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### How to Use Pentobi

### Board

Pentobi's main window shows the board on the left side. The played pieces on the board can have numbers on them that indicate the move number in which the piece was played. An letter after the move number indicates that there exists a variation to this move (see below).

Pieces can be played by moving them to a place that corresponds to a legal move with the mouse or arrow keys and pressing the left mouse button or the Enter key.

### Pieces and Score

On the right side, the remaining pieces are shown. Above the remaining pieces is an orientation selector that shows the currently selected piece and allows the player to change its orientation. If no piece is selected and the game has not yet ended, a coloured dot in the orientation selector shows the colour to play.

Pieces can be selected by clicking on one of the remaining pieces shown, by using the left/right arrow buttons in the orientation selector or by using shortcut keys.

Below the orientation selector is a score display, which displays the current points for each colour or player. The points are the sum of on-board points and bonus points. Points are underlined if they are final (because the colour cannot play more pieces).

### Playing Against the Computer

The board can be used for entering moves played by humans or for playing games against the computer. In games against the computer, the computer can play any (or several) of the colours.

When you start a new game of a game variant with more than two players, the computer plays no colour by default; all colours are expected to be played by humans. If you want the computer to play a single colour, you can wait until it is this colour's turn and select Play from the Computer menu or toolbar. Selecting Play always makes the computer play a move for the current colour. If the computer did not already play this colour before, it will also make the computer play this colour (and only this colour) from now on. If you want the computer to play more than one colour, use Computer Colours from the Game menu or toolbar and select the colours it should play.

When you start a new game of a two-player game variant, the computer plays the colour(s) of the second player by default. Select Play to make it play the colour(s) of the first player instead. The exception is that the computer will play no colour by default, if it played no colour in the previous game. This prevents the computer from starting to play if the user mainly wants to use the board for entering moves played by humans. So if you want to use the board without playing against the computer, you need to disable the computer colours in the Computer Colours dialog only once and it will stay that way. After loading a saved game, the computer also plays no colour by default.

### Move Variations and the Game Tree

When you play a game, Pentobi will store the sequence of moves and it is always possible to go back to a previous position and play differently. If you do this, the new sequence is stored as an alternative sequence (called a variation). Variations can also be used by annotators for commenting on existing games. Variations can exist at any board position and can have subvariations themselves. The game can therefore become a game tree, in which each node represents a board position. You can navigate in the game tree with the items in the Go menu or in the toolbar.

The main variation is the sequence of moves that starts at the start position and always selects the first child node in each position (e.g. by selecting Forward in the Go menu or toolbar). The main variation is supposed to represent the real game played. If you want a side variation to become the main variation, select Make Main Variation from the Edit menu.

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