BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

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 page 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 page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/BrainKing/113831815814 and if you want to stay tuned, please do not hesitate to visit this page and become a fan. 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.

The Easter Egg action is over but if you placed your order when the egg had been active, you still have about 2 weeks to make the payment (to the end of April 2009) and get the 125% bonus. Anyway, it was a nice success as usual and I would like to thank all participants for ... er ... well, for participating. And for supporting our site, of course.

The system of BrainKing achievements seems to be more popular than I expected, which is a good thing and motivates me to program and add new achievements almost every day. At the moment of writing this article, we have 171 achievements and I dare to foresee that this number will exceed 200 in a week or two. And, like for every new feature which is at least a little complicated, a couple of questions emerged and the answers follow:

• Why did I receive a "You earned a new achievement" message? What does it mean?
  It seems that not everyone reads this blog (or, more likely, not everyone speaks English), so I have added a Help entry, regarding this question. It can be found here, should be translated to other languages as soon as possible and every "new achievement" message now contains a link What is this? which points directly to the mentioned explanation.


• I earned a game achievement in the past and the system does not register it. What can I do to get the points?
  Since the specific game achievements were not recalculated from the archive databases (it would be too complicated and probably not worth the effort), they are automatically given to players since the day of their release. If you are absolutely sure that you really earned a game achievement in the past, please send me the achievement name and the game ID, and I can give it to you manually.

I would like to add that although many users sent me their suggestions of new achievements (and many of them are really interesting!), it is not possible to implement all of them. Or at least not immediately. But thanks for all contributions, I appreciate them.

The Easter action has been accepted quite well and thanks to the system of BrainKing achievements, its progress can be continuously watched, along with many other statistical values. To summarize it:

• A new achievement Easter Egg has been added and it is given to everybody who receives this bonus (which means everyone who purchases a year or longer membership when the Easter Egg is active).


• The Achievements page contains a list of the most recent achievements. It is a good thing to observe how and when people earn them.


• It is possible to show a list of all BrainKing users who received the selected achievement (so if you happen to get one of the most difficult ones, you can easily check if you are the only one or if someone else was as lucky/skilled as yourself). For instance, this page displays all members who got the Easter Egg achievement.

There are still more than 2 days left to get the Easter Egg bonus to a year or longer paid membership, which should be enough time for everyone who is not fully decided yet. It is 125% bonus to the subscribed period - it means that you get 27 months for the price of 12 (1 year), 54 months for the price of 24 (2 years) etc. And we never guarantee that a similar action or promotion would be created next year as well.

First of all, I would like to announce a scheduled downtime of BrainKing game site which is planned to some time during the rest of this week. It should not be longer than 30 minutes and the reason is that our database backup system must be restored due to recent small problems (which are already fixed).

The second information is more important. The Easter Egg action has been started and it will be active to Monday 13th April 2009, 23:59:59 GMT+01:00. Click the Easter Egg image next to the Paid Membership link at the left column for more information. Many new BrainKing users appeared since the last bonus action, so it could be a good opportunity for them to get a 125% bonus to a paid membership. And, of course, everybody can take advantage of this action.

The bonus can be used for Black Brain Rook membership orders as well. Instead of adding 125% to a lifetime membership, you can choose another BrainKing user who would get the same lifetime membership for free.

The system of vacation days at BrainKing belongs to the most controversial features of the site. Really. Some people like it because it allows them (under certain circumstances) to use more vacation days (for games) than their membership level allows. Some people hate it because it allows their opponents to move in games very slowly which usually results in tournaments that last more than a year. An unbiased overview says that it is a no-win situation because no matter how the vacation system works, it can never please all types of BrainKing users.

So we don't try to create a flawless feature but the best possible compromise, in order to minimize the group of annoyed players. The new vacation system has been created today and the most important changes are listed below:

• Each level of paid membership defines the maximum number of vacation days that can be used every year - 10 for Brain Pawns, 25 for Brain Bishops and Brain Knights, 35 for Brain Rooks and 45 for Black Brain Rooks. This is the same as before.


• After some vacation days are used, it is possible (twice a year) to get some extra days (during the same year) if the membership is renewed by another year (or longer period) - 10 after the first renewal and 5 after the second one.


• If your membership level expires or drops to a lower one, the system will check if the number of already used vacation days (of the current year) does not exceed the active level maximum. If it does, BrainKing will automatically delete all "future days" which are marked at your Profile / Calendar page. The purpose of this functionality is to avoid situations when a Brain Rook player marks all available 35 vacation days, then his membership expires and he can still use all marked days, even if his current level (Brain Pawn) allows to use no more than 10. After unpleasant dealing with a few smarties who had tried to hack the system in this way, I have decided to put this check to automatic.


