BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

This is a follow-up of the first part.

• Links
  • Problem: Too many menu items (left column) and too many links to favorite boards or fellowships (right column) significantly increase total size of all BrainKing pages.
  • Solution: 1) All left column menu items will be removed. 2) All right column links will be removed as well. 3) A new pull-down menu system will be placed at the page top and made always visible, even when the page content is scrolled down. Likewise, a new pull-up link system will be placed at the page bottom, containing favorite boards, fellowships and similar elements that do not have to be always displayed but only on a user's demand (click).


• Friends
  • Problem: Clicking a friend's name only leads to their profile pages and more clicks must be done to invoke a particular action (game invitation, personal message, tournament invitation, ...). Furthermore, a plain textual list does not look nice.
  • Solution: Instead of showing a list of friends at a fixed position, a box containing a two column table with friend names and icons will be displayed at the left column, by default. Like all column boxes of this type, it will be possible to drag and drop it to another place (at the same or the opposite side column), turn it off completely or change settings - max number of displayed friends, list of actions to pop up when a friend's icon is clicked, etc.


• Messages and notification
  • Problem: All types of messages are sent to the user's inbox, no matter if they come from another person or are system generated. As a consequence, it creates a big mess at the user's message box page, especially when they do not log in BrainKing for a couple of weeks.
  • Solution: Only personal messages will be sent to message boxes, just like it works now. All other notifications (game finished, tournament won, tournament started, opinion poll closed, ...) will be stored at a specific part of the bottom pull-up system and separated by their types. A similar functionality can be found on Facebook and I think that it is a very good and convenient approach.

To be continued, if I think up more details.

I thought that PayPal could not surprise me anymore and I was wrong. As I described at the PayPal policy - you are guilty until proven innocent - is not acceptable by BrainKing any longer article, that hypocritical company (or should I say bunch of bureaucrats?) blocked by account for a couple of ridiculous reasons and put me to an unpleasant situation to find a new way to accept membership payments quickly, without a chance to do anything about it. Fortunately, the solution had been found and we do not need PayPal anymore. However, their email robots keep us amused even 6 months later.

This is what I received yesterday:

Your account has been limited for more than 180 days. It will continue to be limited but you now have the ability to withdraw funds.

Ha ha. That's cute, isn't it? In other words, if your account is "limited" (and it is PayPal and only PayPal who decides about it, so it can happen anytime to anybody), you will not get access to your funds for 6 months and after that, PayPal kindly allows you to withdraw them (after they collect the interest from a bank). Well, even thieves and cheaters must live on something, huh? Luckily, I had cleared by PayPal account a long time ago, so now my balance is just 2.55 Euro, but the web is full of complaints from people who could not get to amounts of ten thousands or even more. Right, what else could one expect from a company which is not a bank, thus not regulated by any authority?

I would like to add that even now, after 6 months, they still do not allow me to close my account or at least delete my credit card numbers. Their slogan says "The safer, easier way to get paid" and it is nothing but an enormous lie.

From time to time, people ask me why BrainKing's Bug Tracker contains so many reports that are never marked "resolved", "not a bug", "duplicate" or any other status which sends a message "yes, we are doing something about it".

Well, the answer is simple. Bug reports are not addressed because, according to the brand new structure of BrainKing 3.0, their sources will simply disappear when the new version of BrainKing is released, therefore it would be kind of waste of time to solve them for the current version, especially when none of them can be called "a deadly critical issue". In fact, it is one of the positive aspects of a complete site rewrite - when it is finished, the whole Bug Tracker can be cleaned and ready for fresh reports only.

I know that it can look like a cheesy avoidance of problem solving but, from a long term perspective, it is the most effective solution for everyone. Why? In order to fix some reported issues, the very core of BrainKing would have to be modified and such operation is always risky - partial improvement of the site fundamentals usually creates more problems than it solves. Nobody wants to compromise the site stability, right?

It does not mean that bug reports would be useless, of course. The more issues are filed, the better the new BrainKing can be, because they highlight the problematic parts of the code and it is easier to make them error proof from the scratch now. Please, do not hesitate to post bug reports. Just don't be insulted if you don't get any response. There is always a good reason for it.

