an idea for a pond variation :

each player starts with a (random?) deck of cards (the amount of cards is equal to the number of players minus 1) .. each round each player has to play a card . the player with the lowest card drops out .. the rest of the players continue with their remaining cards

this is somehow related to lowering the amount of points to start with in normal ponds

another variation could be to let each player start with a full deck of 52 cards (or with just 1 color, which is 13 cards) .. maybe 'jokers' (i dont know if thats the english term) could be added as well (4 in a deck of 52 cards?)

the remaining cards of the other players wont be shown (or maybe they will ?)

joshi tm: the dutch translations are on their way .. will take a little time though as real life is keeping me a bit busy :)

could the current match score from that time be shown above the board when reviewing a game in a match ?

for example i finished a match and now i want to know what the match score was at the end of the 3rd game, but it will just show the final match score

(i will have to go through all previous games and count up the match score from that to the point which i want to view)

Matarilevich: ah! i thought i had seen it somewhere, i just forgot where :)
i dont remember seeing any ads when i was a pawn though (the first half year i think)

francescolr: i dont know about that one :)
i have no ads when i browse this site ... but maybe there are some for pawns ? or maybe in the future ?

francescolr: it will probably show how many times the advertisements are viewed/clicked

it would be nice if we could set a favourite language for the boards

by this i mean a setting per user in which he/she can configure which board will be shown in the red number next to the fellowship name

it would be very nice if a different setting could be done per fellowship, but 1 favourite language for all fellowships would ok as well :)

i ask for this because i am in some fellowships which have czech as their main boards. i only see a red number next to the fellowshipname when there is a new post on the czech board. i wont be notified of a new post on the english or dutch board (which some of those czech fellowships have as well)

of course i can add all those english or dutch boards to my favourite boards, but that list is too long already :)

so it would be nice if i could set a language to be my favourite, which would then be used as the board which shows itself in the red number, and if that language is not available then the main board of that fellowship

could there be a list of fellowship rankings ?
similar to the player rankings

with the new team tournaments there will be a lot more interfellowship matches. this would be a nice way to determine which fellowships/teams are high ranked in which game types.

would it be possible to add such a ranking to fellowships ?

Fencer:

i am not sure if it hasnt be asked before already .. but ..

could it be possible to allow a fixed-width font ? (like courier) .. that would make it easier to 'draw' game boards or post tables to explain game situations on the boards

playBunny: technically it wouldnt be cheating though :)

(just like playing 11 hour games only ;))

Thad: people could start to play for streaks ... starting a lot of games and only finishing the ones first in which they are winning .. could deliver weird stats

i think playbunny means a graph of the distribution of bkrs over all players with a rating on a specific game type

like the backgammon rating in a graph

that way you can easily see how far ahead the top players are from the rest of the group (bkr-wise)

so it would just be a visualisation of the rating list of each game type

WhiteTower: but you cant make any subsequent moves until your opponent has moved .. therefore you are dependent of your opponent and he could stall the game until you are asleep and thereby make you lose the game due to a timeout

from what time would you have to make 6 moves within 24 hours ?

like abigail says ... suppose i make a move, then my opponent makes 1 move 23 hours later ... do i have to make 5 moves within an hour ? ... what if i move directly after my opponent did .. then i have to wait until he moves .. which he doesnt have to as his move was just 1 hour ago ... so he can wait easily for 1 hour ... which makes it impossible for me to make 6 moves within 24 hours

suppose its from the start of the game ... i make a move directly after the game starts .. my opponent waits 23 hours (which might be night for me) and makes his move then ... i am asleep so i wont be able to make my 2nd move (let alone my 3rd till 6th move) within the 24 hours since the start

would it add up my waiting times ? (the time between my opponents move and my move) .. but then again .. i could be asleep when my opponent moves and thereby have several hours added to my total time

it sounds quite difficult .. of course you can just chose not to join such a tournament or not accept such an invitation .. but you will have to look carefully :)

nobleheart: or a 3 player game .. the player who moves the last piece of any color off the board wins .. you would switch sides every move .. but there might be some problems with it i dont see right now :)

playBunny: everyone starts with 20,000 points

everyone places a bet, the lowest bet falls into the pond and is out of the game

the higher you bet, the bigger is your chance to stay in the pond .. for that round .. but when you bet too high .. you might have less points for the next round as your bet will be substracted from your initial 20,000 points

so for example someone bets 30 points in the first round ... i bet 40 and you bet 50

then the person with a bet of 30 will be out of the game (and wont win it) ... we are both still in the game .. but i will have 19,960 points left and you will have 19,950 points left .. so i will have a small advantage for following rounds .. as you will run out of points before the pond ends and i will have a little more points left

so your bet per round should be high enough to stay in the game (out of the pond) (higher than the lowest bet who will fall in the pond) .. but not too high as you wont have enough points left in the end

hmm something like that ? ;)

