happyjuggler0: Danica McKellar > Danica Patrick

rabbitoid: LOL!

Does anyone know how the number of Brain King paying members today compares with the numbers from years back? Are there more today? Or fewer?

Change your settings:

From the menu on the left of the main BrainKing page, choose Settings from under Profile. Then, on the General tab (which should be the default) at the very top is Main Layout. Change to one of the other layouts. Then you won't see the dragon and the script that runs it should stop being run whenever you bring up that page.

HIH

Bernice: I set up some loooong matches so I wouldn't need to start new games for a while.
Open Pente (Thad vs. Cheri)
Open Pente (Thad vs. JackS)

Do we know why it disappeared? It was a worthwhile option to me!

What happened to the option when starting a new game to prevent a player already playing a game with you from grabbing more games from the waiting area?

It seems entirely possible that a 10-wins match with a high probability of ending in a draw could reach that many games. But then again, who'd want to play 230+ draws out of 255 games!

Wow, it looks like you can't play a match that's longer than 255 games. Our match just disappeared from the main page without any warning or message or anything after game #255. Open Pente (Thad vs. JackS)

It's my understanding that in Reversi is biased as well but that in Reversie it's actually Player 2 who the advantage.

Pente is that way too. The advantage is not significant for novice players, but expert players rarely lose as Player 1.

In games like these, I think the BKRs should be calculated as follows:

Calculate BKRs separately for games in which the player moved first (Player 1) or second (Player 2). Calculate the percentage of the player's wins that come as Player 1 and as Player 2. Multiply each BKR by the player's winning percentage **of the other position**.

For example, if player has a BKR of 2000 as Player 1 but only 1800 as Player 2 and was Player 1 in 70% of his wins (meaning he was Player 2 in only 30%of his wins) then his BKR should be 2000 * .3 + 1800 * .7 = 1860.

This system usually produces better BKRs than the curent system. And it never produces worse BKRs than the curent system, at least not in any situations that I can think of. I can think of situations where this system wouldn't give a very good result, for example, when a player plays as P2 exclusively. but the system we have in place now doesn't give a good result in these situations either.

Bernice: There's an extra 'dot' in the link. Try this, RatingDestroyer

It would be a *major* improvement to this site if games, or at least tournament games, could be limited to allow only a certain amount of vacation days. Even if I sign up for a fast paced tournament, I can still get stuck by players with lots of vacation time. I understand the desire for it, but how about a way to make a tournament with, for example, a maximum of five vacation days per player (per round?). That way, someone can go on a weeklong vacation without forfeiting. Seems reasonable to me!

She's a Steeler fan! Woo-hoo!!

Carpe Diem: What's needed is a sort by "games that have been waiting for me to move the longest" option. In other words, sort by opponent's last move time.

Artful Dodger: Both! ;-)

So how did cardinal win a match s/he wasn't even in?

Hau‘oli lā hānau, Brain King!

Fencer: Thanks. I get curious about that from time to time. ;-)

Fencer (or anyone),

Can you please tell us which game/match has been running for the longest time. Are there any games/matches still running started in 2007 or earlier?

Thanks!

happyjuggler0: Obama's fault. Funny! ;-)

In my case, though, I still think it's Fencer's fault because although he actually implements DST for the US pretty well, I live in Hawaii, which is one of the two states that doesn't observe DST and Fencer hasn't taken that into account in his programming.

Roberto Silva: If it's not the programmers fault that time on this site is displayed improperly, then whose fault is it? ;-)

Bernice: I have the same problem in Hawaii. Fencer doesn't seem to understand that Daylight Saving Time isn't implemented worldwide. Years ago he told me to just change the settings on my account and pretend that I live one time zone over. Of course, I'd have to change that twice/year. Not a big deal, but, come on, a site shouldn't work that way.

thisbeme: I had trouble reaching brainking.com (and brainking.it) earlier today. It seems fine now.

Hats off to Ladybird68 & Angler who each topped the old record by over 2,000 moves!

16,500+ moves in one day. Wow!

Hrqls: Ha, ha, hardly. I was doing a lot of eBay sales at the time.

I had trouble with PayPal. The froze my account and accused me of laundering money. Ha! I've seen people do it in movies but wouldn't have the slightest idea how to do it in real life. I hate PayPal!

Bwild: OK, then it would at least give us an upper bound, no? And a better one than the 100,000 we have now. ;-)

I'd be curious to know how many of the 100,000 users have logged in in the last week, month, and year (or maybe six months). Seems like that would give the best indicator of just how many users there are here.

Can somebody find a good estimate of the percentage of tournaments affected by this?

Gabriel Almeida: In the tournament you site, the games that are unfinished *don't matter* for determining who will play in the next round, therefore it should be started already! Fencer, why do you allow this?

When someone sends me a polite request asking me to try and move more quickly than the time limits require I try and help them, especially if they include a good reason for wanting to play faster. But if I got three rude demands to do so all in the same day, I'd probably ignore them.

Fencer: Thanks for the info. Good to know I'm not losing it and remembering something that never was! I hope the feature returns soon.

When creating new games, didn't there used to be an 'allow players already playing games with me' checkbox one could uncheck so a player couldn't accept a whole bunch of your games at once? I can't seem to find it now.

Aganju: But then you can upgrade one without upgrading the other and you can use different displays, one at work, one at school, at home, in the car, wherever...

(V): My guess is that a lot of people will be using Apple products. It will be interesting to see where technology goes in the next decade. My prediction is that we should see separation of the processor and the display into two distinct physical devices. Computing devices will become so tiny that we'll wear them as bracelets or earrings. We'll still need devices to view our content on, though, and we won't want those to be tiny!

(V): Sorry, but that's meaningless. A grandmaster and I use the same chess pieces, but the results we produce are vastly different! ;-)

Aganju: Interesting point. I surf a lot. But my computer also has accounts (with awesome Parental Controls) for my kids. It handles my music and photos automatically. I use it to edit video. Stuff syncs with my iPad and with my iPhone, and my wife's iPhone... I never have to mess with network settings, and best of all, the same company that makes the hardware and makes the operating system.

Marshmud: I know. It was a joke. I love Macs and think PCs are horrid. People who think PCs are better than Macs are... well, this is supposed to be a friendly forum, right? ;-)

Aloha all!

What's IE (says this Mac user)? ;-)

It's OK now.

I finished a game several hours ago and my new rating is reflected on the ratings page, but I still appear as an inactive player. Does anyone know why? TIA

Pedro Martínez: OK, I swear there used to be a setting for that. Maybe I need a brain check. ;-)

Thanks!

Isn't there a way to set how long your status remains online without reloading or clicking on a page before you appear as offline? I can't find it.

I want to give my Brains to a particular user. How do I do that?

AbigailII: Yes, it would be nice if paid members didn't have to see them at Brainking.info as well as BrainKing.com. To Fencer, they might be quite different sites, but I'm sure most users don't thing of them as different at all.

I have noticed that BrainKing has been going down for short periods of time a lot lately. Tonight, I noticed that when it came back online, today's new blog message was at the top of my Main Page. Is there a connection?

If anyone is looking for someone to donate their extra black rook membership to, I'm available! ;-)

I know that Chessmaster1000's prize contest is over, but at least one person could not bring up the context page because it was hosted at angelfire, which is blocked by his country's government! I have obtained Chessmaster1000's permission and posted the same page on my site, http://www.thad.com/brainking/puzzle.html, for anyone who is still curious to see the questions.

Thad

PS: Mods, sorry for the off-topic post, but this is where the thread was yesterday. ;-)