One of the key aspects of BrainKing 3.0 (not released yet) is make its pages as simple as possible, which is a direct opposite to our former approach - to concentrate as many information on a single page as it can keep. There is a couple of very good reasons for this decision:

• Speed
  • Problem: The more elements (text, images, tables, ...) a page contains, the longer the total load time is. It is usually not a big problem for people with a fast connection to our site but everybody knows that the internet is not, uh, a homogeneous entity and it can easily happen that a page, which was displayed in a wink of an eye yesterday, can take 10 seconds to render today.
  • Solution: Extremely long tables with 5000 started games will not be used anymore. All elements of this kind will be, by default, limited to, say, max 20 rows and providing a "show more" link to display a longer list only on a user demand.


• Settings
  • Problem: Users require improvements and new features, we implement them and since not everyone is happy with new functionality that suddenly appears at BrainKing pages, we create options to turn them on/off or change some parameters. Then another feature requests emerge, we implement them, etc. etc. The outcome is a long and complicated Settings page with tens of switches which an average user might never modify and if so, he can be easily confused and change something wrong.
  • Solution: Only the most fundamental options will be displayed at the Settings page and their count should not exceed 10. There will be an Expert Options tab to enable access to all possible switches if someone wants to experiment with them, of course.


• Sorting
  • Problem: BrainKing contains a couple of tables that can be sorted by any column if a user click at the particular column header. Although it may look like an useful feature, it is, in fact, a source of several issues. Many users clicks the headers incidentally and then do not know how to reset the original sorting. It is very difficult (on even impossible in some cases) to optimize database tables to return requested rows sorted by all possible columns and it usually leads to a slowdown of the whole database server, which negatively impacts all BrainKing users. Last but not least, our statistics say that only a minority of users actually changes sorting rules for the mentioned tables.
  • Solution: Customizable sorting will be removed at all, except short lists (like country names) where the performance is not the issue. Instead, a system of customizable filters will be applied. For instance, in a list of user's started games, click "Chess" to show only Chess games, click "Fencer" to show only games with this person, etc. It will be simpler, more effective and much faster for everyone.

To be continued (it is a good practice to split long texts to more short entries, otherwise nobody would read them ).

Although it is not December yet, many people already asked me if BrainKing plans to make a membership action (usually called Christmas Special) this year too. The answer is YES and, regarding the fact that many new users registered on BrainKing since the last action of this kind taken place, I would like repost its full description:

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When you see a small flashing light bulb on the Main Page, you know a bonus is active and can be used. But don't hesitate for a long time - some bonuses (especially the one which adds 100% to the subscribed period) can be active only for several minutes. The bonuses can be used only if a purchased membership is for 1 year or longer period and it is not a Brains payment.

This action will be started on 1st December 2009 and should be active to the end of this year. Furthermore, we have added a nice improvement - you don't have to send a payment in 72 hours to validate the bonus (like before), it must be received to the end of this year - 31st December 2009, 23:59:59 GMT+01:00. The reason is that we would like to make this opportunity available to all users, including those who use a wire transfer or other slower methods to pay.

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Right, it's still the same. But why to change something what simply works and is popular?

I think that I had mentioned a development of the upcoming version of BrainKing at some time in Summer and since former plans and vision was changed at least 10 times, I guess it is a good idea to present the current status, in order to make people prepared for it. There are many things that will look a little (or completely) different and so will be the very core of the system and site.

First of all, I would like to say something about the time schedule. The estimated time to rewrite the whole site and add all planned features (or at least the most important ones) is about 2 months. Of course, it means 2 months of 24 hours work every single day, which is far from reality. Furthermore, when unexpected events occur, and usually more than one at the same time, the release date is always postponed.

In other words, nobody can say when exactly BrainKing 3.0 could be finished and completely tested. Anyway, more than 60% of work is already done and I am more than happy with the outcome.

All right, the changes and improvements follow:

• Visual change
  After a long consideration we had decided to turn back to a simple style of pages with a minimum of distracting graphics. There are several reasons for that:
  • Our statistics says that more than 70% of active users already switched to Simple style, so the Castle style community actually is a minor one.
  • The upcoming version of BrainKing will support customizable boxes with various content and our tests show that it is very inconvenient to squash them to "castle towers" with a fixed width.
  • It is too time consuming to keep three official styles of BrainKing pages and test every new feature with them. It would be almost impossible to maintain the flexibility of new pages under current conditions.
  • The Castle style contains a nasty blank space at the page top (between side tower roofs) and it would not be used at all because the chat box is to be changed as well.
  As a good compromise, BrainKing's home page will keep the Castle style, just like it is now. It is a different situation because the home page mostly contains general information about the site and user specific data should not appear there at all.


