coan.net: I've found that the lack of noise when it is your turn makes me make sure to take a glance, and the beep (warning) is loud enough that I have turned the sound down so the cards and chips aren't intrusive

"GERRY": You have to remember, that the game is still in "test" mode - with Fencer still updating the code and such.

So I've gotten confused from all the past messages - what is your issue?

Are you still seeing the "reload to update" message - or is it just not working?

coan.net: Not had chance to play yet with sound (been a bit of a busy weekend so far lol) and less time to go through all the 45 posts . If you get time let us know about the time countdown through css as thats what i think would be great. Could it be done through greasemonkey? If so i would imagine there would be lots greasemonkey could do (add advanced buttons for check, call, raise etc...)

where is this thing that fencer has posted about if u lose ur chips you can buy more and get 1,000 new ones no pop up has come up and i dont have enough chips to enter any minimum game tables it says

is the site frozen again?

BadBoy7: you need to have under 500 chips before you see it

Bernice: yes, gonna just have to wait for Fencer to wake up

BadBoy7: Here you go
http://brainking.info/

Vikings: Hey the guy,s got to sleep :)))

Hi there :)

I just learned today, that we now have teh pokahs at BrainKing. Lovely ;)

I just skimmed through this board, and I wanted to drop some random thoughts on discussed issues.

1.) Free chips

On different sites, Playmoney is handled differently. At DoylesRoom for example, if you have less than 1000 chips, your chips will be reloaded once a day. On other sites, like Titan, you can reload whenever you have less than 1000 chips. Chips in play of course do count for that, so if you sit at a table with 500 chips and have 600 in your account, you can't reload. On Full Tilt there is an additional rule, that you have to wait 5 minutes between reloads. I think, for the enjoyability of the game, and especially for playing no limit, the latter version would be the best. 5 minutes might be to short of a time for BrainKing, but if you have to wait an hour to reload, that should be enough I think. And I think, everybody should be able to reload to 1k, you could just make pawns wait one hour and paid members 30 minutes or something. Time spans are just random suggestions and might be altered, but I think a day is to long, and 5 minutes maybe too short considering the generally slow pace of the games. People will lose interest in the Poker games rapidly, if they have to wait a day after losing their stack in one hand imo.

Also I absolutely hate the idea of resetting the chips after a certain time. In Poker, you play to accumulate chips. If I'd lose them without playing, that would ruin it for me...

edit: I also think it is better to reload to 1000 instead of adding 1000 on top

2.) Showing hands & Minimum raise

There is a quasi official selection of rules, I just can't find the link atm... :( Be assured though, that the two points discussed are handled identically at every site and brick & mortar casino:

Hands are only revealed when there is a showdown, i.e. there are still at least two players in the hand after the river betting round. If everybody but one folds, the cards remain unknown to the other players.

The only time you can raise for less than the previous raise on the same street in no limit/pot limit is when you go all in. So if I bet 20 on the flop, you'd have to raise to at least 40. If you decide to raise to 50 instead, the minimum amount I could raise to would be 80, making it 30 more. On the turn though, you could bet the minimum again.

3.) Posting blinds

It is indeed common practice that you won't get dealt a hand unless you post at least one big blind. So when sitting down you have the option to wait for the big blind to come to you, or you can post it in your current seat, if you are not sitting in one of the blinds, and not on the button. So you can post between "Under the gun" (first seat after big blind) and "Cutoff" (first seat before button). Also, when you sit out when the big blind comes to you, you can only be dealt back in by posting the big blind and small blind when you are in of those seats, or by waiting for the big blind again. If you sit out in the small blind, you can get back in by posting the small blind in one of those positions or waiting for the big blind again. If you post "out of position", there will of course be more blind bets than usual in the pot. Again, this is not necessarily "official", as there is no universely accepted Poker authority, but absolutely common place and generally accepted as de facto standard. Those rules assure, that no sit out wizards can play without paying blinds or with paying less than their opponents. If you post the big blind in the cutoff at a full 10 handed table, you pay 1 big blind for 7 hands, while you pay 1.5 big blinds for 10 hands by posting big blind and small blind in position. So, the cost per hand is nearly equal. That's part of the reason why you can't post on the button, too.

