How To Play Chess in Moomin?

Choose your method of connecting to moomin:

telnet or any other usual program (e.g., QVTNet, ZMud, XTush, ...)
XBoard, WinBoard or any other special chess client

Text-based chess

Just having plain old telnet? Well... just telnet to Moomin, like always.

An example

Let your name be Kasparov and your opponent be DeepBlue.

Challenge DeepBlue, by using the command
```
  match DeepBlue [<base time> <increment>]
  
```
where base time (given in minutes) is the time limit for the match you propose, increment is time in seconds a player's time will be incremented by moving a piece (by default, the values are 5 and 0). E.g., match DeepBlue 15 0 or match DeepBlue.
Now wait till he will accept your offer (by typing accept Kasparov).
You're the white. Start playing. E.g., write e2e4. All the commands have to be entered directly, by using the algebraic notation a la e2e4, with some variations: o-o and o-o-o denote castling and e2e7=R denotes promoting your pawn to a rook. You can also take back your move by writing takeback until your opponent has made a countermove.
If you want to see the board, write vb.
Write resign if you are losing and want to stop the game.
By moves you can see of the current game, including how much both of you have time left.
If your opponent's clock time is negative (and yours is not), you can type flag. Thereby he/she will loose the match.

Configuring your view

We have tried to make it comfortable for these who have just telnet. You can choose between a larger and between a smaller board (by writing match large or match small). Then you can choose the colors for black/white pieces and fields (see help color for more).

With Xboard

The simplest way is again to have a Unix machine with X-Windows. On these machines, xboard is usually preinstalled. If not, install it yourself! Now, connect to Moomin, using the command line

xboard -ics -icshost moomin.ee -icsport 2010

(you can define an alias for that. An alternative method is to make Moomin your default chess server). For MS Windows users there exists an analog to xboard, called WinBoard.

No, being connected, what to do? At first, follow the 2 first steps of the previous section. Now, play, just moving the pieces around with your mouse. Most of the commands (takeback, resign, flag) are also available from the menus of XBoard.

Installing XBoard

IF you do not have xboard already, you can install it yourself:

Download xboard-4.0.0.tar.gz. cd to the directory of your choice, eg by cd ~. Issue the next sequence of commands:
```
       gunzip -c xboard-4.0.0.tar.gz | tar fxv -
       cd xboard-4.0.0
       ./configure
       make
     
```
Now you'll have a file called xboard in the subdirectory xboard-4.0.0 of the directory you cd'd before. cd back to your home directory by cd ~.

To connect later to the Moomin using xboard, type:

     xboard-4.0.0/xboard -ics -icshost moomin.ee -icsport 2010