• New system of game models
  As some users probably remember, BrainKing was formerly created with Chess (and some variants) only and all other games were subsequently added, usually as extensions of the basic Chess model with more or less modifications (as you can imagine, in case of e.g. Backgammon there were really many modifications). It is clear that Chess model does not correspond with many other game types and it is the main reason why all games need to be completely rewritten, especially now, when we support 128 of them. It should result in a better stability and no more illegal moves, not even if someone tries to hack the system.


• More privacy, less public content
  Public content is always a potential source of problems because it usually becomes a target of spammers or notorious complainers which does not add too good publicity to the site, not to mention the time moderators must spend to fight bad content. Ergo, public discussion boards will be replaced by a new system that would be focused on groups of friends, event comment threads and a rewritten module of problem reports or "I am lost, please help me" inquiries.


• More automatic processes
  Thanks to the previous point, it will be possible to change many functions and processes (which are currently operated manually by administrators) to automatic server-driven ones. For example:
  • New account registration: Since there will be no places to post public spam to, it would be perfectly safe to replace the manual approve system by an automatic one with a confirmation code sent to email address. Simply register and play, just like old times.
  • Tournament prizes: The existing system does not work too conveniently - prizes can be only specified in the tournament description and when more winners share the same final position, it is not clear how to distribute them. BrainKing 3.0 will contain a brand new functionality of prizes to make the process completely automatic and understandable to all.


• Lightweight version (for cell phones, WebTV etc.)
  New BrainKing will use a lot of JavaScript dynamic features to make the site look a little more modern. And although all contemporary browsers should handle it properly, it is likely that non-computer devices (WebTV, cell phones etc.) will not be capable of it. Therefore, the simplest possible version of BrainKing pages would be created along with the normal one and users of the mentioned clients should be automatically redirected there.

This is just a short version and definitely does not cover everything, mostly because some things may still change. However, it should, hopefully, answer questions that I am occasionally asked and give everyone a chance to add a comment with own suggestions. Of course, everything is guaranteed to be considered, not implemented.

It's been a long time, huh?

Since I am continuously (well, actually with kind of rest periods, longer or shorter) working on redesigning and rewriting the BrainKing game site, which should result in a version 3.0 when it is finished, there was almost nothing to post here. However, I have decided to share some design ideas and important changes/improvements of functionality soon, so people would get the picture of our new approach. More details later. Soon.

Anyway, there is still one hot information to announce. Since I received a couple of questions from BrainKing users who wanted to pay for a membership with MasterCard, using AlertPay payment gateway, and got a response "sorry, this merchant does not accept MasterCard payments", I started to investigate this strange issue. After logging to my AlertPay account, everything was clear - AlertPay simply applied new security rules to all account holders who want to accept credit card payments through their websites. After filling a simple form, regarding our site description etc., I have just received an approval, so everything should be OK at the moment. This is the full statement:

"You may accept Visa, Mastercard and American Express payments through your website. However, your payments may be placed on hold for a limited time. We place some credit card payments on “hold” to ensure the security of the transaction and to decrease the chances of fraudulent payments made through our service. After this period, you will have full access to your funds."

So, if you decide to use your card to purchase a BrainKing membership and your transaction is not processed instantly, please be patient and don't hesitate to contact me with any further questions.

Back to work.

I would like to announce two interesting events. One of them is closely related to BrainKing and the latter one should help one of our partners with promoting their own action:

1) Many BrainKing users probably noticed the recent short unscheduled downtime of our game site. In fact, it took no more than one hour and was caused by a broken optical cable that connects BrainKing servers with the rest of the world. Since the site was not accessible for a really short time and proper actions were taken almost instantly, there were no negative consequences, everything is all right now, etc. However, I am sure that many people would feel better if they can be informed as soon as possible if something like that happens again. And that is why I have created a BrainKing group on Facebook.
No matter what you think about Facebook, the indisprovable truth is that this social network connects more than 200 million users, so it really is one of the best places to contact a big group of people at once, and to deliver a simple message as quickly as possible. The address of BrainKing group is http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=102006504268#/group.php?gid=102006504268 and if you want to stay tuned, please do not hesitate to visit this page and join. It is also the recommended place to discuss features and improvements of the upcoming major update of BrainKing game site itself - code name BrainKing 3.0.

