mctrivia: 50% is a massive rake. It makes no sense for gamblers to have a separate site when there are other separate sites with much lower rakes. The gambling market is very competitive.

Walter Montego: I don't know Backgammon but I would consider Dark Chess a game of skill just like poker is a game of skill. It involves knowing your odds and playing acordingly. As for 50/50 it does not have to be that specifically. Fencer should get a cut to help keep the site going. Besides in a tournament with 20 people in it, 10 peoples entrence is a lot still.

mctrivia: This would never work. Do you really think people won't load up fritz and get the best move if $ is on the line? It's not like this hasn't been thought of before. There are several sites that are trying it...they don't get *that* much traffic to make it worthwhile. I won't post links, but you can google it easily enough.

JackFiveOff: I have no clue what you mean. But seting up a web site is not expensive. $9 a year for a domain name. $4 a month for a high bandwidth low space web server in the US.

mctrivia: It's more than setting up a website. You have to do all of the coding behind the scenes for the $ part to work. That can be expensive when you are factoring in the amount of time it would take to implement. It's a lot more work than you think - I'm sure Fencer can agree w/ that.

And most of my post was regarding cheating. What makes you think people won't look up the best moves when $ is on the line? I mean, people cheat here when all you're playing for is a win or loss...

Nice ideas but lets see what Fencer says first before you stress yourselves out on the legalities and technicalities etc. :)

JackFiveOff: Ya unfortunetly there is absoulutely nothing you can do to stop cheaters.

mctrivia: which is exactly why this idea will never work

I think turnbased moneygames mostly will attract cheating sharks and naive fish.

Yes, this idea with Brains has been wandering through my mind for a long time. Something will be done next year.
But no gambling, no real money winning, of course. It would be illegal in our country as well.

Fencer: Just a minor note: Technically, it would be illegal here. But the practice of the courts is not unambiguous. Betandwin.com, expekt.com and other similar sites have never encountered any legal problems in the Czech Rep.

Pedro Martínez: "not unambiguous" is close to not being an unambiguous phrase in itself in fact.

grenv: Not in my eyes.

Is there any way to stop people from creating more than one account here?

(sorry if this has been asked before)

Lamby: Sometimes I suspect it's the favorite local pastime around here

Why would someone want to make more then one account. As for stoping them you could make them show ID but there would be know way stoping them from using someone elses ID for the secound account.

volant: yes I agree!

mctrivia...they seem to do it for a few reasons, one to cheat at their games & another to role play as different people & abuse peoples online friendships

Is it possible to only allow one user name to each persons internet connection? Im sure they have that system on other sites to avoid the problem of multi accounts

Lamby: what happens when a husband and wife both want to play? or 2 brothers? same i-net connection isn't a good means to limit the accounts.

JackFiveOff: Any company using PAT would only have 1 person in the entire company access at once. Wouldn't work for wireless hot spots.

Legal or not put prize tournaments exist on BK now, so what is a difference?
Are you saying that any match/tournament with an entry fee is considered as gambling? see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling

eagle eye: Simple definition of Gambling. Placing money down in the hopes of wining more money back.

so any live tournaments with an entry fee is gambling.
However, if you pay money for membership and play to hope to win more money this is not gambling:)
How it sounds?

eagle eye: Its completely different. Especially since you don't have to be a paying member to take part in the prize tournaments (unless specified by the tournament creator). Usually, pawns are allowed in them.

Also, your membership fee isn't going into the prize pool, the prize is provided by the tournament creator. This, again, makes it completely different.

JackFiveOff: my point was about gambling :) so if money doesn't go directly toward a tournament you cannot consider it(payment for membership) as a gambling, is it right?

That's it. That's why there will be no money winning. You can win Brains but it is only a virtual currency and can be used only on BrainKing, nowhere else. Or you can win a t-shirt or a membership.

eagle eye: it just depends on what definition of gambling you are using really. different governments and organizations view it in different ways. many people would contend that if you are playing a game of skill for money, it is not considered gambling. and so on.

i would definitely not view paying a membership here and participating in a tournament w/ a prize as gambling.

Fencer: It would not be illegal. 1) gambling is not illegal. 2) This is not gambling.

Gambling sites without a license is ilegal in most countries. But yes the prize tournaments are not gambling.

Otherwise, the PGA tour, the Formula 1, the Premiership football etc would all be classed as gambling. They are not games of chance, they are games of skill and as such they are not classed as "gaming" (UK legal term).

read below. Someone already said that in some countries if you win more then they combined entry fee in a game of skill it is not gambling.

mikkyT: A football game is not gambling. Betting on who will win, putting money on it, and winning money back, is gambling.

Why do you thing the bookies get arrested?

yes but if Brain King hosted such a thing they would be the bookie. Now if you want to bet on a game with someone else go ahead just keep BrainKing out of the loop

Eriisa: Yes but the one who accepts bets must have a licence for it, otherwise it's illegal.

Gambling? What's that? I live in Utah!

I don't know what the law is like everywhere else. but, believe it or not, gambling is NOT illegal in Utah. Gambling where the "house" takes a percentage of the winnings IS illegal. So, I can sit down with some friends of mine and play poker for real money and not be breaking the law. Now, if I was to run a "Poker Parlor" for some friends and keep a little of the winnings to "cover my costs", then I would be breaking the law.

Now, the disclaimer...this is how it was explained to me. I am not positive about the law. So, if you take my word for it and get BUSTED...You can't blame it on me.


p.s. It is un-realistic to expect money for winning...It is just too hard to stop cheaters. I certainly wouldn't put up money in hopes that everyone else was honest. Yeah! Right!

Let's get back to Feature Requests, please. Thanks!

