yoyudax: No problem. [shakes hands]

Yes, it was King of the Dust Bunnies, who shows his sense of fair play again. I'd like to have found the trick - in the sense that I consider it clever. ;-)

playBunny:

If I wasn't a pawn I'd use the smileys clinking wine glasses.

playBunny: In defense of MAX regarding having a friend or other player making moves while they are on holiday, I think that's a sensible solution to the problem of timeouts. I hate winning by timeouts (in stark contrast to those who positive seek to boost themselves that way, and while I won't mention a name, I must express the utmost contempt for the fellow countryman who knows who he is) and so I'd much prefer a match to comtinue with a babysitter making moves. It's standard practice at DailyGammon, where I also play, and efforts are usually made to find a babysitter with about the same rating. They would also move as infrequently as possible. And I've just finished babysitting a set of games at IYT for a friend who was away and unsure whether they'd be able to get online before timing out.

But babysitting games is a very different thing to having a team of players working through one account in this competition. If Fencer said that was okay I'd go with it because it then becomes another competition resource (though not one that I have any advantage in). Without his explicit say so, though, my assumption is that it's to be only one person making all the moves.

actionpoints: No problem, I took it exactly the way you meant it and Not a floosie was referring to earlier posts (since modified, lol). ;-)

While playing with fang earlier we discussed connection speed (and that's why I mentioned it in my post below). He said that both he and yourself are on 512Kb. Quite a bit of Britain is on 2Mb, including myself. That coupling with excellent playing partnerships, has allowed me to steam along like a mad clicker! ;-) There are also minor techniques - no, no, not loopholes, lol - that I'm willing to share .. after this month's competition. ;0) These techniques can shave off a second or two here and there and improve the overall move rate.
_______________

Auto?a$$ is the ability for the server to skip your turn if you can't make a move. Here at BrainKing we have the luxury of being able to tell the server (Yes, you're right, I can't make a move. Thanks for putting the game back on my game list so that I make this click and tell you that I agree). Other sites, for some reason, remove this option thereby shortening the game, and hence the fun! [Takes tongue out of cheek.]

But it's also possible for a computer programmer to implement an autopass of their own or even write a program to make every move for them. I'm capable of that and I'm tempted to do so and enter it into the competition next month, lol. (Only as a proof of concept and naturally I'd disqualify myself much as KotDB did with the DB expoit). This month, though, there's no robot and all my clicks are my own. ;-)

playBunny: i am not sure if i like the idea of peopole babystitting games of other players .. we have vacation days for that .. and players should plan a bit .. or take into account some timeouts .. i am for sure .. although i am glad i got rid of the red and green dot games before i go away on holiday .. i am not joining new ones .. although i know i can handle them with vacation days .. but it wouldnt be nice to my opponents i think

i will certainly time out in a couple of games on dailygammon .. even a few rated ones .. but i wont let someone babysit them .. i dont like the idea of them boosting or dropping my rating :)
(i could care less about the friendly games, although some of those are some kind of tournament as well)

all that said i can see people doing it .. and i wont act against it .. although i dont like it

i definetly dont like the idea of several people using 1 account in which each player plays only 1 type of game ... that way the overal rating (average bkr, win loss ratio, ..) would be cheated for sure

Hrqls: I definitely approve of 'babysitting'; it's the only way of coping with a year's 30 day vacation time.

By the time I get to October (assuming Vacation time started in January), I have no days left - so what do I do?
I have asked fencer whether we could pay extra for more days. This could be based on whether a player is a quick player or not.

tonyh: There are two options:
1) Renew by another year - your counter will be reset to 30 days immediately.
2) Upgrade to a Black Rook - you will get 40 days a year.

Fencer: I went to 'Paid membership' to see how much a Black Rook costs - but i cannot see it; where do I look, please?

tonyh: Click on the combobox containing the time ranges. It's an equivalet to 10 years - 300 Euro.

tonyh: make sure your membership renews each year in september .. your vacation days will be filled back up again to 30 at the start of a new year .. but also when you renew your membership .. so you can have 60 vacation days per year

make good use of your weekend days .. you can change them to other days of the week (once in a while) .. this might save you some vacation days
(e.g. i wasnt able to move in a game last thursday .. but i knew i would be able to move on saturday .. so i changed my weekend days to thursday and friday .. that way it didnt cost me a vacation day)

Hrqls: Do you REALLY get an extra 30 days in January!!!??? Fencer, please confirm!

tonyh: The counter is always reset as of 1st January. That's how it works since the very beginning.

I seen this morning that you can click under your opponents flag and read the news of that country, really cool fencer!

Skittles: I am just playing with RSS feeds.

Harley left, and there's no-one to interview me!  (Would you let me be interviewed, Fencer-sama? Please please pleeeeeeeaaaaaaase?)

瀬人様: No problem, it will be a pleasure.

