Next year is in 3 weeks :-)

Very nice ! Later next year I am travelling to Africa and I hope to play it there as well !

Yes, I already have a half-finished game model for it :-) And Vetek provided excellent graphics. I plan to add it next year.

It is well known on Nokia phones as Bantumi

There are dozens of names and variants of this game, depending on the country, Ethiopa, Nigeria, Haiti, Cameron...

Some well known names are Awale, Bantumi, Mancala.

In Africa, you just need to find 24 stones pro player, make 6 holes on the floor and start playing!

:-)

I like the idea of that too BBW :o)

How about a page somewhere with interesting BrainKing statistics.

For example your recent post in General chat of the top 30 Discussion board posters, and other interesting stats.

BBW: good suggestion. Maybe a "new messages" red flag could be at the top of the page, then the only reason to scroll down would be if you know you have a new message associated with the game.

Everything is considered :-)

In order to speed up and play many games quickly, I went and made these changes in my settings:

YES - Show game boards at the top of game pages
YES - Show move buttons directly below game boards.

Problem is that the move buttons are not directly below the game board - so I'm still having to take time scroll each page down to submit a move.

Here is what I see (from top to bottom)

Game board, game title, finished move instructions, opponents name, opponents rating, opponents current doing, opponenets last move, my name, my rating, my last move, draw offer, message for opponent box, notes box for self, then finaly MOVE button to submit a move.

Any chance to actually get the "move" button right under the game board?

And when there are 20 different bkrs and stats

yea... it would be very simple if you have only played a total of 100 games. But when you have things like 743 wins, 18 draws, 379 loses - it's a little harder to know the winning percentage without doing a little math.

It is quite easy to count, I have for example 71 wins, 6 draws, and 23 losses. So it is about 71% of victory, 6% of draws and 23% of defeats :-)

And on our profile page, where it shows game stats, I would also like to see a wins percentage rate :o) So I can see as I improve :o)

Could we have a red number next to our BKR that shows how many Tourny's have been won in that game variation ?

Sometimes I have had the impression,that my draw offer was not read by my opponent.
Perhaps there should be a flashing lamp in red or yellow, for the blind :-)?

I would like to see a page that will display the PGN with timestamps--just the notation, not the download that is processed by my WinBoard (improperly). I am playing Gothic Chess and I wanted to show some people what good game tactics look like; but when I go to the PGN download page my WinBoard tries to display the game--and it cannot. ItsYourTurn.com has a page to download PGN and also to view PGN with timestamps. Is there a place here to do that?

draws have never changed my rating either, which is bloody annoying when you have to battle against a large rating difference in players

I'm also sure my rating has not changed after a draw even if there was a big difference in our ratings. This has happened several times, actually i don't think i've noticed my rating changing after a draw even once.

I'm rated pretty low at chess ;-) lol

Honcho recently told me that his rating went down after a draw but he has an unestablished rating, I dont know if that makes a difference.

Well I'm referring to chess variations, but it would surprise me if some games worked and others didn't. Anyway a test would work, I have a high rating in some games and am willing to deliberately draw one game against a lower rated player at the risk of losing rating points while the ratings are monitored in order to test.

In the discussion boards, it shows the name of the person who made the post. It also shows their membership level. Could their national flag be shown too?

im not sure to which games you refer too grenv but i know it works with checkers and five in line at least also tank battle works correctly ,other games i havent took any notice ;)

Fencer,
I would have to agree with the comment that drawn matches do not count. I have had quite a few drawn games. In many cases the difference in ratings was quite a lot (e.g 2000 vs 1300), in which case I would expect to increase the lower rating and decrease the higher rating. NEVER has this occurred. I suspect that there is a defect in the code somewhere causing this.

In addition I would suggest that winning a series 3-2 (which should score 0.6-0.4 where a draw is 0.5-0.5) should score less than winning 5-0. I haven't enough data to tell whether this is the case, but can you confirm that it should be? I suspect that the same piece of code would be used in this case and therefore it may not work either.

If necessary I volunteer to play someone in a game of something where our ratings are dissimilar and engineer a draw to test this hypothesis. Just invite me to a game and alert fencer so he can monitor the ratings.

Just trying to make sure it works!

..Although nothing may change, it is nice to hear other players have the same concerns about ratings

That's slightly different approach. I think that Chief KM wanted to outline some proposal.

is this along the lines of a ladder system i remember hearing about maybe ?

Somebody [Dmitri King, most likely] has already proposed to hide users who didn't finish a rated game within three months from the Ratings pages. It should force them to continue playing.