Rex Nihilo & anyone else :) : i dont know much about ratings .. i just played games in which you gain experience points and skill levels (rpgs) ... which is seen as a rating in there, but which just depends on time :)

i have some feeling for maths though .. and i like any ratings and to work for them :)

would it be hard to implement other types of ratings as well ? and maybe display as a side note to the ratings which are used now ? (the lists dont even have to sort by them)

weehee .. another feature request :)

FriendJosh: the whole problem is to identify cheaters, when they are identified with a 100% certainty .. ban them .. why keep them ?

playBunny: you are right i can see a group wanting to have a rating among themselves .. i didnt think of that .. i think i can add nothing to what we have said before and have no real sollution yet there are too many sides to ratings online in a lose 'organisation' like this .. ratings are tough to get right when its done online .. there are too many holes in which villains can hide .. and its too little controlled ... but still they are fun to work for :)

playBunny: argh! i hate laptops .. pressed backspace by accident

i agree that players should be free in their choice of opponents .. but when they want to play for the rating some requirements could be applied .. for example needing a certain variety in opponents .. (lets say when a player played more than 50% of his total games with the same opponent then the rating will be slightly adjusted .. i like abigails idea of normalizing) .. of course this doesnt prevent someone to create 2 extra nicks to cheat with

the 'success' can be calculated better from the win/loss ratio

i am ok with the current system though ;)

playBunny: *nod* thats what i think of cheats as well .. what i said was meant for encouraging players to play various opponents (which was the side effect of fencers idea)

playBunny & Walter Montego: would it better if penetalties were given no just to repeated games between the same players .. but if (for example) more than 50% of all the games of a certain player are with the same opponent ?

could a link be added to forums in subgroups (chess,checkers,...,other board games) on which you can click to go back just 1 step instead of going back to the main list of forums ?
(like the link i added to the jarmo forum)

bumble: hmm .. i see it .. it would make a mess of all the data the account would have been in (tournaments/games/etc.)

too bad :)

baudrillard: when you send your request to the database operator (fencer), i guess he will be able to delete your account

Eriisa: i think he means 'vacation'

ScarletRose: ah now my fogged mind sees what you mean ... there is no envelope next to the names in the list with your games on the status screen

but there is an envelope next to the name in your friends list (in the 'right' column/menu (in my setup :)))

ScarletRose: the envelope doesnt only show next to the name of a 'friend' .. it shows next to the name of all your opponents names below the game board (where the stats of the game are) (as long as you dont have the opponent on your blocked list, or the opponent has you on his/her blocked list)

i guess a tag could be added to the envelope message which would show a message when you hold the mouse over the envelope for some time (like the personal data shown when you hold your mouse over the pawn/knight/rook/.. symbol next to the name) ?

do we really need public holidays when we have 30 vacation days per year already ?

Andersp: lol .. true .. but i guess you need to lower the price of liquor to achieve that ;)

Andersp: it would probably requires some recoding as i understand now a lot is linked to the direct number in the list ... where different languages would sort the list differently

the numbers should be fixed and the lists could be ordered easily .. which of course is possible .. but which is not how it is right now (i think i read somewhere)

reza: but also a list of people within 10 rankings of you would nice :) to know the competition :)

why would you want to know ?

you can easily have a rough estimation of the average established bkr by looking at his list of bkrs .. you can even more easily have his win/loss ratio by looking at his profile

what statistics do you want to know ?

i can understand you want to know your own position .. i am always interested in that .. but i dont have to know the exact position in the statistics of anyone else ... or that someone must be very close to me :)

hmm .. ok i see one point now (thinking while typing ;)) .. suppose you are at position 200 in the average bkr rankings .. then you might want to challenge the one who is at the 199th position for a game and thereby try to advance 1 spot in the rankings

playBunny: :) for some reason in dutch it is 'veel dank' although 'danken' would be more logical as 'veel' is plural :)

graag gedaan :)

playBunny: hmm wouldnt it be nice to have a board dedicated to translations and languages in general .. the language of the board itself would be in english i guess though

your list in dutch :

• Hoi
  
• Hallo
  
• Gegroet
  
• Hoest (or better 'hoe is het ermee')
  

• Veel geluk
  
• Dat was een interessant spel
  
• Aaaggghh!
  
