it.

The 30 days value is about 4100. It doesn't seem to discount the non-countable one-peekers, though, so I'd say my estimate is more accurate as an active players count whereas the languages page (and the raw players list) is a logins count.

Fencer: So many little tricks ... and the total? :)

WhisperzQ: Look again.

This page shows [in bold font] where you can send a challenge [without examining the Stairs one by one].

Fencer: So you go to the Main Stairs page, then click on the "Show your stairs only" to get to your own page where you can see the bold for if you are able to challenge.

Any chance to get the same bold feature when you look at your own profile's stairs section?

BBW: I'll second that, though I'd prefer the background highlighting (as per games) rather than a bold font.

Fencer: Is there any purpose for the Creator column? Will anyone else be allowed to create Stairs?

playBunny: Hum... A private stair for fellowships.

I would hate to see many more public stairs for the fact that too many will spread people out too much - unless one or a couple were designated as "official" stairs - and that is the stairs you would want to join to play the best of the best.

Fellowship Stairs are planned. So are the Ponds.

Fencer: What a champion

I am one of those new players who almost ducked out but I wanted to play more games than those minimum allowed, and I wound up as a paid member. Thanks for the info playBunny, and I hope I turn out to be one of those Halma players to stirr up a few high rannked players. Stairs--Why can't a castle have more than one stairs for the enjoyment of so many stairs players?

what's a Fischer's Stair? how is it different from regular stairs? thanks...

plaintiger: It uses the Fischer's clock time control which means that the time is for the entire game rather than per move.

playBunny: aha. thank you, pB.

Im top of the stairs, im top of the stairs

so the fall will be high... Just joking :)

Is there anything to prevent the person at the top of the stairs to not challenge. No one can challenge him until they reach the same height, right? So they can just chill at the top until someone gets to the same stair and challenges them (if they have an open challenging slot of course)

dmk: That is correct. Once you at the top (or even on the bottom), you do not have to challenge anyone - so in a way, you can protect your spot until someone climbs up to you to challenge you.

BIG BAD WOLF: But Fencer said that gaps will be minimized by the system... Once a week or something...

Andre Faria: Probable once a month, any gaps in the steps will be squeezed - that way no one gets *WAY* out from where they don't have the option to even challenge anyone themselves.

(but I'm not even sure that part of the stairs is working or programmed yet - but I believe Fencer was thinking once a month.)

Princess Alison: Not for long