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)