2) Rake in Grass, the game developing company, offers a PROMO action - a giveaway of one of their game Larva Mortus (http://larvamortus.rakeingrass.com) in case you follow their Twitter account http://twitter.com/rakeingrass. There is no catch - this time you are even not obliged to purchase a BrainKing membership to get a free game. Just follow these simple instructions and collect the prize. Since all Rake in Grass guys are very good friends of mine, I can guarantee the legitimacy of the promotion and recommend it to everyone.

And back to the source code.

Nothing has changed since yesterday (what a surprise!). Let me continue. My PayPal account page now shows the following line:

Your account access is limited. Learn how to remove this limitation.

Well, I like to learn new things, so let's see what these freaks want me to do now. The first step seems to be quite simple because it just requires to select Yes as a response to the Have you removed all items from your website that violate our Acceptable Use Policy? question and enter all BrainKing domains to the What website URL(s) did you remove the items(s) from? field. I think it is not necessary to add that it would be hardly helpful to do it because, as I have explained yesterday, if we remove all such "items" from BrainKing, there would be nothing left to sell, therefore no reason to keep the PayPal account active.

The second step is much more interesting and I post its full content here because I don't see any other way to express my disgust. PayPal wants me to sign the following affidavit:

"I have read and agree to the terms of use specified in the Acceptable Use Policy section of the User Agreement for PayPal Service.

I understand and agree that I am responsible for making sure that the transactions I enter into using PayPal are legal and do not violate the terms of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy.

I understand that my previous activities have been deemed by PayPal to violate the Acceptable Use Policy and I agree that if I do again violate the terms of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy, my account access may be limited or my account may be closed without advance notice, regardless of whether the violation takes place through eBay or another online marketplace, through my own website, or through any other forum.

I also pledge that my current usage of PayPal is legal under the terms of the User Agreement and that I will not use PayPal in the future to accept payment for goods or services that are illegal or are prohibited as described by the Acceptable Use Policy or the Restricted Activities Section of the PayPal User Agreement."

In other words, they want me to plead guilty and if I do so, they might lift the account limitation. And that's what I call The Extortion in its clearest form. I feel really sorry for merchants who made their business dependent on accepting PayPal payments because they can easily go bankrupt every day without a warning. It is not just my private opinion - even Wikipedia describes how PayPal treats its customers. See Criticism paragraph at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal page and see also Criticism of eBay document. It should be a mandatory reading for everyone who thinks of starting a business with these thieves and frauds.

Please, feel free to add comments with your own PayPal/eBay horror stories, I will be very glad to read them.

The story goes on. Some weeks ago, I posted the first part of my absurd PayPal experience and since the 1 month period (which PayPal "generously" gave me to resolve the "issue") is over, I am back with new information (even more absurd) to share.

First of all, let me recapitulate the facts. As of 6th May 2009, PayPal accused me of breaking their acceptable use policy by involving gambling activities at BrainKing game site and using my PayPal account for this criminal and contemptible purpose. Despite my numerous attempts to prove them wrong and vindicate BrainKing as a safe and non-gambling server, their responses were always the same. We decided that you were the bad guy and we do not accept your proofs of innocence. Why? Because. It is our right and you can do nothing about it.

Actually, now I really don't care what PayPal thinks about me and BrainKing because I made all necessary things to ensure that no funds remain on my PayPal account and no further PayPal orders can be made at BrainKing. In other words, PayPal cannot steal any money from me anymore, ergo I can post here anything I want. Which is what I am doing.

I have received a email from PayPal today. The subject is Notification of Limited Account Access and I am going to comment the best parts of it.

"We have recently reviewed your account and have noticed that you are still selling items on your website that violate our Acceptable Use Policy."

Another collision with idiots. First, we don't sell any items at BrainKing, only services. Second, PayPal's statement does not specify which items violate their policy and how. Regarding their previous responses, all BrainKing services violate their policy and although it is not true, the only logical way to resolve this issue would be to make BrainKing free of charge for everyone. It is very unlikely to happen.

