simuls

  "Simuls" = simultaneous chess matches; playing more than one opponent at a
time.  It is possible to play more than one opponent simultaneously on the
chess server.  Below are sections for Starting a Simul and for Joining a
Simul.


STARTING A SIMUL

  In order to play more than one chess match simultaneously you need to do the
following:

1. Turn on your simopen flag with "simopen".  Announce your simul conditions
   on shout and cshout enough to get the word out, but not so much as to annoy
   users.

2. Other users must then challenge you with "simmatch".

3. Accept or reject the challenges as they come in.  You play WHITE in all
   games.

4. When you are satisfied that you have started the number of games that you
   can handle, turn off your simopen flag.  You can see how many games you
   are playing with "simgames".

5. You can then start making moves on the board.  The "simnext" command moves
   you to the next board; "simprev" moves you to the previous board.  You
   will focus on one game at a time, going in a particular order.

6. If you are bothered by how long a player is taking to make the next move,
   you can abort that game with "simabort".  You are in control of these
   limits since the games are untimed.

7. When all matches you are playing are complete, you will get your results.

Various commands you can use while running a simul include:  goboard, gonum, 
simabort, simadjourn, simallabort, simalladjourn, simnext, simopen and
simprev.


JOINING A SIMUL

  In order to play against a user who is open for playing simultaneous
matches, here is what you do:

1. Using the "simmatch" command, challenge the person you will be playing.
   If the challenge is accepted, you will play BLACK.

2. You will be informed when the simul player is coming to your board.  You
   should be prepared to move either before or shortly after that player
   arrives at your board.  If you do not move within a reasonable time
   period, your game could be aborted.

3. It is impolite to offer a draw unless that player is at your board.  It
   could very easily confuse the simul player if offers come in from
   different users at once.
   
4. If your game ends early, you may want to turn on your ginform flag so
   that you can see the final result of the simul games.  You can also
   observe the games; when the last game is over, you get the results.


OBSERVING A SIMUL

  You can observe all games in a simul once they have started by typing
"observe simul_player".  All of the simul_player's simul games will be added
to your observation list.  As the simul_player moves from board to board, so
will you.  When the last game has ended, you will see the final results from
the simul games.

See Also:  observe  set  simmatch  simgames  [and other commands given above]

[Last modified: August 15, 1995 -- Friar]