---

Anyway, nice to see Hold'em here :) Is there currently a problem with the refresh or something? The table doesn't refresh for me atm, is this a general problem, or something with my settings? Doesn't work in Firefox, Opera and Chrome though. It says connected, but actually nothing changes.

To come back of my promise of last Friday, here's is my suggestion on how
poker tournaments could work.

Tournament creation
First step is to create the tournament. The organizer sets a start date
and time, and defines a few parameters (limit/pot limit/no limit; stakes
seconds/move, max/min number of players). (S)he also has to define the
number of chips a player starts with - the "buy in". I can imagine two
variants: 1) players bring in their own chips (as is done now for the
existing poker tables) and 2) tournament chips are not related to the total
number of chips a player owns - you get a number of chips to play with, and
they're gone afterwards. There should be some checks so that the combination
of parameters are sane (stakes 5/10 with 10000 starting chips or stakes
500/1000 with 750 starting chips are not desirable parameter combinations)

Tournament signup
There will be no advance signup. The table(s) ought to open for players
a few (10?) minutes before the sceduled start of the tournament. Players
should be seated before the tournament starts - or else they cannot
participate.

Sitting out
You cannot leave the table - once you're in, you have to continue playing.

Winning condition
The winning condition is simple: last person to have a positive number of
chips wins the tournament.

Blinds
Blinds should be automatic, and there's no sitting out.

Stake increase
Over time, when players get eliminated, the average number of chips/player
will go up. Stakes (including blinds) should increase during the course of the
tournament. To pull some numbers out of thin air: a 10% increase each time
a player gets eliminated from the table, or if the button (dealer) has passed
around the table twice, which ever comes first.

Timeouts
Eliminating a player if (s)he timeouts is perhaps a bit harsh. However,
keeping her/him in and having him/her timeout over and over again is
very annoying of the other players. So I suggest the following. Once
a player time outs, (s)he goes into "time out mode". A player in time
out mode always puts in her/his blind (if (s)he is a blind); otherwise,
as soon as it is her/his turn, (s)he folds. That way (s)he doesn't hold
up the game, nor can (s)he win. Also, if a player times out, a button
appears on his/her screen. Pushing the button brings her/hime out of timeout
mode, and back into the game.

More tables
If a tournament has 10 players or less, the tournament can be played
on a single table. Otherwise, the tournament has to start on more than
one table. As soon as 5 (or, in rare cases less) players are left at a
table, they advance to the next round (keeping their current number of
chips). Repeat until there's one table, with one winner left. Of course,
another cut-off number could be picked as well (perhaps only the top
3 should advance).

Gordon Shumway: Good tips. I will take them to a comsideration. And no, there is no problem with table refreshing, I've just checked all of them. It might help if you have a look at the error console of your browser.

AbigailII: Nice tournament tips, thank you.

AbigailII:

Tournament creation 1) players bring in their own chips (as is done now for the
existing poker tables) and 2) tournament chips are not related to the total
number of chips a player owns - you get a number of chips to play with, and
they're gone afterwards

How about a mix: You pay a tournament buy in - for example 500 chips - which is deducted from your chip balance and put in a price pool, and you receive tournament chips - for example 10k - which are not related to the chips in your account. Then the tournament could define a payout structure - for example, the winner gets all, or 70%/30% for 1st and runner up, or something similar. The payouts are then awarded from the price pool back to the winners' accounts.

More tables
If a tournament has 10 players or less, the tournament can be played
on a single table. Otherwise, the tournament has to start on more than
one table. As soon as 5 (or, in rare cases less) players are left at a
table, they advance to the next round (keeping their current number of
chips). Repeat until there's one table, with one winner left. Of course,
another cut-off number could be picked as well (perhaps only the top
3 should advance).

That is one way to do it, called shootout tournaments. There is, however, a more common practice of moving players to other tables until there is only one table left. For example, 20 players start a tournament, and there are 2 tables with 10 players each. Once 2 players get eliminated, tables are balanced. So if there are 8 players on table A and 10 players on table B, one player is moved from table B to table A. Once only 10 players are left, all players from table B are moved to the free seats at table A, and the final table is played out. This is however more complicated to implement and test, so maybe shootouts should be the way to get started. Oh, and all other suggestions you made are good. Usually blinds are increased time based, but for BrainKing I think it would be fine to do it based on No. of players or No. of hands. I actually think, No. of hands would be better. But please don't do it based on No. of rounds. That way, when there are only two players left, blinds would increase every second hand, not good imo.

