emmett: Wouldn't it occupy too much space?

Is it possible to always show the large image on the profile page without having to click on it? It looks much better that way.

Oceans Apart & Pattypoo: Moderation questions do not belong on the discussion board. They belong in PM.

Posts that are clearly off topic will be deleted. This should be assumed. There were no hides or bans in the equation. You would have certainly gotten a message about that. I will not waste time writing PM's every time a post only containing smilies, or just chit-chat back and forth is cleaned up.

This conversation should not need to take place here on this board.

Thanks so much.

pattypoo: I know a couple of my posts disappeared as well. Moderators of boards should inform you by PM why posts have been removed.

AbigailII: Ok, I kind of meant that without being clear. so i see further down in the thread you describe an algorithm that works for the simple case.
So if T=W+D/2 for the leader, and T(n)=W+D/2+U for the others for simplicity

So if you are searching to see if T > T(n) for all n

If it doesn't then you need to see if T=Tn for each value of n. If it does then you would just search through a tree to determine if any combination of results ends up with the leaders S-B score being less than the challengers. That's what I meant by being efficient. You don't need to take into account every possible outcome.

Fencer: Thanks, i never knew that about the 'home' button!

Maybe someone can tell me what I have set wrong, because all that I have is the "reply" option?

BIG BAD WOLF: Actually the easiest solution is to simply send a message to the player who is slowing down the tournament and ask him/her to play faster.

Family Man: The "box" is where it's supposed to be. It never disappeared.
About the "go to the top" link, it's useless. Press the Home button on your keyboard, it does the same trick.

grenv: No. I was discussing the case where the winner will be determined on SB points (the case of a sole winner I have already described - that's both trivial and efficient). For SB points, all games in the tournament are relevant, even of players that have no chance of winning. (Ok, ok, if there are two players A and B that have the most points (and hence their scores are tied) and there are players C and D that both won all their games against A and B, the outcome of the games between C and D doesn't matter for the SB points of A and B).

Remember that the SB of a player i equals Σ s_j P_j, (summing over all opponents j), with s_j the score i got in his game(s) against j, and P_j the total number of points j got.

AbigailII: But there are efficient ways to search the tree. So the leading player will be assumed to lose all his/her games, then you test the 2nd player's games etc... until someone else can win. No need to traverse the whole tree.

I may have missed this being asked, but what happened to the "box" way of replying to a post? Is there any plan to put it back, or is there something I am missing?

I also asked before but never heard anything, we also lost the "go to top of page" link at the bottom of pages

AbigailII:   We can only advance if there is no way for any other player to win.  If the game has to be calculated on SB there is no way to garante that the player has one except in the small case were both players have the same points and neither of them can be beat by anyone else.  But this case only happens if those players games are all finished.

mctrivia: That's basically what I said. However, that doesn't take SB into account - which is what nabla wants.

I don't know of an efficient algorithm that will determine whether there's a winner, even if the winner has to be decided on SB points. Sure, trying all outcomes of a match may work, but that's a lot of combinations. Take for instance a tournament with 6 players, every one playing two games against each other. All games are finished, except for one player, he hasn't finished any game yet. Then there are 7,776 different ways of the 10 games to finish (well, 59,049, but you don't have to consider player A winning one game and losing the other game against player B separately). In a group of 8, there would be 279,936 possibilities (4,782,969 without eliminating symmetries).

nabla:
<b>nabla</b>: The absolute simplest way to calculate absolute winner.

x=0;
do
{
  maylose=false;
  y=0;
  while (y<players && maylose==false)
  {
    if x!=y
    {
      if player[x].points<player[y].points+player[y].notdone
        maylose=true;
    }
    y++;
  }
  x++
} while (x<players && maylose==true)
if maylose==false
{
  //player[x-1] is the winner
}

It works under the principle that if player x loses all his games and every other player wins all there games and he still beats them then he is definetly the winner.

Then maybe you can answer this, for me..Why did what i post yesterday keep disapearing. I wasn't the only one that notice, others came to me and ask what isaid. go figure... I even had a message from Taz7474..

joshi tm: Fair enough, but don't forget to multiply that split second by the number of unfinished groups in all running tournaments !

nabla: Efficient? Well, that cost a computer just one split second more to define!!

BBW: I'm sorry if that wasn't directed at me. It was in my message box, for me to answer... and i did... just like some other questions.

