Thanks for taking the time to make a great post, Scott.

As everyone probably knows by now, many of us will be meeting next month at the tournament in Oklahoma City as the first meeting of the new World Pente Federation.

We will discuss EASY ways to even the game out for both sides and how to effectively promote the game in the future so that it can come back to it's early '80's popularity and continue increasing strongly in the future.

My favorite choice to even the game up, yet keep it simple is with D-pente rules. It includes a swap option after 4 stones have been placed on the board and is virtually as easy to understand as the current opening restriction. This was proposed by Don Banks of Canada about 2 years ago. See some other messages on these boards about the specific rules for the opening in D-pente.


Gary


P.S. Scott, you and Virag are going DOWN in the Dweebo's Stone Games tourney! :-)