AbigailII: It's not about prize tournaments. What they say (and don't want to discuss about it) is they have to make a payment to play these games, which is simply not true. Prize tournaments are optional. If you make some features restricted to paying members only, it does not mean that it supports their distorted opinion (or can a bureaucrat even have own opinion?).

By the way, PayPal is playing it safe? That's very unlikely. First of all, they admit that games of chance are not a problem but games of skill are. We have games of skill here since the very beginning of BrainKing, why hadn't they bothered me with it 3 years ago, for instance? Second, my account belongs to PayPal Europe, it has nothing to do with U.S. gambling regulations or how they call this nonsense.

It is not a good attitude to find a logic in it. Good thing is that we don't actually need them because about 70% of our income comes through other online payment gateways or wire transfers. But people should know about it before they start to defend PayPal.

It's to bad because this is a great site.But i am not paying anybody on the internet money other then by PayPal

The PayPal gambling policy:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/use/index_frame-outside&ed=gambling


PayPal are having to pay out big time in various law suits. Two examples below:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-954672.html

http://www.dmnews.com/PayPal-Pays-10M-to-Settle-Online-Gambling-Case/article/81600/


So, they are being ultra cautious now.

AbigailII: Prize tournaments can just as easilly be restricted to non-paying members only. In fact, many are... I bought a subscription and can't enter many prize tournaments because of that
You don't buy a subscription with BK to win more money, but to play more games at once, take more vacation days, etc.

That said, I aggree with everything else you said...

Considering that there are prize tournaments, and that prize tournaments can be restricted to paying members only, there's some shred of truth about paying money to play games of skill for money. Although PayPal's emails are most likely triggered by the existence of Poker, and possibly the links to other pay sites from the front page.

I can understand why PayPal is playing it safe. BK probably doesn't make enough money for PayPal to spend a lot of time investigating what exactly it does (and doesn't). I can also understand why BK is dropping PayPal.

"GERRY": http://brainking.info/

Fencer: Where do i go to read this post?

Czuch: Yes, you are right. The act did not specifically ban online gambling, rather it outlawed the financial transactions to gambling providers, which would include direct transactions through credit card etc. (as you state), but also includes transactions through the likes of PayPal.

Hence, as you are experiencing, it is very difficult to get the money into a gambling provider, more so as the overseas providers also check users ISPs to ensure they are not from America.

PayPal is worried that its directors may be arrested if they transact between a US citizen and an online gambling provider. Indeed a fellow scot was arrested in 2006 on this law.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/gambling/How-US-gambling-laws-sent.2794677.jp


Fencer, take note and be careful if you travel to the USA

SL-Mark: However, Americans can still gamble, but they can only lose against other Americans.



This isnt true.... but I do know what you are saying when it comes to the internet gambling thing... as an American, it is hard to get any money into play, you cant just use the ol credit card. First you have to make a deposit into someone like paypal, then have them put the money into the gambling site for you.... with all the transaction fees etc, we are already losing money before we even get started playing poker

But that does probably have something to do with why paypal can seem like a pain in the butt for someone like fencer, and others

Czuch: I see you fly the American flag
I did not say that all Americans will lose to the rest of the world (as your chip count clearly shows) only that most them will!

SL-Mark:

Fencer: This stems back to the Bush era and treating the entire population of America as little children and chastising them by banning all cross border online gambling in 2006.

Whilst I am not defending PayPal, they have to show to the US authorities that they too are observing this law, for which they will need some ridiculous audit trail to show that they have carried out the required due diligence.

However, Americans can still gamble, but they can only lose against other Americans. One might conclude therefore, that the real reason for the US gambling act (other than loss of tax revenues) is that the Americans were losing en masse.

This resulted in a weakening of the US$, as the overseas winners were selling their US$ winnings back into their local currency. In fact the UK£:US$ reached 1:2 in 2007 and since then, the US$ has strengthened to 1:1.5 as we can no longer take their candy.

It would be an interesting statistic on BK to see over time how the following weightings change:
Total Win(Loss) / Number of poker players in America to
Total Win(Loss) / Number of poker players in Europe to
Total Win(Loss) / Number of poker players in Australasia etc.

Fencer: RED TAPE!! I know how you feel. And like you I'm gonna make it awkward for the 'management' by letting people know what they are doing.

Fun

coan.net: Thanks for providing these links, I knew only the first one.
I've just posted the first part of the story, it is mostly related to this BrainKing issue. The second part will contain outcomes and conclusions which can be applied to any site, so it might be more interesting to those who plan to open a web shop or similar business and start to accept PayPal payments.

TheCrazyPuppy:  Everyone should just become black brain rooks and there will not be any problems...  :-)

"GERRY": all will be revealed tomorrow has previous said

"GERRY":I don't think we have a vote on this, it's Fencer's time, trouble and money, and he can do as he wishes.

coan.net: If you would could you post some link's of Fencer's horror stories here so we could have a better understanding of his problem's with Pay Pal

He already wrote he was going to write more tomorrow in the blog section.

I myself have not had any problems with PayPal, but I know of many who have. Here are some sites with some "horror" stories about other people's "bad" experiences. PayPal has gotten so big, and does have a lot of bad users trying to take advantage of others through PayPal. here are some sites if others want to have some good reading:

http://www.paypalsucks.com/
http://www.paypalwarning.com/
http://www.aboutpaypal.org/

Of course feel free to search "PayPal Problems" or something similar to find even more stuff. Some very interesting reading.

