I think making the site about playing to "win" money and such is not a good idea. As it is now, some people feel the need to cheat to win - if it was for actual money, it would bring out a lot more cheaters using programs and such. Another reason is many people play from work, or certain places which does not allow people to play on gambling sites - and even if the person is playing the "free" stuff with no money involved, it would still be considered a gambling site and could be blocked. (Not to mention the programs which automaticly block gambling sites.)

I came up with an idea awhile back to turn the Brains into a little game/money type of thing awhile back. That is you earn brains for winning games, and tournaments. (very few for games with limits, more with tournaments, and even more with tournaments with a lot of players.) You could also earn brains doing other things, players could offer their brains as extra prizes for their own tournaments, etc... etc...

With the brains in turn, nothing would actually equal out to actual $$ - but things that would not cost Fencer anything - like for XX amount of brains, you could post an approved system message on the front page for everyone to see for XX amount of days. Or you could change the color of your rook/knight to special design colors like purple, red, or multi-color (NOTE: This idea was before gold rooks were introduced - to tell you how long ago I had this idea). You could also buy things like being able to post with your own special icons/smiles in your posts only. Maybe buy your own private discussion board, extra vacation days, post in different colors, post in slightly bigger/smaller fonts (not enough to actually mess anything up - but to help make a post special) etc... etc..

I believe I still have my "long" idea around somewhere. It had a lot more detail, with restrictions to keep people from cheating too bad to get extra brains.

I think something like this would be an interesting addition to the site - give players something else to go after - but with the bottom line that they can not be used to actually "buy" something like extra membership time since that would take away money going towards a new server.