"We value you as a member of our community and wish to continue this relationship, so we ask that you remove all items from your website that violate our Acceptable Use Policy."

Nice joke, really. A member that is really valued would deserve at least a personalized response written by an open-minded human being, not an automatic responding machine. Moreover, if I remove all "items" they refer to, there would be nothing else to sell, so what kind of "we wish to continue this relationship" bullshit is that supposed to be?

"Until you do so, your account access will be limited. Failure to comply will result in closure of your account."

Oh sure, that's exactly the type of friendly answer a valued member can expect from PayPal. I am sorry guys but, given these circumstances, I will be happy if you close my account and never bother me anymore. At least they didn't have a chance to steal my money - on the contrary, it can still happen in the future. Read on.

"For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

For my WHAT!? I don't remember that I ever asked PayPal to protect me because, from my point of view, they only work as a "middle man" and have nothing to do with our seller-customer relationship. It reminds me the prohibition times (you know, Chicago in thirties of the last century) - we will "protect" you, whether you want it or not, and if you refuse to pay for this service, your bar will be blown up. Hush money?

Let me continue. PayPal, with its incredible cheek, still presents itself as a honorable company and give me a chance to "resolve" the limitation. So I have looked at the details of this limitation and, again, I don't believe my eyes:

What can I do while my account access is limited?
a) add funds by an electronic funds transfer
b) place logos into your auction listings or on your website
c) update your account information

What can't I do while my account access is limited?
a) receive payments
b) send or request money
c) close your account

In other words, they kindly allow me to:

a) Send them more money from my bank account or credit card and never see them again.
b) Encourage auction bidders to pay me with PayPal although I cannot accept PayPal payments.
c) Give PayPal more credit card numbers, so they can misuse them in the future.

Oh, what the hell. I don't want to use PayPal anymore, so what's the catch? Well, since I don't trust them a single word and the limitation description says that I can update my account information, I have decided to visit the "update account" page and remove my credit card number. The response has been short, direct and fearsome: You cannot remove this credit card because access to your account has been limited.

To be continued soon. Part four - The Extortion.

Our chess variant obsession is, I would say, one of BrainKing's typical attributes, and when an interesting and original idea emerges, the release of the particular variation usually follows in a couple of days. The newest addition, created by Andy Lewicki, is called Massacre Chess and, as the name suggests, the nature of the game is to kill, capture, eliminate and destroy enemy pieces as much as possible, which should be quite attractive to players who do not fancy complex chess strategies and just want to have fun.

The rules are very easy to understand. Each player starts with 8 queens, 8 rooks, 8 bishops and 8 knights. It means that there are no empty squares because the total number of pieces is equal to 64. The following image shows an example of a start position:



And now, what makes this variant different to the classic Chess?

• It is mandatory to capture an opponent's piece in every move. Other moves are invalid.


• The player, who cannot make a legal move (to capture an opponent's piece), loses the game.


• The player, who lost all pieces, loses the game as well.

I am sure this game can reveal many interesting strategies and it is just a matter of time to uncover them. Anyway, Massacre Chess has been catapulted to 30th position (out of 128) of the most played games at BrainKing, and only 24 hours after the release. Congratulations.

Very well, let's go on. Yesterday I wrote about PayPal problems, regarding BrainKing game site, and explained why BrainKing is about to stop accepting PayPal payments by the end of this month. Now I would like to publish an outcome that could be applied to any other site, based on my observations, experiences and attempts to have a constructive dialog with PayPal representatives.

• It is not possible to communicate with them. The only way to contact a PayPal employee is to use a web based form and it is not an easy task to find it, you must click through 3-4 pages (which try to confuse you offering "typical answers") before you are allowed to write your specific question. I am sure that many people simply give up and don't get to this point anyway, and I am also sure that it's a part of PayPal policy to avoid problem solving at all.


• The "contact us" form is limited to 1000 characters only. Of course, it should be enough for normal questions, but if you need to add a very detailed description to support your opinion (which is my case), you are forced to fall back to abbreviations, simplifications and similar things. The result is that your question is too difficult to understand, ergo you cannot expect to get a reasonable response.


