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)