Pente will probably never be as popular as chess, nor, I dare say, even as popular as it once was. It's not as good as a game, nor as interesting. It's even more boring to watch than chess is! Playing them is different. I like to play them both. I know no one that plays Pente in any form. All of my friends can play chess, or atleast have heard of it. Though none of them play it. Not when there's cards to be dealt. If you guys haven't noticed, even chess is dying out in certain ways. Damn computers!
Are you right that there's only 20 masters of Pente? I find this number quite low. As easy as it is to learn Pente, you'd think there'd be lots of real good and master players around. That's one big plus in Pente's and Keryo Pente's side, easy to learn. Mastering them is a whole different thing all together. But it's just putting spots on a lined up board and there's not much excitement in that. A great intellectual challange, yes, but excitement or interest for the casual person, no. Atleast chess has different looking men and sudden movement in its favor.

I think it should be a choice as to having a move restriction or not. Your chess analogies are quite good, but you're comparing apples to oranges. No master of chess will take me serious at regular chess just because I'm one of the best players at a variant of it. So why should Pente be any different between us non-serious players and you champions irregardless of what rules we play by? You guys play and argue amongst yourselves about things that are of little concern to someone that just wants to play the game. You convinced Fencer and now we're stuck with it unless he adds or changes it again. Gary, how come you didn't get him to add the move restriction option that you told me about that the second player places the next three moves and the first player decides if he is going to be the first to move player or make the second player be the first to move player? That version is certainly more fair than the current move restriction standard game, and would be just as much fun. And it could get some play and you'd see if it'd work well or not. The ol' data base you keep plugging would get some data put into it. Why not have it on as well?

If the Official Rules Committee (whoever they happen to be) was to adopt it tomorrow, what would happen to all the players that want to play with the current move restriction? If you're right about Pente being no good even with the move restriction, why are you foisting it upon us? Now we have to play with your guys' imposed version on the 13 X 13 board that neither of you want to play on. Seems unfair and hypocritical to me. I agree with ellieoop, if you don't like the game, don't play the game. If you say the current way is flawed, why force us to play it. You guys seem to view it as an assault to the standard game and are intent on stopping anyone that tries to play a different version.
I am going to play some Keryo Pente on the 19 X 19 board and see how I like the game played that way. Even if I find it to be a better game than the Keryo Pente that I'm used to playing, I don't see why I should be prevented from playing a different way because you don't approve of it. Just imagine if a group of chess masters came to this site and convinced the owners that they shouldn't have any chess variants on it for all the reasons you've given about Pente and Fencer got rid of them. I'm sure there'd be an outpouring of complaints if that happened. I fail to see how this is any different than that. Just because you're the best player in the world at one version of a game doesn't mean I should be forced to play it.

(Note: most of the "you" 's in this posting are meant to be the all-encompassing second person, not to a specific individual except where explicit shown or stated.)