Hey Fencer, what's this new "news" under the flags?  A search engine?

my membership is jan. to jan., if i renew early every year in dec., will i get 30 days in dec. and 30 again after jan. 1st? i just want to be very sure.

ellieoop: If you renew in Dec, it will reset to 30. In Jan, it will reset again to 30. It does not accumulate. You would not have more then 30 unless you are a Black Rook.

Eriisa: 30 days seems like plenty of vacation time. Here it is mid July and I have 29 days left. What's the deal with people needing 60 in a year? I'm on vacation now and am still able to move.

As for getting more vacation days out of the yearly reset, why not get a six month membership if your year subscription ends in November or December? Then when May or June comes up six months later and whether you've used up all your vacation or not, you renew at a year long subscription. Now you'll get 30 more days and the following year in January you'll get 30 again and can have the 30 coming the following May or June.

King Reza: Press monitoring. Try different keywords and you'll see.

Fencer: So BrainKing is a news site now? I have other, more useful, sources for news, and I think the flags look better without this "news" link. Can we have the option not to show it?

KotDB: I like to use google for my world and local news

KotDB: actually given the state of affairs in the world right now, I think it is an excellent time for this feature, I haven't checked it out yet, but news reports from different parts of the world would be an interesting point of view

Vikings:

I agree whole heartedly. A real eye opener to see how different countries handle the same events.

Fencer: Where is this located on the page? I don't see it on my page, nor do I see a monitoring link.

Walter Montego: When your making a move on a game, look at your opponents flag, under it is a link that says "News" that will give ya some news of that country.

Skittles: OK, I'll try that. Now if one of my honorable opponents would be so kind as to move for me to give it a try. :)

Walter Montego: Or you could just take a look at a game even if it's not your turn. :)

Walter Montego: You don't have to wait for your opponent to move. :)
Just go to any of your games and click the "News" link located below your opponent's flag.

Pedro Martínez: I did that as whopper suggested. As it turns out, the top game was one with you in Berolina Chess. It said News under the flag under your handle. I clicked it and it sent me to a page with articles about Czech Republic. I tried it with a different opponent and I was sent to a page with Guatamala news article.

I am curious about the links at the top of these news pages. The one called "Trice sucks" 601 link searches seemed like one to try, but when I went there it had just one article and it was about the Black Eyed Peas and DMX. What are those links for? Are these joke links, or have that many people been searching for information about the space in his head? Very vacuous I've heard and I thought an article about it might help explain it to me.

Walter Montego: It's still in a test mode, that's why it wasn't officially announced and there is no direct link to it (except the one on the Search page. The links at the top mean the most used search keywords and it seems that someone make a joke with it and other people just click on them to see what it is about. I'll make some improvements soon.

KotDB: It's not meant to replace your favourite source for news. It's just an additional source of information for people who don't want to leave BrainKing to read it. I plan to make an aggregation of information from more sources in the future and integrate it to BrainKing pages.

Fencer: Ah, so it is a joke thing. It will be interesting to see how it changes over time.

As for the news feature, it's kind of neat to be able to go to your opponent's listed country to find topics he might have an interest in while playing a game. I'm thinking I'll not often use this feature, but it doesn't hurt to have it.

Fencer: From what I've seen, Yahoo! doesn't do a very good job of selecting important news pertaining to a given country. The results tend to be very redundant and USA-centric. And for many countries, seven or eight of the ten articles are reports of sports results. Eight of these appear to be nearly identical, and five of these have virtually nothing to do with Bavaria.

I wouldn't mind having a world news link in the menu column at the side of the screen, or a link to each country's news on the list of players from that country. But why in the middle of a game page? There, it's just a piece of clutter that has nothing to do with the game.

KotDB: I don't think such a tiny link would be a problem, even on a game page. It will stay as it is.

Walter Montego: and taking out a six-month membership would cost an extra 12 euros a year, which is fine by me; I would wiilingly pay extra for that extra 30 days vacation time!!
I agree that probably very few players are constrained by 30 days vacation time - but I am one and it causes major headaches!!

Fencer:

I like it 

Fencer:

I like it too

Thanks.

Could you please look into how I got two men home in this game

http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=1767148

WellyWales: You should probably report it as a bug.

gambler104: I think the game should be full proove by now

WellyWales: I think u mean "proof"

WellyWales: actually the saying is "fool proof" :o)

WatfordFC: Cor, these Welsh just dont know how to spell proper Inglish lyke wot I duz hehehe

*runs to hide* ;o)

LionsLair: Just an error, i am sure

tonyh: You'll only have to buy the six month membership once. After that your renewal will be in May or June and then you can go back to buying it yearly. This would seem to maximize how many vacation days you could receive by spreading them out over the whole year in six month allotments. When January 1st rolls around you'll get 30 days. Then you renew for a year in June and get reset to 30 days for the remainder of the year knowing the reset for the following January will get you back to 30 days again.

WatfordFC: wen we going to get a spel czech-er ?? we got ever thing else on ear

WellyWales: That would certainly help with all the slav-y spellers out there ;-)