Working with the Holtz program
Starting a new game
You can choose to start either a Zèrtz, Dvonn, or Relax game from
the File menu. This leads to a wizard interface for choosing the
settings and players of the new game:

On the first page of the game setup wizard you can choose either to
"Play Alone" or to play with friends over a network connection. If you already
started a new game and enter the game setup wizard once more, you can
also select "Keep last game connection". This keeps the
configuration from the last game and keeps network connections alive.
All other options will interrupt existing network connections.

The second page of the game setup wizard offers several options to
define the game to be played. You can either select "Start new
game" or "Continue game". The new game options between
Zèrtz and Dvonn differ slightly.
Dvonn offers to play with "Standard Rules" or "Random
Start Board". The latter chooses purely random positions for all
pieces which skips the part of placing pieces and lets you start right
away with stacking pieces.
Zertz offers to play with "Basic Rules", "Standard
Rules", "Tournament Rules", or to select
"custom" settings which will be set on the next page of the
wizard. For basic rules, the requirements to win the game are 3 white,
4 grey, or 5 black marbles, or 2 of each. For standard rules and
tournament rules it is 4 white, 5 grey, 6 black, or 3 of each. Basic
and standard rules use a 37 ring board whereas tournament rules use a
48 ring board.
For "Continue game" it is possible to continue the
last game or to load games from PBM or Little Golem. In case of PBM
you should copy all emails in a folder. When Holtz scans the folder it
can assemble a board setting from several email files. Little Golem
offers the download of TXT files for Dvonn which can also be placed in
a folder and loaded in Holtz.

Custom settings for Zèrtz offer to choose boards with
different numbers of rings, to choose the win condition as a set of
marbels required to win, and to choose the commonly available marbles.

The last page of the game wizard is a dialog to setup the players
participating in the game. You can enter the player name on the top
and hit "Add Player" to add a new player to the list. The
checkbox "AI" determines whether newly added players are
controlled by an AI strategy. The radio buttons under "Help
mode" also have effect on newly added players and can activate
helps like to show possible moves or to show hint moves.
Players in the list can be moved up and down or removed with the
buttons on the right. In network games the "Ready" button
signals the end of making changes and the text line on the bottom
gives instructions on adding more players, or pushing the "Ready"
button. "Please continue" tells that all settings are ok and
a game can be started by pushing the "Finish" button.
Playing Zèrtz

The status bar of Holtz tells you at any time which kind of move you
should play. In order to make a set move you can click on a marble to
set which must be one of the common marbles if possible and one of the
private marbles otherwise. After selecting the marble you can place it
by clicking on an empty ring. Don't forget to remove one of the
outermost rings after each set move if possible. In order to make a
jump move you can click on a marble on the board and on the
destination field for the jump. If this marble can jump further, the
marble will stay selected and you just need to click to further
destination fields.
While the game is not finished the player to make a move is marked in
red. Marbles captured by a player are displayed below his name.
Playing Dvonn

In the phase of placing pieces every player just clicks on the
destination field to place a piece. The player to make a move is
marked in red. After the three DVONN pieces the first player to set
his own piece is black. The last piece on the board is placed
automatically and doesn't count as a move. If you are annoyed by move
reminder sounds, you can disable them with the settings dialog.

In the phase of stacking pieces every player can click on pieces or
stacks controlled by him and move them by clicking on the destination
field. A stack can only move in a straight line on an occupied field.
The distance of the jump is determined by the number pieces in the
stack to be moved. The size of stacks with more than one piece is
written on the top. The screenshot above shows how the help mode "show
possible moves" marks possible moves during this phase.
Playing Relax
The piece to play in a round is shown at the top. The highlighted
player can set this piece on any field of his board by clicking on the
desired position. When all local players moved, you will see also
moves done by remote players. If a remote player is highlighted, you
are waiting for this player to move. Show possible moves doesn't make
sense for this game, since all empty fields are viable for set-moves.
Also undo is generally disabled and the variant display is mostly
useless.
Playing Bloks

The board by default is shown at the top and stones of all players are
shown below. The name of the current player is highlighted in red.
If you right click on the stones of a player, all stones will be shown
flipped upside down. In order to set a piece, you first click the stone.
This will highlight the first reference point on the stone. It is highly
recommended to switch on the option show possible moves for your player.
Then potential points to put the reference point of the piece are shown
in red on the board. Once you placed the first reference point, the
second reference point is highlighted on the stone as well as potential
positions to place it on the board. It is not possible to flip a stone
upside down while placing it. You have to undo all clicks with right
clicks, first.
Don't forget that you have to start the first move with a piece that touches
one of the outer most corner fields. The two player small board variant is
actually fun, too, and the AI is quite competitive there.
Settings
After a game is started, a settings dialog can be opened from the
"Settings" Menu:

The arrangement tab allows to define whether coordinates should be
shown around the board. For Zèrtz it also allows to choose
arrangement options for the game panels. An interesting alternative to
the default settings might be to show the board
"horizontally" and to choose "board and common stones
left". In case you like to have a better view on the precise
count of marbles, you can disable the checkboxes for displaying them
individually.

The "Look & Feel" tab offers the choice of a different
skin file. Holtz ships with several skins in different
sizes to take account for different screen resolutions. Despite the
identical skin format, most of the skins, are rather useful for
Zèrtz than for Dvonn.
A beep file can be chosen as move reminder. But you can also
deactivate it by disabling the checkbox in front of "Play
sounds". For player names, coordinates, and for text on stones,
different fonts may be chosen.
If you invest lots of time in choosing your display settings, please
bear in mind that only skin file, beep file, and play sounds is saved
and restored the next time you run Holtz.
Networking

In order to play Zèrtz or Dvonn over the network, one player
can setup the game as server and other players can connect to it as
clients.
For setting up a server you can just choose a port and
continue with the next page to setup a game to play. You may have to
figure out how to deal with your firewall to allow accepting
connections on the specified port.
Clients have to enter the hostname
and port of the server to connect. You can click the
"Connect" button to establish a connection and see with the
text on the left whether the connection attempt succeeds. Hitting the
"Next" button without connecting first will also trigger a
connect and switch to the next page in case the connection succeeds.
Clients have only a limited game setup wizard which just allows to add
his players and wait for the server to choose a game to play.

When starting a network server, an additional dialog is displayed
containing all active connections. Don't close this dialog if you want
to see what clients are connected or if you want to change whether new
clients can connect to the server. If you don't disallow further
connections it is also possible to connect with a client during the
game and just view the moves played.
During network games only the player to move can ask to undo moves or
to start a new game without aborting the connection. In case of
finished games it is the player who didn't do the last move.