Fencer: OK, I keep getting the following message continuously (using german version atm, so just translated it myself, and not guaranteeing that this is how it actually appears in the original version)

Error: syntax error
Source file: http://brainking.com/en/AJAXTableRefresh?g=20&bms=129401

Row: 1, Column: 1
Source Code:
5745:Czuch:0:2:1:5471:0:D7HT:-1:0:1:0|63960:snaky:0:2:1:1078:0:CAH7:-1:0:1:0||||||||;18197:Gordon Shumway;0;20;D2S8DTDAH4;3;63960;5745;0;1;10;0;0;2;19;11;1

Oh, and there is a "^" pointing to the first "D" in Czuch's line

Gordon Shumway: I have no idea why a "D" should cause a syntax error. Especially when it works for others.

Gordon Shumway: Ah, I've got it. For some strange reason, your browser tries to validate XML but no XML is used, of course. It is not a right behavior and if it happens with other browsers as well, something is wrong with your system at all.

Fencer:
This is the Header that Firebug shows me for the AJAXTableRefresh GET response:

Date         Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:58:20 GMT
Content-Type    text/xml; charset=utf-8
Pragma	          no-cache
Cache-Control	  must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires	          Friday, 12-Jul-02 23:59:59 GMT
Content-Length 309
Server	         Jetty(6.1.9)

Gordon Shumway: I think I have a solution. It should be active soon.

Fencer: Great, thanks, looking forward to it

AbigailII: Another option...Not require everyone to stay and play this big long marathon....Have a tourny start at a specific time. But also have a date/time when it ends. At which point, whever has the most chips wins. These tournaments typically run a week. Brainking could even sponsor a weekly tourny like this.

Gordon Shumway: Try it now.

AbigailII: I think, at least at the beginning, if not generally, creating Poker tournaments shouldn't be a function available to everybody. Maybe do it like it's currently done with team tournaments. Have one or two members take care of it. Then you won't have to deal with a ton of never starting tourneys with weird settings. I don't think having countless tournaments on any given day would be a good thing, and people playing 10 tournaments simultaneously wouldn't either, that would only hold up the games unnecessarily.

Summertop: These tournaments typically run a week. A week long tournament? How's that supposed to work? Not many people will be able to go without sleep for a week.

Note that in my suggestion, once you start the tournament, you got to stay till you're eliminated - there are no time outs or breaks. Now, a time limit may be a good idea - let the tournament run for one or two hours, and count the chips at the end. (To avoid people waiting till the last second before raising/betting/calling/checking/folding once they are ahead close before the time runs out, hide the exact time when the tournament finishes, or let a tournament be "1 hour + 20 hands", meaning that the tournaments ends 20 hands counting from an hour after the tournament started).

Fencer: Looked better, but now I get the following error:

Fehler: errorMessageTimeout.clearTimeout is not a function
Quelldatei: http://brainking.com/js/poker-19.js

Zeile: 1303

Gordon Shumway: seems like my system is really sucky.... :/

AbigailII: Maybe we should stick to 1 table tournaments at first, and just play them to an end?

Gordon Shumway: Huh? clearTimeout is one of fundamental JavaScript functions and must be supported everywhere. Does it happen with other browsers too?

OK, I just played some more. It is slow to play. When a player "times out" it is VERY SLOW.
1. There were 3 players...one of them kept timing out.
2. The other two wanted to check.
3. The "timed out" player would auto check after timing out...EACH TURN!
4. At the very end, the player that timed out THREE TIMES actually, won.
6. New hand, I was FINALLY dealt in...
7. After the flop, the same player timed out again (checked), so I did a small raise...
8. Player timedout AGAIN and auto folded.
9. Play continued...
10. New hand...player that timedout repeatedly was still there...and timing out.
11. Finally that player was either booted from the table, or left. Whew!
12. Player shows right back up...
13. Player continues to timeout, hoping to win more pots with everyone checking...

Please, Please, Please....When a player times out...
1. Flag the player as timed out.
2. Force a fold, no matter what!
3. Don't deal them in to a new hand till they unflag themselves.
4. Let existing players boot timed out players (so others can take their seat).