• Actually, the web form limitation would not be a big problem if you have a chance to contact them in another way (for instance, to send a normal email). It is not possible, of course. Even if you get a response to your question, you cannot reply to it, because such email returns with a short note "please use our Contact Us form if you have any further questions". If you do it, the second question is usually picked by an absolutely different person who is not aware of your former inquiry, and the eternal loop is going on and on. Conclusion - if you have a complex problem which cannot be solved by a simple question and answer, you have no chance to solve it.


• If PayPal wants you to provide some documents, it never tells you what documents you should start to gather. The only thing you know is that it must be legal opinion, but everybody knows that the law is very complicated and what is valid in one country, can be totally worthless in another one. Just imagine - you hire a lawyer, give him an awful amount of money to write a legal document which you only believe to be the correct one, send it to PayPal and then get a short response "sorry but this document is not acceptable". Bureaucrats of all countries, unite!

I would like to add a couple of useful links, where you can find and read many interesting stories, related to problems with PayPal:
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
http://www.paypalwarning.com/
http://www.aboutpaypal.org/
(Thanks Michael!)

By the way, PayPal is not even capable of displaying correct dates at their warning messages. When I log to my PayPal account, the "account limited" message starts with Oct. 16, 2006 which is almost 3 years ago. I would not be surprised if I receive another funny message soon, containing something like "since you failed to send us required documents and you had more than 2 years to do it, we are closing your account, effective immediately". Luckily, it would not be a big problem because I will not risk any more financial transactions with these bastards anymore.

If you still plan to start your business with PayPal, well, good luck. Of course, you might be one of lucky guys who never experience any problems, most likely because PayPal's random number generator does not mark your account as "suspicious". However, please keep in mind that Your PayPal account can be frozen at any time, without advance notice, leaving you without your money for months (if not forever), and there isn't much you can do about it. You have been warned.

Part three - The Hypocrisy

BrainKing is a multilingual site (my favorite description) and since it is actively used by players from many countries around the world, it was always one of our primary goals to allow them to purchase higher membership levels and give them a choice of as many different payment methods as possible (unlike of sites which are focused only to local audience). And, since the internet is continuously evolving, new payment ways emerge, while others can either disappear or change their behavior and policy so much, that they become disadvantageous and unacceptable. Today's article is, unfortunately, about the latter.

BrainKing users, who read our Server News, are already aware of my plan to stop accepting payments via PayPal. The problem, which is the direct cause of the current status, appeared 10 days ago when I received a Notification of Limited Account Access email from PayPal (and although my first idea was that it's just one of the well known scam letters, it really was a genuine PayPal message). The email contains the following excerpts:

"The PayPal Acceptable Use Policy requires merchants involved in gaming activities, including games of skill, to receive approval for such transactions. The business conducted at your website www.brainking.com is covered by this policy, and we therefore require additional information to ensure your transactions are in compliance with both legal and credit card association regulations."

It's funny, huh? Everybody knows that BrainKing is not, never was and never will be a gambling (or gaming) site, and we had even highlighted this important detail in this blog site several times - for instance, this article explains that BrainKing has nothing to do with gambling although some web directories list it at a gambling category, or we didn't forget to mention in this article that our version of Online Poker can be played only with free chips and never for a real money. However, PayPal employees obviously don't bother to find more information - there, we can see "online poker" at your home page and, of course, backgammon and other games can be played for money too. So, you are the bad guy and now it's your turn to prove the opposite!

"To facilitate this review of your business, we request that you provide: (1) a legal opinion stating why the games available on your website are not considered gambling activities in the jurisdictions they are offered; and (2) the methods you employ to block users from jurisdictions where playing non-gambling related games for money is prohibited."

Can you see the absurdity of this paragraph? They want me to provide documents which simply cannot exist because no legal authority would give you a statement of something you do not do. It is understandable that real gambling sites need a license for this kind of business - but why would "play for fun" game sites need a similar "anti-license"?

OK, OK. I had decided not to give up that fast and sent a response to PayPal (which was not an easy task at all, I will describe it later) which contained my attempt to describe why BrainKing is not a gambling site and why we don't need any kind of license or legal opinions. After 2 days I receive the following reply:

"Thank you for contacting PayPal with regards the warning on your account. We understand that no gambling (games of chance) is taking place on your account, however as there is a level of skill involved by players and they have to make a payment to play these games we require you to provide details of the games offered on your website http://brainking.com/ and the methods you employ to block users from jurisdictions where playing non-gambling related games for money is prohibited."

