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NAME

       pente - Game of five in a row

SYNOPSIS

       pente -help

       pente [ <options> ]

HOW TO PLAY PENTE

       Pente is the American name of a Japanese game called ‘‘ni-nuki’’, which
       is a variant of the ancient game ‘‘go-moku’’.  Pente  is  played  on  a
       19x19  grid  with  stones of two different colors.  Each player chooses
       one set of stones; then the players take turns placing their stones  on
       any unoccupied intersection until one player wins.

       There  are two ways to win.  If a player makes five or more stones in a
       straight line (across, down, or diagonally),  then  that  player  wins.
       Or,  if  a  player captures five pairs of his or her opponent’s stones,
       that player also wins.

       Stones may be captured in pairs only.  To capture a pair of  stones,  a
       player must place one stone on either side of the pair.

       The  first  move  is placed in the center of the board.  To make up for
       the advantage of going first, the first player’s second move must be at
       least  three  spaces from their first.  This sounds confusing, so don’t
       worry about it; just play, and if the computer won’t let you move where
       you want on your second move, play somewhere farther away.

       That’s  it!   These  directions  are pretty terse, but if you have an X
       display there are better  directions  available  through  the  ‘‘help’’
       button.   You  can  also  try playing a few games; the rules are simple
       enough that you can pick them up easily just by playing.

THE PROGRAM

       This program has support for many different display  types.   Depending
       on the compile options used, X Windows, Curses, and a plain text format
       may be available.  The exact display type used will be  chosen  by  the
       program, or it may be selected with a command line switch.  Information
       on the switches is available with pente -help.

       Most of the command line switches can also be set  with  the  ‘‘setup’’
       window of the X interface.  Any changes you make there will be saved in
       the .pente.ad file and remembered the next time that you play.

       The command line switches can also be  set  with  an  X  default.   For
       example, if you want to set black and white to be the default mode, you
       can run pente with pente -nocolor, or you can  add  pente*color:  0  to
       your  X  defaults,  or  you  can  just  turn off color in the ‘‘setup’’
       window.

       Pente will store a new .pente.ad file every time you run it.   In  this
       file it will save the current state of Pente.  This is handy; you don’t
       normally have to set command line switches since  Pente  will  remember
       them in the .pente.ad file.

BUGS

       Sometimes the .pente.ad file gets some bad data in it.  Just delete the
       file and then you can start from scratch again.

AUTHOR

       Bill Shubert (wms@igoweb.org)

       French text by Eric Dupas (dupas@univ-mlv.fr)

       Italian text by Andrea  Borgia  (email:  borgia@cs.unibo.it;  homepage:
       http://www.cs.unibo.it/~borgia)

                                 31 July 2001                         Pente(6)