AbigailII: I meant an algorithm including the SB calculation. More convoluted, but definitely possible : a trivial solution is to try all possible results, but that does not sound efficient.

Summertop: My question would be "Why does it need to tell us that they are new posts?" Why doesn't the favourite boards list just have the same style as the Fellowships list and just a red number in brackets. I know the ones on the fellowships list become links to the actual board within the fellowship but the style could be the same couldn't it??? 

I love the new look of BK...But...

The width of the right hand tower (column where "Favourite Boards" is) is much more static. Maybe not, but I notice it more.....

Right now, there is red text added to the end of the board names when there are new messages. This causes some funny word wrapping. Could there be an option to suppress the extra text...i.e "(43 new)". Simply making the text bold or putting a dot instead of the red text would be great. On the board itself, you could put a message saying how many new posts there are.

Same for the "Fellowships" list.

nabla: It's not that hard to write an algorithm that can determine the winner regardless of the outcome of the outstanding matches most of the time isn't too hard:

For each player i, let W_i the number of wins he has, D_i the number of draws, and U_i the number of undecided games. There is a winner if there is an i such that W_i + D_i / 2 > W_j + D_j/2 + U_j, for all j != i. This is trivial to calculate. The only winners you might miss are the winners who finish with the same amount of points as other players, but win on SB.

joshi tm: Actually it is making an excellent case of why a feature requests tracker would be better than this board !

joshi tm: I also second that, even though as CryingLoser said, this would not be enough when one player has not finished any game before all other games in the pool have finished.
But it may be a bit tedious to write the algorithm which checks whether the winner of a section is certain. If someone volunteered to write the Java code for that, it might speed up things :-)

mctrivia: I second that. Even if the winner of a section is decided, e.g. nobody of that section can get more points/SB points tham him/her, a tournament can go on.

My sugestion may not remove all hand brakes but it will allow tournaments to go on sooner unless the winner is the slowest player

pattypoo: Um..... unless you are using multiple accounts and got them confused, I did not address that message to you.

It was address to others who have signed up for a tournament with a set time limit, but then after the tournament is going, they are unhappy about it and want to change it for everyone else to make it easier for them. Which of course the easiest solution is to accept that everyone plays different, and the best option is to find what works best for you and not try to change everything to work for only you.

If I somehow made it seem like my reply to someone else was directed towards you, then please accept my apologize - I thought it was clear but possible was not.

tazman7474: Oh dear! I was about to propose a compulsory Genealogy feature, where we could build a great big Brain King Family Tree. We're proably ALL related if we can go back far enough

How bout this - a member involved in even one tournament who is inactive for a month - and is using the auto vacation feature - gets an automated BK request sent to his/her email requesting the member log back in to change the settings so that immediate time outs becomes possible.... this would remind them they are holding up others....

tazman7474: I'll have you know, i don't do that.. I don't even know how.

BIG BAD WOLF: What do you mean, not try to change how others play????? I've never done that, hell i can't olay myself..

I'm not so sure that tracking peoples relationships on here is a good thing, whether it be family members or any other type of relationship. The next thing that someone is going to want to do is keep track of users who login with one screen name but from several IP addresses (are they cheating or simply logging in where it's convient?) Personally, I know I log in on at least 3 different IP's during the week.

That's not even touching on the whole privacy issue. My opinion is that this idea/request is one destined to go down in flames.

CryingLoser: well - that would certainly solve your problem - i think maybe creating your own tournaments with your own time limits might help - maybe your own fellowship...

AbigailII: Fortunately, the exception you mentioned is an extreme rarity. Let's take from
Retep
a spot check of 10 games, we get an average of 19.4 moves per game and variance sigma^2 = 132.93. Probability that a game ends in 50 moves = phi(50; 19.4, 132.93) = 0.00292267, that it ends in 4 moves = 0.00298107. Probability
that in a 8-player-tournament just one player ends all his 7 games in 50 moves while all the other 49 ghames end in 4 moves = 0.0292267^7*0.0298107^49 =
3.19*10^-86. We should make a lot of tournaments - more tournaments than atoms in the universe! - in order that the situation, that a player will be accidentally be detected as "hand-brake" coz he has just 50-moves-games while all other have 4-moves-games, occurs even a single time...

About vacation no other comment that every player has vacation days from the server. It's the job of Fencer if he will give more or less vacation days.