I didn't believe my eyes. They have to make a payment to play these games? The home page of BrainKing is very clear at this subject: The basic membership is FREE - you can register a free account, play the games and pay nothing at all! There is no trial period - you can use the free account as long as you want to. And if you are satisfied with our services, you can easily upgrade to a higher membership level and unlock a huge amount of members only advantages and new features. However, please note that this request does not ask me to provide a legal document - just to provide details. Very well, that should have been much easier. So I sat down and created a long and descriptive document, including screenshots, references to ICRA and similar stuff, and uploaded the result to the Resolution Center of my PayPal account. Every sane person would expect a "case closed" response, however, I guess it's not a big surprise what I actually received the next day:

"To facilitate this review of your business, we request that you provide: (1) a legal opinion stating why the games available on your website are not considered gambling activities in the jurisdictions they are offered; and (2) the methods you employ to block users from jurisdictions where playing non-gambling related games for money is prohibited."

Oh well. Should I laugh maniacally or simply fall on the floor and froth at the mouth? The whole effort was for nothing. Actually, after reading horror stories at http://www.paypalsucks.com/ and similar independent sites, I knew that there was a small chance to win this ridiculous case, but I don't like to give up without a fight. Furthermore, if nothing else, I can gather an interesting material to warn other site owners who accept PayPal payments as well and don't know what could happen to them anytime and for any reason (or even without a reason at all).

This article seems to be longer than I expected. Let me post the second part tomorrow.
(to be continued)

I am very happy to announce that BrainKing has reached another important milestone of its evolution. Since yesterday, the 22th localization of BrainKing is released and every user can can enjoy the full Japanese version of BrainKing either by clicking the small Japanese flag at the right column of any page or (if you don't use the Castle style) visiting the Settings page and switching the language option to Japanese.

To say the truth, I used to be a little skeptic and had thought that it would take a couple of years to complete it. Fortunately to everyone and thanks to the great work of krinid and takodori who started this process some years ago, and especially fukuhara who made a really big piece of work and managed to complete the translation, including all game rules and other long entries, everything is done and officially released.

I am really glad that BrainKing has become open to Japanese players, especially Shogi fans. This event also gives me an inspiration to implement more Shogi variants and make the site even more attractive to everyone who likes to play this great game of skills.

I am sure that there are people who would never agree with me but an experience shows (and proves) that an average BrainKing user does not want to learn more complicated strategic board games at all costs but, shortly said, to have fun and compete with other users in many different ways. It does not mean that we would never add a new game to our site in the future but the priorities are split to a couple of sub-projects and all of them are being developed concurrently, so to speak.

And my current favorite sub-project is called Achievements because their total number has recently exceeded 200 and more than 100 other ones are already planned to implement in upcoming weeks. One of the newest achievements introduces the feature named Reward, the achievement itself is called Bonus conqueror and is related to nothing less than a free Black Brain Rook membership level which never expires.

In fact, it is not an easy task to achieve - a user must successfully catch all available bonus color codes and use them for 1 year or longer membership purchase/renewal. Some of the partial achievements are difficult to accomplish but it would make little sense if everyone can easily get them in a week. Let me explain the advantages:

• The standard price of the lifetime Brain Rook membership is 360 Euro which is equivalent to 10 years of a normal Brain Rook level. Since you need to earn 7 different achievements and each of them would cost you 36 Euro. The outcome is that you save 108 Euro, paying only 252 Euro - not a bad deal.


• It is not mandatory to use all required bonus codes for yourself. In fact, you can do a nice favor to 7 different BrainKing users who, for instance, cannot afford to pay for a Brain Rook membership - the Pawn Registry is a good source for this purpose. Another option is to dedicate some of these purchases to prize tournaments. And, as a reward, the lifetime Brain Rook membership should be more than an adequate result.


• Since every BrainKing feature or functionality is, in some way, connected to many other BrainKing features, it helps us test them much better if more people use them. I am sure that a stable and rock solid site is what everybody wants.

And I am really glad to see how many people are already hunting achievements and, as a side effect, playing games they never played before. This observation gives us ideas how to make the system even better and user friendly.