• The system remembers how many days you used during the current year. If, for instance, someone is a Brain Rook and uses 20 vacation days (out of 35), then his membership expires nad after 1 month he decides to upgrade to Brain Rook again, BrainKing will give him only 15 vacation days for the rest of the year.

I hope that many BrainKing users will like this change. From my point of view, it should be the best option for all normal players.

I would like to announce a new feature at BrainKing game site, which belongs to the statistical category of functions but also could be a beginning of new way of competition among players. As the article title indicates, it is just the very first version, released mostly for testing purposes. However, the basic functionality should be working with no significant problems.

OK, what is it about? The feature is called Achievements and everybody can find it at the new Profile / Achievements page. Shortly said, it is a reward system that allows all BrainKing users to earn points when they achieve certain goals - for instance, to win 100 games with different opponents, to purchase a paid membership, to win a pond game with 100 or more participants etc.

Each achievement is rated by 5-50 points, depending on how difficult it is to achieve. At the moment of writing this entry, the system mostly contains the ones which can be calculated out of the archive databases. It is planned to added more interesting achievements in the near future, related to particular games and game versions. Are you lucky enough to roll 6-6 10 times in a row? Can you win Dice Chess by capturing opponent's king with your own king? Would you dare to win Espionage by capturing opponent's base without revealing it by a spy? The options are endless.

In order to avoid repeatable questions, regarding this topic, some answers follow:

• We have tried to generate as many achievements (based on historical data) as possible but it is very likely that some of them were omitted. If you are sure that you should earn one or more achievements which are not marked as "completed" yet, please let me know and I will investigate it.


• I know that the Summary page is not well designed and does not show up good in some web browsers. It is about to be redesigned.


• More features (achievement points charts, comparing achievements with other user, etc.) are to be released soon as well.


• Yes, I have stolen this idea from the World of Warcraft game.

A discussion board will be added as soon as possible. Meanwhile, feel free to post any suggestions to this entry comments section.

Although our main effort is currently focused on BrainKing's Online Poker implementation, in order to prepare and release the final version as soon as possible, there is always a chance to take a rest and make a simple side project, which can be completed in a couple of minutes. And the easiest way to create something new is to make a modification of what is already done. This time, our new addition to BrainKing's collection of board games belongs to the Chess category.

It is a known fact that many BrainKing users like to play games with some kind of luck involved, because it is not easy to compete with top players if only a logic and strategy can be used. Dice Chess is a very good example - the game follows the standard Chess rules (with some exceptions) but a die roll determines which piece can be used to make a move. However, since a couple of players complained that the luck factor is too high in this game, a new variant called Dice Chess 10x10 has been introduced and it brings several really nice improvements to make the game more balanced and interesting:

• The game is played on 10x10 board, which means that opponent's pieces (especially pawns and knights) have to make more moves to endanger your king and you have a better chance to protect it or do a counterattack.


• Each player starts a game with 3 kings instead of one and loses the game only if all three kings are captured by the opponent. This is a really big improvement. You know that it is very easy to lose a game of classic Dice Chess in 3 moves if your opponent rolls 2 three times in a row to make 3 moves with a knight to capture your king, and you are not lucky enough to kill the knight. This situation cannot occur in Dice Chess 10x10, so the chance of "sudden death" is drastically reduced.

Enjoy and play.

Poker is a game of skills and a luck (a little luck and many skills, to be exact), so it is not unlikely that many players lose all their chips, sooner or later. And since we want to give everyone a chance to play online poker at BrainKing as often as possible, a simple rebuy functionality has been created with the following rules:

• Every player starts with 1000 chips. The profile page shows the current number of chips for the selected user.


• When the number of chips left drops below 500, a button Get more chips appears at the profile page. It can be used to add another 1000 chips to the player's account.


• This rebuy function cannot be used again until 24 hours pass since the last rebuy. It means that if you add 1000 chips with this feature and lose all of them in less than 24 hours, you would not be allowed to get more chips immediately. The profile page will inform you about the time left.

Please note that it is just the first version of this functionality and we are not sure if it is the best possible solution (which cannot be easily misused). Comments are welcome and we are open to new suggestions. However, I think that it should allow everyone to play at least once a day - and that's very important, especially during the beta test period.

One more thing - I have added an optional sound support to poker tables because it is nice to hear chips being added to the pot, cards being dealt to the table etc. But since this feature is not (and cannot) work properly at all possible combinations of web browsers and operating systems, it is recommended to turn it on only if it does not cause your browser to freeze. If you are not sure about it, please read the corresponding FAQ entry.