BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

No, we are not announcing a BrainKing live contest or a reality show. Since we have calculated the rest of game moves history at last, the page Statistics / Game moves contains all data from the BrainKing start in October 2002. And as you can see, there are players who are not far from reaching the limit of 1 million total game moves which is a respectable achievement, especially for their fingers.

And I would like to add two notes regarding the last entry about the promotional program:

• Unlike the former action points feature, there is no IP address check. If 100 new users register from the same computer, you will have 100 referred users. But you get Brains only for users who become paying members, of course.
• The action points have been completely removed from the site and we don't plan to reactivate them in the future. Their main purpose - testing the performance under a high load - has been accomplished and there is no reason to keep them.

4 days and 13 hours left.

All right, this is it. The easiest way how to get a free membership and, as a side effect, to promote BrainKing (which is a good thing anyway). Unlike the former referral program, this new way is available for all registered users, no matter which level of membership they are currently having. The basic instructions have been posted to the Brains page but since the short instructions always bring up many additional questions, I will post a more detailed description here:

• Visit the Brains page and find your Promotional Program URL (something like http://brainking.com?refuid=*YourUserID*). If you don't see it, you are probably not logged in - please log in first.


• Copy and paste this link to your own pages or any other site on the web (where you are allowed to post links, of course). Don't forget to make it clickable - for example <a href="http://BrainKing.com?refuid=*YourUserID*">Register on BrainKing now!</a>, where *YourUserID* would be replaced by your BrainKing user ID - can be found on your Profile page.

That's all! Tell your friends about it, encourage other people to register on BrainKing by clicking your link. The system detects your user ID and make it the referral ID for all new users who register through your link. And when they decide to become paying members, you will be automatically given the Brains, no matter if they do it two days or five years after the account registration. The more visitors register through your link, the better is the chance that some of them pay for a higher membership level and you make a profit on it.

Please don't forget that you can get Brains only if a referred user purchases at least 6 months of Brain Knight or higher level and it must be a real payment. The promotional program won't be applied for Brain Bishop purchases or Brains payments.

Well, I wanted to finish the calculation of player moves of past years today but it seems that the script has overloaded the database server and crashed in the middle of the computation. Uh! All right, the complete stats will be a little delayed, in case that you are interested in your total number of game moves in 2006 and previous years. Not a big deal, anyway.

But the real purpose of today's entry is to announce an important change in the Brains system. The current way of getting referral Brains is not the best one because the majority of new paying members either don't understand how to give Brains to another paying member or simply forget about it while placing an order. That's why I have decided to make the rules much easier and with no special action which would be required from any participant (except a simple copy and paste).

More details tomorrow. If nothing goes wrong, the new system should be live tomorrow as well.

Hell, I have missed the chance. The BrainKing blog contains 301 entries at the moment (including this one) and I planned to post something sophisticated and related to the famous movie of the same name, but since it happened yesterday (the entry No. 300) and I just wanted to express my auction ideas, the opportunity is wasted.

On the other hand, it's just a number.

Based on the requests, there are two new features today:

• More filtering of unwanted messages - if you don't like to receive invitations to private tournaments, go to the Settings page and uncheck the Allow other users to send tournament invitations checkbox.


• Zip archives - paying members have an advantage to generate and download a zip file containing all finished games of the selected type and time range in pgn format and this feature is enhanced by the selected player only option. Very useful if you want to download and archive your own games or analyze all games of a selected top player.

By the way, we are looking for a Romanian, Greek and Japanese translator. Who wants to participate and get a reward, please don't hesitate to contact me.

I would say that people like to bid, no matter if an auction is running on eBay or a non-auction site (which is BrainKing's status at this moment), because our laptop auction is currently showing 15 different bidders, even at the quite high bidding amount level.

Which brings up a question, if it is worth implementing our own auction system which would be specific for BrainKing users, with significant advantages for paying members etc. Since the fundamental code is already added, being tested at the mentioned auction, it would be very easy to turn it to a new part of BrainKing, dedicated to bidding related events (or, as someone has already mentioned, a "mini eBay").

I like this idea because there is nothing to lose except a few days of programming work. And we like to explore new opportunities and experiment with them, especially when they can be integrated to BrainKing and offer some unique features.

The countdown has been started.

