lightning

  There are four types of regular (not wild or bughouse) chess played on this
chess server: Untimed, Lightning, Blitz and Standard. Details on how the clock
works are given under "help clocks".

  A game is "Lightning" if the expected duration of the game is less than 3
minutes per player.  "Expected duration" (etime) determined by a formula that 
takes into account both the Start time and the Increment (Inc) value assuming
40 moves are played.  Here is the formula:

     Expected duration = (Start + Inc*2/3)

  The following table shows the slowest Lightning and fastest Blitz time
controls, the dividing line if you will between those two types of matches.

     Slowest Lightning   Fastest Blitz
    ------------------------------------
       Mins  Incr         Mins  Incr
    ------------------------------------
         0     4            0    5
         1     2            1    3
         2     1            2    2
        --------            3    0

  As you can see, Lightning chess is very quick!

  To match someone for lightning, just use appropriate values for Start and
Inc.  For example: match Solid 1 2.

  You can list logged on users according to their lightning ratings by typing
"who L".  "Lightning" is also a variable that can be used in formulas in order
to screen match requests.

SPECIAL NOTES:

(a) Bughouse, Crazyhouse, Wild and Suicide Chess games can be played at
different time controls, but there are no distinctions made in rating
these games.  Only 'regular' chess games have lightning, blitz and standard
designations.

(b) If Start is zero (0), the player will start with 10 seconds to begin the
match.

See Also:  blitz  clocks  crazyhouse  formula  lightning  match  standard
           suicide_chess  untimed  who  wild

[Last modified: March 19, 1999 -- DAV]