• Neeeeeeeeee!
  
• Phew!
  
• Dat was gelukkig
  
• Dobbelsteen Goden
  
• Ik heb een 6 nodig, geef me een 6!
  
• Race ja!
  
• De race is gestart
  
• Bedankt
  
• Dank u voor de wedstrijd
  
• Wilt u er nog een spelen?
  
• Nog een?
  

grenv: it would be a nice stat indeed ... to show the average time per move which a player uses
(of course this can be different per game type .. but i guess its too much to split it over game types as well :))

Czuch Chuckers: the way it was before (with time limist of 1 day or more) .. was that if you timed out on a day (and you had automatic vacation on) then that day was turned into a vacation day and no other game would time out on that very same day ... this way if a game would time out at 3:00 a.m. it would turn that day into a vacation day .. and a game which would time out at 22:30 that same day wouldnt time out either, and neither would it cost an extra vacation day as this day was already set to be a vacation day

at least thats how i thought it worked

in that case .. case 2 of my previous post would be the one thats correct ?

Czuch Chuckers: when the game would timeout .. but its a vacation day .. then it wont time out .. it can only time out on the next day which is not a vacation day ...

a question which arises (for me) though is .. supposed a 1 hour game would time out on 22:30 .. i have auto vacation on .... so this day would become a vacation day .. and the game wont time out ... but! .. does it try to time out again on 0:30 on the next day .. or does it try to time out at 22:30 for the first time again on the next day

in the first case i will lose 2 vacation days .. even when i would be online at 9:00 a.m. the next day and make my move .. in the second case i would only lose 1 vacation day as i made my move before 22:30 the next day

frolind: ah ok :)

last week i discovered you can already start more than one game at once with the same opponent ... but those will count as separate games .. not as a single match ..

i can see the value of this addition you propose :)

Fencer: would that be a board where only cloaked people can post ? and uncloaked people cannot see whats happening ? ;)

frolind: starting all those games at once might be a problem for pawns .. or people who have too many games going on already .. they might now want to have 3 games added for every (2 player) final they are in

at the moment it would be very nice to me .. because i am in some finals which will probably last until i am on holiday (we are in the first game of a 3 win match) .. and i will probably have to use some vacation days ..

so personally right now i would favor starting those games at once ... but generally i see more problems with it than i see advantages

maybe a link 'expand fellowship boards' to show all the boards in all your fellowships would be nice ... clicking on the link again would hide the boards again

(this means a combination of how it is right now and the way it was for a half a day last week :))

Summertop: you could make a tournament start far in the future .. write in the description the real date and time at which you will start it .. that way you can remove anything from it right before you start it (i think you can start a tournament right away by changing the start date to the past ? i think bbw did that a couple of times ?) .. i am not sure if this wont leave a gap of 10 minutes open though .. but at least it would minimize the chances

grenv: i didnt say 'illegal' .. but you are correct that its legal .. just against the company policy :) .. i was making the words too strong i guess :)

suppose i am using the english version .. then only the new messages on the english boards would show up in red numbers next to the names of the fellowships .. i can then switch to dutch and have a look at all the dutch boards in the fellowships (only one so far i guess ;))

then i switch to czech .. and see the czech red numbers ... and i can try to decypher those :)

etc.

right now i have to go to the fellowship page itself to see if there are new messages on the english boards if the main language of that fellowship is other than english

it would be nice to link this to the language which is used to watch the site at that moment

Luke Skywalker: hey! weird ... i never noticed .. but it does add one indeed ... hmm .. fencer ? help us confused souls, enlighten our days please ;)

grenv: *nod* thats what i do at home ... but i dont want to do that at work .. its not exactly legal to play at work ;) ... plus more people can use my laptop once in a while

Luke Skywalker: i thought it doesnt add the extra Re: when someone really uses the 'reply' link underneath the post (like grenvs subject has 5x Re: and so does mine while i used the reply link underneath his post

but when someone manually types in the Re: in front of the previous subject (instead of using the link which adds the Re: automagically) .. then the Re: is seen as part of the text instead of the real function of a Re:

hmm .. i hope that was clear .. it sounds quite confusing to myself as well ;)

Luke Skywalker: hmm thats an idea .. just tried it .. its much better .. i will have to type the word GameList extra .. but thats only for once each day :)

thanks for the tip :)

Fencer: ok ... i subdue to the people ;)
(or something like that .... but then in correct english ;))

i will try to be gentle with my tab key :)