You may find that the discussion 'On 'Private Messaging' by danpost' may be of some help. There is at least one thing not mentioned in that discussion: avoid character 13 in your user IDs. In your case, however, you may want all 'score' values to be zero, unless involved in a current game. While playing against another user, both scores can be set to the same number (first making sure no-one else is using it). This way, calling getNear(2) should return both players in the same game (for updated info). I have not tested; but, certainly getNear(3) will have both players returned (plus one other).