It occurred to me today that a list of "active" or "busy" games would be really nice to have. When I don't have any moves to make, I'd often like to watch other games in progress. It seems to be difficult to find games that are currently "busy" in realtime. Perhaps there could be a dynamic list that, say, shows all games with two or more moves in the past 5-10 minutes? Then it would be easy to pick out the most active games to watch. Am I the only one that finds watching entertaining?

headius: I watch almost more than I play at Vogclub, but that's a realtime site. I've watched a few games here - usually when I'm in an active game myself and clicking on the games that my opponent is playing.

It would be handy to know who's playing something watchable. It is, of course, possible to go through a game once it has ended but it's not the same. In Backgammon I can tell you that I, TC and kie19 tend to play a game right through if possible.

One possible indicator is to have a person's refresh rate shown in their profile. It wouldn't be reliable but could be a good give a hint. Mine's set to 2 minutes. Lol. Even then I often click the refresh button to get to the next move.

mctrivia: All these cheating theories and other conspiracys. You guys are so cloak and dagger. I'll grant you that such things might just happen or be a person's reason for having an extra account or two, but the most likely reason is they're cheap and want to save money. I can have five Pawn accounts. All free, or I can one Rook account around $36 US. If I only play eighty games at a time, which is the better deal? Yeah right, five accounts, five different ratings. But there's plenty of people that don't give a hoot about no stinking ratings and just want to play games.

On the main game page, next to each of my BKRs in the "Your best BKR" s******, I'd like to see that little graph s***** that takes me to the graph of my BKR over time.

I had a game time out yesterday, despite being on line. I know the games show up in red when there is less than an hour to go, but I'd like to see this be user definable. I'd like my games with 24 hours or less to be red. I'm not here every hour. ;-)

Thad: You have a mere fourteen games! I'm puzzled you'd have a problem making a move. Perhaps you should do what I've been forced to do since getting this new job. I hate having to have done it, but it has curtailed my problems with having to worry about time outs.

Play longer time limit games.

Simple solution. I don't like it, but I have understanding opponents and I do make my moves when I'm able to. I have around 30 games going. Down from 60 of a few weeks back. Since you don't have 900 games going and those people seem able to avoid time outs, I'm kind of wondering what happened. What was the time limit for the game you timed out in? Why should it matter what color it is for telling you about how much time it is? It's the amount of time left, not the color that is important. I hope you have your games listed by the amount of time left. That's how I have mine listed. That way the game with the least time left is listed first. If I know I have time to play every game when I log on, it doesn't matter which one I play first. If I only have time for a few moves I can look at the top of the list and move in the games that will time out in before the next time that I think I'll log on.

Walter Montego: Well first of all I am not the one with the huge cheating theories I did ask why you would want more then one account. But opening five accounts is still cheating. It is cheating Fencer out of the money he rightly deserves.

Walter Montego: This is the request board is it not? What is wrong requesting anything under 24 hours to be in red. Lots of places do it and I think it would be nice. May help my aponents not to time out on me.

Walter Montego: I sorted them by name some time ago (I forget exactly why) and kinda never really noticed that they weren't in order by time left. That's why I didn't notice that one game had little time left.

As I said before, it would be nice to be able to set the value for the time left for which the color of the game changes to red. 24 hours would be my choice, other players might prefer other times.

mctrivia: It most certainly is a request board. There comes a time when the place is built and standing nice. Then we start redecorating. We have plenty of features now that should keep one from timing out. I don't need a rainbow of colors to see that a game is down to one hour left, 23 hours left, or 2 days 13 hours left. You guys need color coded lists, fine, request them. My list is fine just the way it is and I don't want a bunch of extraneous clutter and bells and whistles. I fail to see why some dilligence on your part can't keep the games from timing out. Plus there's vacation time that us paying members are given a generous amount of.

I hate to time out my games. A game of Dark Chess is ruined if it times out. There's no way to undo it once the position is shown. A bad game is not too bad of a thing to time out win or lose, but a good game is. Now my job takes me away from playing here and my vacations days have dwindled. As far I know I have yet to lose a game on time out except for one that didn't allow vacations. As long as I have this job I won't join games or tournaments that work that way. Some people can be bad sports when losing, but even if I'm losing a game I don't want my opponent cheated out of a well deserved victory. I time out and if the game was close, my opponent wins, but the win is kind of hallow compared to him making a good move or me falling for a trap that he has set up.

I understand not wanting to time out, but I look at it as something that is my responsibility. If I have a problem with the time limit of a game, I don't join the game. Since it is my life that changed in the middle of a running game, that's the breaks. I hate losing for any reason, but it's my fault for timing out.

If you can get your color coded list happening, what will you say when you time out the next time? Things happen, right? In itself it's not an unreasonable request and I'm willing to bet it'd be fairly easy to make happen. Especially seeing how it's already in place to warn you that you have just an hour left by changing to red. If Fencer makes the change, I'll have to think about what time I'd make the warning change color. I could just shut it off, but color difference does draw attention to something. Do you think 24 hours is a good cut off?

Walter Montego: Ah well I have never let a game get as low as 1 hour so I haven't seen the red. Red at 1 hour makes sense. Or even red by user specific. I agrea that is isn't that important a feature as I sort my games in order of time to time out and use autovacation. But I would like any feature that would stop my oponents from timing out. I have a few friends that I usually end up calling and telling them they are running out of time just so I can keep playing.

An option that may be more useful for those people that are cronicly timing out is have an e-mail warning when they have 24 hours left(this should be user selectable like the e-mail for your move). The problem is most likely they don't log on that often.

McT: Or have BrainKing call their mobile. "Stop! Whatever you are doing, stop! Make your way immediately to the nearest Internet access. It's your move and your attention is urgently required." ;-)

playBunny: Maybe not call but having the option to IM them would work. LOL

playBunny: LOL! I want that one!