I would like to post a short update to the BrainKing's auction, regarding two latest news:

• The laptop's keyboard is fully functional - since Liquid has carefully cleaned all parts of the computer, the formerly inactive keys have started to work again. There was probably too much dirt which blocked the contacts. Which is good news for all potential buyers.


• The initial price is more than doubled now - thanks to the enthusiasm of all bidders, the current price of the notebook has exceeded 600 Euro and we are very glad for that. The lifetime membership will be a good satisfaction for the winner. And we will be satisfied too.

The Auction.

Back to work.

I like to read profiles of BrainKing users and not only because I have to approve all changes to them. There are creative users who are capable of turning a text and our set of smileys to a real art and it is a pleasure to observe it. And it is also a useful thing because we have already implemented several improvements after reading profile descriptions.

For example, people used to write "please do not invite me to chess games" but not everyone understands English or wants to comply with it, so we have created the game invitations filters.

And today is no exception. Instead of writing "please do not invite me to your fellowship", simply go to the Settings page, find the new option Allow other users to send fellowship invitations and turn it off.

It is a feedback that works. Don't be afraid to post more.

Ha! It seems that an auction is what BrainKing has been really missing because the current bid for the notebook has increased by more than 200 Euro, although nothing has been officially announced yet. Very well, let's do it now.

The BrainKing auction is up and running, the deadline has been set to 5th June 2007 00:00:00 GMT+01:00. BrainKing informs you about days, hours and minutes left, so you don't need to bother with calculations if you live in another time zone.
The light bulb points to the auction page. If it doesn't appear, it means that you are the current high bidder. I think I'll add a permanent link to the page soon.
The page now contains more pictures of the laptop and some additional information. BrainKing sends you a notification to the message box if you are outbid by a higher bid of another user.
Every bidder can choose whether he wants to hide his user name or not. If it is hidden, a dash (-) appears at the bidding history.
As the auction description says, the winner will receive a free Black Rook membership. The winner can choose whether he will use it for himself or gives it to another person as a gift.

I think it could be enough for now and we will see. And yes, it is not a joke. We mean it seriously and the real laptop computer which I have been using to develop our site is really the subject of the auction.

Who wants a free Black Rook membership? Only one to give. Seriously.

Yes, I promised to make no more special actions concerning lifetime levels and I don't plan to break it. This is something different.

As I have mentioned a week or two ago, Liquid had an idea to get rid of my former laptop computer which I have been using to develop BrainKing for almost 4 years, and since it has recently collapsed, I had to buy a new one. Actually, it was only the hard disk what had to be replaced by a new one - the rest of the notebook is left untouched and although it is more a collectible item than a hi-tech computer (I bought it in 2002, so it is a little outdated now), it can still be used for a normal work. And it has the touch of the BrainKing's history!

All right, what is the offer about? Since my attempt to make an auction on eBay has ended up as a total fiasco and the item is interesting for BrainKing users only anyway, I have decided to create our own auction system for this purpose. It hasn't been officially announced yet, which is the reason why no BrainKing page links to it, but it should be fully functional now, so you can try it out here:

http://BrainKing.com/en/Auction

Please note that there is no deadline of the auction yet - I don't want to set it until the auction system is tested and proven to be working properly. Furthermore, there is no need to hurry - I don't plan to sell the notebook in any other way.

And yes, since we like to make promotions, the winner of the auction will receive the Black Rook membership level for free (which is the reason why the bidding starts on 300 Euro. If you win, you can use it for yourself or give it to another user, of course.

Please don't forget that the auction system has been developer by one person in one hour, so it cannot be as perfect as eBay is. But the basic functions should be sufficient for its purpose, and if not, I will improve it soon. As I have said, there is no need to hurry.

I have created an account on Neteller, in order to test this service and decide if it is worth adding to BrainKing's list of payment methods. If you have a Neteller account or plan to create one and want to help me with the test, you can, for instance, pay for a membership by transferring the corresponding amount of Euros to my account there (I haven't figured out how to activate some kind of a payment gateway there yet - is it possible at all?).

My Neteller account ID is 451523771428.

By the way, as we have announced some weeks ago, we would like to give my former development laptop computer to the enthusiast who deserves it the most and since my attempt to create an eBay auction for that has ended up as a total failure (details tomorrow, maybe), I have decided to make our own auction on BrainKing and it will be launched tomorrow as well, along with a special Black bonus to the auction winner. Goodnight.