Gordon Shumway: Sorry, my fault. This is a real bug, will be fixed tomorrow (I am already too tired to make any changes today).

Fencer: OK, I was just about to paste Opera's error message, but the console doesn't allow me to copy more than one line, or I am to noob to figure out how. But now that you found an error, I'll just wait until tomorrow :) I'm just gonna play some other games and read some forums for now. Have a good time relaxing and thanks for taking care of this problem (which strangely only is a problem for me?)

Summertop:

Please, Please, Please....When a player times out...
1. Flag the player as timed out.
2. Force a fold, no matter what!
3. Don't deal them in to a new hand till they unflag themselves.
4. Let existing players boot timed out players (so others can take their seat).

1. Yes!
2. I think it is actually OK to let them check in the hand on that they timed out, just do it instantly when the action comes to them and don't wait for them to return.
3. Timed out should be = sitting out, so Yes!
4. Might be an option as might be auto boot them when they timed out and the big blind comes across them.

In your (brainking.info) blog, you mentioned being able to request more chips...I have a few suggestions for this feature:

1. Only let people renew chips only when they go bust.

2. Let every player have 5 (or some finite number) of free renews. So players learning can get more chips at the beginning. All 5 can be used in one hour, one day, however long they need. Again, can only renew if you don't have chips. So, you can't use them all up to get 5 times the normal starting amount.

3. Let players always get one renewal per day. Again, only if you don't have any chips.

4. Reward people for playing other games on brainking. You could have a daily bonus players could grab, based on their activity with the other turn based games. You could base it on number of ratings (provisionsal?), number of running games, number of moves, or any combination.

Let every player have 5 (or some finite number) of free renews...

now that isnt very fair....you have people playing because they love the game but they never win a hand....so after "so many" renews you want to deprive them of having fun??? I think not.

you then say ***Let players always get one renewal per day*** which is it to be.....or am I missing your point here

Gordon Shumway: this might help you clean out your system LOL

http://www.raincitystory.com/flash/screenclean.swf

Bernice: The problem is that we can't just allow infinite renews otherwise people will just lose all their chips right away because they know they can just get more again, and then we undergo massive inflation. We need to find the fairest way of allowing people to get free chips back without "flooding the market".

nodnarbo: now if you were talking "real" money/chips I would have to agree, but we are talking playmoney?chips here....lets be serious....LOL "flooding the matket" hahahaha

I just went into room 2........frozen in time again.

Bernice: Of course flooding the market is a problem. If money just keeps coming into the system and no money gets out, some players will sooner or later have huge amounts of chips. New players with their puny stack of 1000 chips have no chance whatsover playing agains someone with for example 1 million chips.

To keep the game balanced the play money economy needs to be balanced. I say rake should be put into use before market is flooded with chips!

To keep the game interesting people should have similar amount of chips available. I think tables should have maximum buy-in instead of minimum wich is in use now!

puupia: Flooding the market is no problem at all. Every player can chose what stakes to play. If you have 1 million chips, playing 5/10 doesn't seem to be the most fun. If you have 1000 chips, playing 300/600 doesn't seem to be fun at all.

New players with their puny stack of 1000 chips have no chance whatsover playing agains someone with for example 1 million chips.

Wrong. If I have 1000 chips and sit down at a table and play against a guy with 1000000 chips - we are both playing for 1000 chips effectively in every hand. Him having 999000 more doesn't change anything, it doesn't give him better chances to win any hand. If you play a ring game, you can leave the table whenever you want, so play does not continue until one player has all the chips (in which case the rich would obviously be favored). Of course you can't catch up with the rich guy in just a couple of hands, but he had to play a lot to get these chips, so that's OK.

You chose the maximum you play for in any given hand by selecting your buy in. So the maximum is already under your control. Now you can chose the minimum by entering a table that suits your wishes. Removing minimum buy ins is a bad idea.

EDIT: for limit tables this is obviously a non-issue overall

Another rule that I don't remember being mentioned yet: going south. The term going south (also referred to as ratholing) describes a player winning a pot, leaving the table and buying back in with less chips. So he effectively "secures" his winnings (puts it into his rat hole) and will continue to play only for the minimum. This is commonly considered bad etiquette and most places don't allow this. Online, a common counter measure is to set a time limit. Say you have 1500 chips at a 500 minimum table and leave. During the next hour, if you want to rejoin this table, you have to take at least 1500 chips to the table. After that period you can buy in for the minimum of 500 again. Of course, this doesn't affect other tables, so you can always leave and enter a different table for the minimum if you are not comfortable with your current deep stack.