Although I am a life time member, I to use Paypal. Have for a long time, and have never had problems. I even recently received money from someone through them and it was plain and simple. Perhaps it is an international thing??? I live in the USA.. The man who sent me money for membership for our Pin Traders Club is from Australia. He used them so he didn't have to mess with converting money. 

Fencer i have used Pay Pal since coming back to this site.I have sent you alot of payment's in the last 6 month's,, not hearing one word from you about any kind of problem. They have treated me as a valued member of there service.There payment's to you clear within 6 to 8 business day's acording to my bank statement's.So let's hear what your problem is Posted on this board

Fencer:   sure  ;)

Artful Dodger: Good question. I am not sure. Should I have a look at the source code?

This may be a dumb question on my part but if you reject a public friend invite, they are locked out of further requests.  If a person rejects someone but then later decides to accept, can the lock out be changed or does it need an administrator?

MrWCF: Of course, if you want to give Brains as the prize, just send me the tournament ID (or URL) and I'll do the rest.

Fencer: Perhaps I have misunderstood  how one can contribute a prize for a Prize Tournament.  My profile shows five Brains. (I would have more to offer, but the 40 Brains I've won in another tournament will not be awarded to me until everyone finishes playing their games, years from now.)  Anyway, can I not use those five Brains as a prize in a tournament that I've created?  Or must I purchase something in order to offer a prize?

MrWCF: Yes, the prize must be provided first. The reason is that we had had problems with prize tournaments in the past because of users who disappeared from BrainKing shortly after the tournament start and when it was finished, there was nobody to provide the prize. This is the proper action to do:

1) Create a prize tournament and describe the prize in the tournament name or description.

2) Use the "Paid Membership" page to pay for the prize. Don't forget to check the "Select if you want us to process it manually" option before placing the order.

3) When the payment is received, I will click the "prize provided" button.

I know that this system is not too straightforward but I want to make it a little more automatic in the future.

MrWCF: send Fencer the tournament ID and he will add the prize to it

I have created a tournament, and wish to give a small prize in Brains to the winner.  However, the tournament's current status description reads "The prize for this tournament has not been provided yet.  It won't be started."

Must I take some action to provide the prize, or will this be done manually by the owner of the site?

alanback: My ears belong to another species... What's up, doc?

yes I can see it there.......but why cant I see it on my profile?

Pedro Martínez: Actually she does have one, but it looks like it is "private" so you can't see it

Bernice - go to the main Photo albums page and see if it shows near the top:

http://brainking.com/en/PhotoAlbum

Bernice: You don't have any photo album. :)

can somebody tell me how to find my photo album?

it doesnt appear to be on my profile....I have asked another member and they can;t see it either.....any help please?

Constellation36: WOW!!! Thanks so much.... when I have more time I will give it all a try!!

Czuch: I faced this problem too. It just getting corrupted during the download since the connection speed is not good i guess for some reason.
My son solved my problems when he told me to use a download manager to download the file. He installed on my computer the program flashget and if you try to download with it then you will have your file with no problem.

Then you need winzip or winrar to extract the games of the file into PGN format.
Unfortunately for example for Loop Chess the games are 20000 so when you extract them in a folder Windows are very slow to handle and anyway it's just too tough to do anything with them having to open each one separately each time.

So my son saved me again by showing me a way to join all these PGNs with single games, into one big PGN with all the games.
Just create a BAT file and write:
for %%f IN (*.PGN) DO type %%f>>collect.out
ren collect.out FINAL.pgn

Don't ask me what are all these, i don't know. But it does the work.
Then inside the folder with all the games run the bat file and at the end you will have a PGN named final.pgn with all the games. Now you can delete of course all the 20000 single PGNs.

And then you can handle this PGN with ease.

rabbitoid:Your lack of precision is not logical ;-)

Czuch: First you may try to download the file again. Please compare the file sizes, the one which is shown during the download, and the one of the file on your computer after the download has finished. If the size of the downloaded file is less than the predicted size, then the file wasn't downloaded completely and thus can't be opened. If this happens more than once you may try to create the zip file again. If this doesn't help as well then I don't know either... Probably Fencer could check whether the zip file on the server is OK?

kleineme: I did now download winrar, and now I get an error message that the file is either unknown or damaged?

kleineme: Right, but I assumed that Czuch had wanted to download the files in order to replay the game in some pgn viewer. My bad, I shouldn't have assumed anything. :)

Pedro Martínez: Well, not really :) PGN files are just plain text files and can be opened with any text editor, like Notepad on Windows.

Czuch: You have to have a program which is able to open zip files, like Winrar for Windows.

Even if you already have a zip program on your computer, there may be a problem with the download. From time to time I'm not able to download the zip files completely, which also produces an error message that the file can't be opened. You may try to create the zip file again or you may ask Fencer...

Pedro Martínez: er.... okay....

Pedro Martínez: Thanks! I guess my lack of correct punctuation didnt confuse you or my question....

Czuch: You have to have a program allowing you to open pgn files.

Czuch: Yes and yes. :)

(17. May 2009, 12:57:57 is the last term before timeout for this move)


To clarify.... This will include any weekend days and set vacation days? Then the only way this will change is if auto vacation day is used or if after this is posted a vacation day is set?

Can this also change if after it is posted weekend days are changed?

I am trying to use the feature to down load a zip file from a players games of dice chess.... but my windows says it doesnt recognize it and cannot open it?

Anyone know what I am talking about?