BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

Did you know that BrainKing is a US site? I was not aware of it until I have found an article about online gaming and they mention BrainKing at the second position of Top US Game Sites, In Terms of Average Session Time chart. If you are interested, you can find the full story here.

Yes, I know they have probably meant US visitors to the site, not the site itself, but the formulation does not disprove any version and it made me giggle.

On the other hand, is it really important where the site actually reside? I guess not. If we pick any other location in the world (instead of Prague, Czech Republic), there would be always someone who would complain about a slow connection and this problem can be solved in the future. More interesting than the location of the site is the location of the users.

There is a database of IP addresses, called GeoIP, which has been built to the BrainKing code two months ago and its main purpose is to translate a user's IP address to the country (or even city) he is connecting from. The database is not accurate in all cases (because I use a freeware edition) but it can make a good overview of the real location structure of BrainKing members.

Right now, the GeoIP location results are visible only for site administrators (Liquid and me) because these data should not be available for eveyrone due to people's privacy (or is it a privacy?). However, if you pretend to be, say, in Northern Korea and actually connect from Russia, don't try to fool me.

I am very glad to claim that all 22 open team tournaments will be started on time with no delays because all of them contain at least 4 signed teams, even for games which are not occupying top positions of popularity (Jarmo, Gothic Checkers, etc.). Maybe we could start to think about the next batch of tourneys because we have a batch of new games as well.

I have had a look at the statistics pages of our sites and found some interesting information and results:

• The traffic of this blog site (BrainKing.info) rapidly increased in December 2006 - we have detected almost 25,000 unique visitors during that month. The majority of them were coming from BrainKing's Main Page, which is not a big surprise because many people click the "more ..." link when a new blog entry excerpt apprears.
• Another record has been reached in December 2006 - the number of unique visitors to BrainKing.com game site exceeded 65,000 and due to planned changes and improvements for this year we expect to break the 100,000 boundary in 12 months.
• The percentage of Firefox users is growing as well - this month statistics show 25%, which means that every 4th BrainKing visitor uses Firefox. Very good choice.
• The top search phrase to find BrainKing in search engines is still the Turkish online satranç. Which means that
  1. Turkish people like to play online chess
  2. It is obvious why the Turkish community is the third biggest on BrainKing, and so is the usage of Turkish localization.
• Some of the most interesting (or bizarre) phrases which people use in search engines and finally land on BrainKing.info site are "what should i do for a job?", "runescape dictionary of all usernames and passwords of all the users", "boring job", "why must we maintain chinese traditional games", "pictures of halloween makup" and "turkish bra sizes".

The dice-free backgammon variant has been released some hours ago and I am very glad for it because nobody can complain about BrainKing being unfair with rolling better dice combinations for the opponents. The game is called Grasshopper and don't forget to read the rules before playing the first game, otherwise you would be lost for sure. Or maybe not.

However, the next game will be a pure dice one and if we are very lucky, it could be finished tomorrow, but I don't want to make a promise on that. Anyway, the goal to release 10 new games in January will be reached at all costs.

By the way, what was the best monthly action so far?

As I have threatened yesterday, I have planned to release a new game today in the morning, if nothing goes wrong. And yoy have probably noticed that no game has been released in the morning. But nothing is wrong. I was just a matter of time and security because I have made some global improvements in the code and when I have tested them in the morning, the site has started to restart itself every two minutes, so I have quickly reverted the changes and reactivated the previous stable version. And since I was out for the rest of the day (just returned), the game will be released tomorrow.

But back to the subject of this entry - when a glitch or a small problem suddenly occurs, some people are very quick and report at discussion boards and something is wrong. Please, it is not necessary to do it. Why?

• If we are online, we already know that something is wrong and it makes no sense to inform us.
• If we are not online, we cannot read the boards, so it makes no sense to write that something is wrong. The automatic performance watching system usually notify us much faster.

But we are always glad that people are concerned.

BrainKing currently supports almost 100 board games to play and according to the Christmas Action, this number will be exceeded in January (which reminds me, there are two and half weeks left to do it ). This big heap of different games contains not only well-known classics (Chess, Backgammon, ...) but several games invented by BrainKing users themselves (Ambiguous Chess, Cheversi, ...) because if you have a good and original idea, BrainKing is a great opportunity to have it supported and open to public.

I am sure that new game submissions will continue because there are many smart and creative people on BrainKing who has ideas which are worth considering. However, since newly invented games bring a drawback of lack of playing experience of the particular game, there is a risk that after the game is added and released and played several times, some kind of unbalance is found and the chances to win are not equal (at much as possible) to both players.

That is why I would like to ask all game inventors - please make sure that before you send me a request to add your game to BrainKing, you have tested it many times and with many experienced opponents. When the game rules must be changed or fixed after the game is released, it is always a pain for everyone.

By the way, I have observed that games with a random factor (especially dice games) are much more popular (at least on BrainKing) than any other ones, most likely because people like to have better chances against strong opponents and the random factor partially eliminates the gaming skills.

Which means that the next game, which could be released tomorrow if nothing goes wrong, will use no dice (nor any other luck factor) at all.

I have visited, er, the nameless Swedish furniture store again and spent, uh, unrecognized amount of time fitting another chair together, which is the reason why no new game has been released today.