I hope the title of this entry is not misleading - it does not mean that BrainKing would feature a graphic editor to create your own smileys with no limits. The feature of the day is about the possibility to display only those smileys (in the popup window) you really want to use, instead of searching through 10 pages to find the desired one.

All pages where smileys can be entered to a text (discussion boards, move submit forms, Notepad, ...) now contain a new link Change smileys which points to the Settings / JavaScript page, presenting a new section called Your selection of smileys. Simply use the Add smileys, Delete, Move left, Columns and other options of the editor and build your own smiley set. Don't forget to select Activate user smileys checkbox before saving the settings and never be bothered with smileys you are not interested in anymore.

Well, as I have written yesterday, I have re-organized the Settings page in order to make a free space for this smiley improvement, but since I have finally decided to put it to the JavaScript section (where it logically belongs to), it haven't been necessary at all.

And, as all JavaScript enhancements, it is available to paying members only.

The Danish domain BrainKing.dk is our most recent addition to our collection of BrainKing's features of the multilinguality category. There are people who say that it's a waste of time and money to take over all possible national domains for our site but I don't think so - everything has its purpose, although it might not be visible at the first glance.

Everyone who wants to use BrainKing in Danish - please bookmark http://BrainKing.dk.

There is also a small change to the Settings page - since the number of Settings pages is too big and it would not be convenient to add more headers to the top row of the page (which is exactly what I plan to do), I have moved all game related pages to the Settings / Game settings section and made them accessible as sub-pages. The overall structure of Settings should be a little better organized now.

The secondary purpose of the yesterday entry about the censorship was to write a short explanation why I have decided to implement a new sorting feature to the Player List because I wanted to find out how many BrainKing users pretend to be from Cuba but it was too difficult to locate the selected country in the list of all countries, sorted by the number of players. But since I have been thinking about the global censorship problem more and more and deeply and thoroughly, I have completely forgotten about the feature and posted the entry without mentioning it.

Well, it's not a breakthrough but I like to comment everything what is added to the site, so I want to do it now.

Shortly, the Player List page contains a simple search form to locate users by their names and/or countries. However, since the country combo box is sorted by the numbers of the particular country players (United States, Turkey, Czech Republic, ...) and not alphabetically, it is not easy to find, for example, Cuba.

Which is exactly what the new improvement is about because now you can see a new link sort by country names next to the form and after it's clicked, a country lookup becomes much easier. And clicking sort by country player counts reverts the former status of the list, which is useful for us who like to observe changes in the leaders.

Next time I'll try to read the entry twice before clicking the "Save" button.

I have read an interesting article today about countries which apply some kind of a censorship to the content of web pages or search engines results, when their citizens wants to access a certain type of sites. Well, it is not a revelation of the day because the internet censorship has been existing for many years (as the article days, the most affected countries are China, Iran, Myanmar and Vietnam) but, what is more alarming, the total number of such countries has increased to 25 and most likely it is not the total final number.

Good news is that BrainKing doesn't seem to belong to the "black list" of forbidden sites because our geo-targeting database confirms that BrainKing is being visited by users from all countries, including the mentioned ones.

All except Cuba but it is a different problem and I don't think there can be anything done about it. Maybe another revolution could help.

The meaning of this entry is to highlight the difference between the real censorship and the moderation of BrainKing's discussion boards which is occasionally criticised by displeased users who had experienced a post deletion or a discussion board ban. BrainKing, as any other public site, has its rules and since every user is obliged to follow the User Agreement, the rules are valid for everyone. The purpose of the moderation and its consequences is not to make a censorship but to maintain the friendly feeling of BrainKing, especially when it is open to all countries and all nationalities. I would like to thank everybody who understands this point and does not take a moderator's event as a personal attack. And I am glad to say that the majority of BrainKing users belong to the "good" category.

The Game Filter on BrainKing's Main Page is very useful if you want to list only games with a selected opponent or game type but when you play a big number of games at once, it can be kind of annoying to find a particular user there.

Since in most cases we are looking for games with someone from our Friends list, the Opponent combo box is now separated to three sublists:

• All - there is no change to it and it is the default value.
• Friends are listed first to locate a friend much easier.
• Other opponents are following.

All these groups are sorted alphabetically and separated by ---------- dividers.

Let's keep the entry short for today.