Oh, and are there waiting lists for full tables? Would be a good idea too.

All of this of course for the future! I think time out and blind posting and showdowns etc. have a higher priority obv.

I am currently in room 2? and it has frozen again for me :(

everytime I sit down this seems to happen.....is anybody else on my side of the world having the same trouble?

I don't believe there should just be unlimited amount a chips you can get in a day - otherwise, what is the point. This was mentioned before (by AbigailII), but will tell you what I think would be good.

Everyone who has less than X chips, get Y new chips (maxed out at X)

So how I would do it:

If a person has under 1,000 chips, they can go to their profile and click on an option to get more chips.

A pawn can get 250 additional chips a day (current lowest amount table is 250, so if they lose a lot - they can still play at least once a day)

A Bishop & above can get 500 additional chips a day

So if someone has 800 chips - they can go to their profile and click "add more chips" - and they will be back up to 1000 chips.

So if someone has 100 chips - they can go to their profile and click "add more chips" - and a pawn will then have 350 chips, everyone else would have 600 chips.

===========================

I would also like to throw out an idea for something to look at in the future. Since some people will just keep gaining & gaining chips forever (well if they are good poker players) - the idea to have "awards" or "prizes" that people can "buy" with their chips. Like a 50,000 chip award where a player can turn in 50,000 chips to get this award to display on their profile (of even little ribbons under the picture on a poker table if they wanted - or a little star on the picture on a poker table for every award that they have got.)

This is just a quick thought - a lot more detail & prizes & awards & ribbons & stuff like that can be thought of... nothing to really do right now, but as time moves on and people start to accumulate more chips - it's an idea to help "remove" some of the chips from the system... and reward the players who achieve it at the same time.

Bernice: Do you have the sound on? I know someone else was having the issue when they tried to have the sound on (little speaker above the chat box.)

Red X on it means it is off.

Green plus on it means it is on.

If the speaker has the green plus, maybe try to turn it off?

Bernice:Let every player have 5 (or some finite number) of free renews...

now that isnt very fair....you have people playing because they love the game but they never win a hand....so after "so many" renews you want to deprive them of having fun??? I think not.

you then say ***Let players always get one renewal per day*** which is it to be.....or am I missing your point here

Yes, you miss the point...they get 5 free to use any time they "bust"...they ALSO still get the daily amount. So when they start out, they can go back and get more chips 5 times (all in one day or spread across multiple days). After that, they can only go back and get chips once a day. So, if they start playing and end the day with chips, the next day, they can actual get more chips SIX times. But once those five free ones are gone, they can only get chips once a day.

Summertop:pokerstars and fulltilt allow 3 per hour....   I think that is very reasonable.

I don't think there is an issue of flooding the market. I seriously doubt Fencer will let you get more chips whenever you want. I bet there aren't even a million chips in play yet.

As for "awards", they are awesome. But, I'm not sure you should spend chips on them. Nothing wrong with having millions of chips in the bank. You should be limited to how many you can bring to a table.

Bwild: I just started playing on facebook a little bit ago, used to play on PartyPoker...not sure how frequently you can get more chips as I don't bust. But, I think we all agree:
1. Players must be able to get more chips if they bust
2. Player may only do so, "once in a while". Once a day is the max, but I think shorter time periods would be nice.

Personally, I think 3 per hour is too frequent. Nothing more boring than sitting at a table when someone just goes "All In" on every hand...knowing they can get them back whenever they want.

Summertop:bingo players dont last long...even at 3 per hour.

coan.net: I think that is a GREAT idea! That is probably the best way to control the amount of chips in play. Something visual in the poker room is definitely a good idea, maybe make certain items upgradable, such as a prize cup, you can get the next biggest one once you get to a certain chip count. The only thing that might get in the way is that we don't want to add to many things to the poker interface that don't have anything to do with the game and would crowd the screen.
Another thing that Fencer could maybe consider is allowing the exchange of chips for brains. You could cash at a certain exchange rate of chips to brains. That might be kind of getting too close to playing for real money, but since you can't actually get cash for brains it might be OK.