I think the rating depends on the pool size, so as more players join your rating will increase (assuming you continue to play), thus you'll overtake any above you who have stopped playing. This latter is another negative of ratings, once a player is top rated they've been known to stop playing just to preserve their spot in the list, pathetic.

i dont brag about my rating but i do care about them . the only thing i find is that im ranked number two in five in line but this doesnt mean that im the second best or anything like that , it means i have played more games than some other people . there are people out there that i cant win , but my point is i could get to number one if i played enough games .

I cant understand any of this fuss about ratings, all they do is give an approximate idea of whether a prospective opponent is likely to provide a challenging game or not, otherwise they have no importance whatever. It sounds like some of you people sit in the pub boring your friends with stories about your BrainKing ratings, ridiculous, who could possible care?

jason: Sure. I've got it written somewhere ;-)

fencer , when i look on someones profile ,it used to show how many games they was playing ,now we need to click a link to see the amount of games they have , would it be possible to have a number of games in play ? (if i am looking for someone who had available slots ect then i could see straight away without having to click a link) . just a number indicating the amount of games would be fine ,if i wanted any more info i could click on the link already there ;)

Each rating has it disadvantages. Even if ELO or USCF is fine for OTB chess, in online chess, it could always be leading to "unfair" ratings with a lot of games against much weaker or stronger opponent. In real chess, you never play 500 games against an opponent rated 500 elo below you in your entire life. Here, this could happened within a month. What's more, in real life, you need quite a lot of time and money to get an "established" elo rating. Here, you can be rated 2000+ without spending one haleru :-)

I must say I find the rating fine, thanks Fencer for your good job :-)

The rating system we have here makes NO adjustments for draws what so ever!!

This is not true. Ratings are calculated even for draws. When I have more time, I can review the algorhitm but I am sure it is correct, I've tested it many times.
However, if you know about a better one and want to help me, give me more details. Everything can be improved.

Was it the end of the full match? You won't get credit for any of the individual games (as far as I have seen) but you will when the match is over with the full match countng as one game.

is astro in here, Ri'me rorry reorge, wrong roard.

Playing for run is great too!! Thats why we also have unrated games. :)

LOL, yep, you can tell I'm sleepy, huh! I probably would not have even bothered to post otherwise too. :-) I'm off to sleep. Night all!

We want to have run!!
Hope you have a Great night

Don't you guys ever play just to have run and enjoy someone's company?

California man is right!! On USCF Live whenever you are playing an opponent you are prompted as to what your rating will be after a win, loss, or draw. ex. win +10, loss -2, draw +3. This way you will know if it is worth it to play your opponent.
The rating system we have here makes NO adjustments for draws what so ever!! No matter how high or low a person is rated against each other. That statement in itself tells us that the rating system we have is inaccurate. I don't know what rating sytem we use...but I know the Glickman sytem works pretty good! Is it possible to switch to this tried and true sytem Fencer?

Ratings here are a mystery, why should it go out to decimel points? A very simple way would be: scores within 200 pts, 6 pts. scores with in 400 points 4 pts and etc, So when a player makes a challege, they know what they will win or lose

That is what I'm saying - the computer figures it out with many decimal points (but the rating on the screen - what you & i see - are without the decimal points)

So if it was a rated game, it is very possible that the rating did go up - just not enough to raise it another point.

.... and as you finish more games, the more "established" a rating will become - and the less it will fall/raise with wins & loses.

Since this is Feature request - Hey Fencer, any chance of possible in a persons profile, show the rating out to a couple of decimal points. I would be interested in them!

california man: I remember I have won 5-in-line (my rating was about 2000) against a person whose rating was approx. 1500. And I recieved no points for that win - because the difference in ratings was too high (over 500 in this case) - which is probably what happened to you. Next time choose stronger opponents!

I have never seen a 5 number score, including the decimel point

california man: It probable did go up. The more games that a person finishs, the more stabe the rating will become.

So for example, you might have had 2210.1 before you won the game, and after the game you might have a 2210.8 (But since the decimal is just droped on the screen, it looks like it just stayed the same)

Well, it happened again, this time a player named "BEDRU' and it was a 5 point match, again I received no credits for winning, because my rating was higher, I would like to pay dues here,but when there are so many deficiencies, I won't,

When will the 'Edit' and 'Delete' buttons return to Pawns?

Maybe adding a previous in thread by the reply area would help

to check off messages on the db's when we have read them.. for when we have to get to another page before reading all of them.. sometimes.. there are more than 100 messages to scan through.. and by clicking on the db to a second page.. it wipes out all new message marks.. so I am unsure of where I left off..