     Pente(6)                                                           Pente(6)
                                  30 November 1997

     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!  There 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.  You can
          also set any of the command line switches can 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@hevanet.com) French text by Eric Dupas (dupas@univ-

                                        - 1 -       Formatted:  January 11, 2001

     Pente(6)                                                           Pente(6)
                                  30 November 1997

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

                                        - 2 -       Formatted:  January 11, 2001