However, the announced change of rules of the mentioned games is completed. I summarize it once more:

• Cheversi
  • Only empty squares are counted for the score, not the ones occupied by opponent's pieces.
  • If a square is attacked by more pieces at once, the player would get a point for every attacking piece separately.
  • In order to eliminate an advantage of black player, a game must be started by placing a white king, followed by placing a black queen. The second and other moves has no restrictions.
• Cloning Backgammon
  • When a doubling cube is used, there will be no extra points for pieces above 15. Only the standard backgammon scoring are used. It makes the game simplier and better playable.

The game number 95 which is also the Chess variant number 30 has been added today. It is called Dice Chess and it could be interesting for players who are not too good at classic Chess strategy but would like to challenge strong Chess players, because the luck factor could positively )or negatively) affect anyone, regardless his/her Chess skills.

Read the rules here.

You might have noticed short downtime events of BrainKing site(s) yesterday. There were caused by a malfunction of our ISP's router software. Since they want to fix it once and forever, there will be one more outage of the line, planned for 12th January 2007, 00:00 GMT+01:00 (midnight). Luckily, it should take only 10-20 minutes, maybe less.

Since these two features has been requested and have not been too difficult to implement, I've added both of them today. It is a good relaxation while working on new games (which are much more complicated, so it would be almost impossible to focus on them 12 hours a day):

• List of tournament games - sometimes it is interesting to have a well arranged list of running games of the selected tournament, in order to find out how close the next round start could be. The link Show running games (number) is displayed above the tournament section tables.


• Open teams to join - if you are looking for a team which still doesn't have enough players to sign up for a team tournament, a list of such teams will be shown at the particular team tournament page. It is much faster than to visit each fellowship separately.

By the way, I am currently working on a typical dice game without dice and a typical non-dice game with dice. And don't ask about details.

No new games today. But there is still enough time to implement the remaining 8 games in January. By the way, as I have already announced and the News for Cheversi and Cloning Backgammon, there will be some changes of the rules, which would be valid for games started on 11th January 2007 or later. Read more information here and here.

Another purpose of this entry is to inform about a couple of small improvements for team tournaments:

• Red dots at the page of Team Tournaments indicate that you are not a member of any team of the corresponding team tournament game.


• A link to your team at the selected team tournament page, even if the team is not signed up for the tournament.


• A link to the current open team tournament at the fellowship page, just below the selected game type. A green dot means that the team is already signed up for the tournament.

Although I wanted to release only one new game today (as I have announced yesterday), I have made it two instead because when a game model is finished, there is no reason to keep it unreleased. To play it is the best way to test it.

• Cheversi and team tournament Casino Royale


• Hawaiian Checkers and team tournament Never Say Never Again

And since the number of team tournaments to sign up is too big, I will probably add more features soon, in order to make the process of joining a team and signing up a team easier and more intuitive.

Today is a day of two small additions because more difficult changes are not visible to a user (they help to maintain BrainKing's background processes) but they must be done anyway. And both of them are related to team tournaments:

• Move and go to the next team match game action has been added to the list of actions which can be used when a move is submitted. If you don't see it, you must probably activate it on your Settings page. Although this function does not guarantee that the next game would belong to the same team tournament (because it would be more complicated to do), it can be useful after the current 20 team tournaments are started and you want to play all team matches (which are parts of team tournaments) in a row.


• Team tournament names have been added to the automatic link conversions. For example, if you submit a post containing http://brainking.com/en/TeamTournaments?tri=87, BrainKing will transform it to Tomorrow Never Dies.

By the way, a new game will be released tomorrow, along with the 21st team tournament, which should make the James Bond collection completed.

This is just a short contribution to the BrainKing Knowledge Base category, although it is a new feature as well. If you are a Stairs creator (within your fellowship), you can remove players from your Stairs, which can be useful if a fellowship member leaves the fellowship but remains at the fellowship Stairs. Yes, I know the system should remove him from the Stainrs automatically but it is not implemented yet, so this small improvement can be used as a workaround.

There was also a small visual bug which caused that some finished games disappeared from the corresponding team match table. It is already fixed and all team match pages should display correct data now. I hope.

Sometimes I like to wake up and make some small improvement before I focus on a more complicated task of the day. It usually happens when a new feature is added but I forget a tiny detail to implement as well, and a member-observer kindly reminds me.

If you look at the Team Tournaments page, you might find a small green dot in front of certain tournaments. The dot means that you are a member of a team which is signed up for the corresponding tournament. It can simplify the navigation.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have done it today. The Team Tournaments page now shows the number of signed teams for all listed tournaments, so it is easier to find out which tournaments can be started after the deadline (containing at least four teams) and which would be postponed until more teams join.

By the way, team tournaments are a great opportunity to try games you have never played before. Or it can be a good reason to buy a membership for a friend with great playing skills, who could make an invaluable support for your team and increase its chance to defeat all opponents.

If you were waiting for a new team tournament to sign up, now it's your time to do it. Just pick one or more of the 20 tournaments which have been just created, make a team of 007 players and enter the arena (and now I see that the Team Tournaments page should be improved because it does not show the number of signed teams).

By the way, the 21th team tournament (Casino Royale) is not created yet because the game must be implemented first.