HexPair admission

Overview

HexPair is the admission protocol for online play. When a player joins a 3Chess table, HexPair governs how the seat is requested, claimed, confirmed, and (if necessary) released. It also defines the handshake between the local client’s optimistic state and the server’s authoritative state.

Locked at rev 4 after three rounds of adversarial review. 26 axioms in total.

What the system covers

• Seat states — empty, claiming, confirmed, playing, leaving. Transitions are explicit; intermediate states are visible to the player.
• Claim window — A player who clicks a seat enters claiming immediately; the server confirms within a bounded time or the seat reverts.
• LEAVE SEAT — Only appears in the UI after server confirmation. No optimistic confirmed state.
• Conflict resolution — Two simultaneous claims on the same seat resolve by server timestamp; the loser sees the seat returned to empty with a clear message.
• Identity — How the client identifies itself across reconnections; how the server identifies a player across sessions.
• Spectator admission — Separate from player admission; uses a lighter-weight handshake.

Why HexPair (and not a standard handshake)

Three-player games have a structural problem two-player games don’t: a partial table is unstable. If two of three seats fill but the third never confirms, the table waits indefinitely. HexPair encodes the rules for how long to wait, what to display, and how to gracefully degrade — including transitions to bot-filled seats with explicit player consent.

Status

Locked rev 4. Implementation is partial; the full axiom listing is being prepared.

Coming soon — the 26-axiom HexPair listing with sequence diagrams.