BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

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.