But enough said, this theme seem to cause so much trouble that i don't want any longer suggest a solution for all of us but found a solution for myself: Today i quit all fellowships and will
not start in new tournaments.

emmett: you forgot to factor in the blocked user. If you don't want to play someone for some reason but they turn up at the same IP as you (due to using a public facility) then you don't wanna meet them in person do you?????

Mctrivia:  I didn't start this conversation. I have no idea how to tell if someone is cheating.

Andersp: It causes enough confusion already with the relationships in this place. Some people I know already change their name weekly and others would have to start!!!

CryingLoser: The solution is simple - if you don't like other players taking the time they can in a tournament, play in different tournaments yourself that has time limits that fit your need better.

If I were to join a 7 day tournament because I like to play slow, it would be unfair to punish me by putting it down to 1 day a move because other players in the tournament decided they wanted a faster tournament.

So again, best solution - join tournaments with time limits that best suits your needs and not try to change how others play.

CryingLoser: The problem is that there are so many exceptions that it would be impossible to implement. For instance, a Dice Chess game can be over in 4 moves, but it can also last for 50 moves. The suggested system would penalize someone because in his games, the games last for 50 moves (which he actually may play quite fast), while the other games were all finished in 4 moves (played quite slow).

Or someone might be away on a three week vacation; the tournament he signed up for started three weeks early because it reached the required number of players, and all the other games were finished before the player returns from vacation.

Furthermore, any game is played by two people. No tournament can depend on just one player to finish his/her games.

mctrivia: This does not solve the prob. If a player is so slow that he has not finished a single game while all the others have finished their games (except with him), the system believes it is possible that he can win the round even if he is the weakest player in the tournament. So it will hold up the next round. Hence i remain in the suggestion for tournaments in new modus (flexible time frames). Of course, it should remain the option to create a tournament with the old modus.

pattypoo: Since the conditions will be known before the tournament start, there is no surprise and a player can chose if he want to join a tournament with flexible frames or one with unflexible. Cannot see something unfair here...

I don't think that is fair CryingLoser

CryingLoser: I don't think changing time frames part way through a tournament is a good idea at all. I do however think that if a player can not possibly go on to the next round it should not hold up the next round from starting.

There are some tournaments where all players have finished their games before months - except with one tournament participant, example

► BIG BAD WOLF Presents: Assimilation Tourn #1

In such a situation where all unfinished games contain the same player name, my suggestion is that the server changes immediately the time per move to only 1 day per move, so that a single tournament participant doesn't block dozends of others for months or years. Players who join to a tournament and need all the time for reflection of, say 7 days per move, should be aware that
they could become the hand-brakes of a tournament, then the time would change to the faster mode of
1 day per move and they would risk to lose by time control.

nabla: Now YOUR request became buried, oh my! :)

Would be nice if one of the following two were implemented:

1) Instead of setting 4,8,16..exc players you could set a min and max number of players. If say I set between 4 and 128 players and 6 people sign up the first 4 players would play and the remaining 2 would be removed.

2) Instead of forcing a power of 2 players allow passes to the next round for the odd player out with lowest BKR that has not already received a pass.

TarantinoFan: It goes farther then that. If you are a university student all students from the University could show up as the same IP. Also one player could show up from tones of ips some overlapping if they are moving around or using public access. If you think a player is cheating message fencer.

pgt: Well that wouldn't count then. What emmett suggested was if they log on from the same computer. Each person that logs on fromt that one computer somehow has a list attatched to their games to show who else has logged on from that exact computer. 

emmett: What if the family members live on opposite sides of the globe?

emmett: I don't think that family members should play online for ratings anyway.

What? You know this is a fun games site, right? No money or titles are on the line.

I thought of that. My girlfriend is Ultramarine on this site, although she rarely plays. I would mention in my Profile that Ultramarine is my girlfriend. It would still be fairer to people who might want to play Go with her. If they suspected that I was Ultramarine, then they could choose not to play her.
My issue is with people on Waiting Games that look like new players, but are really highly skilled, with multiple identities. There are also certain players that have thousands of games, then also play under different names too. If I knew a little more about the players that I am about to engage, I would refrain from playing them.
Also, it would be interesting for everyone to see the connections between players, even if they are family members.
I don't think that family members should play online for ratings anyway.