Hmmm.... I imagine that you are quite a good regular Pente player. If you're right about you Pente players not studying Keryo all that much it might explain my success in it. It is true that in two player games without chance in them it can be shown that one player or the other has the advantage or a forced win except in the case where one player can always play to force a draw if the game rules have draws. You even used some of that argument about having the first dude placed in your other reply. And Keryo is spread out a little more as it's played. I think that Keryo might work a little differently because of the capture rule change from Pente that makes Keryo the game that it is. I only think this, I can't show or prove it. As you haven't either.
So why isn't there more study to Keryo? I think the game is better than regular Pente. I don't have the time or inclination to study it or master it and was hoping you enthusiasts would have done so already. Quite snobbish and provincial I think your attitude is towards IYT and other sites toward the game. Aside from the fact they have a --move restriction -19 X 19 board-- both colors --tournament game rules-- on their site just for players such as yourself. Why disparage IYT tournaments of playing everyone twice? Especially after you sing the virtues of it in your recent Pente tournament. I think that is a better method than arbitrarily assigning colors and using some method to weight the games. Yeah, yeah, to speed up the games. Right, and you think this site is faster? They better do something about the Vacation rule during tournaments or there's going to be a lot of problems. I do have issues with IYT. They are almost cavalier in their response to player questions and help. They've also gotten so concerned about making money that they're giving us players short shift in other ways too. Still I do like a lot of the things about their site. This BrianKing site is good too. It certainly gives us players more control and autonomy. They probably got a lot of their ideas from IYT and decided to start their own site and correct the problems they thought IYT has. They have better costumer service too. I wrote them a couple of times and they responded fast.
I don't see anything wrong with a 13 X 13 board for Keryo Pente. What makes you so upset? The only reason Pente is on a 19 X 19 board is it was borrowed from a Go board. Yes, the game plays differently on a smaller board. The sides come into play for one thing. I bet that doesn't happen at all in your Pente games on a 19 X 19 board. I used to play Pegity on a 15 X 15 board and it predates Pente by 20 years or so. (Pegity is Line 5 or Gomoku) I'm curious about the other rule changes that you guys are thinking up. To me Pente is flawed because it requires a rule retriction. I could imagine the uproar in chess playing circles if they proposed move restrictions! I have thought up a couple of variations of Pente that could be played. One of them would probably lesson the advantage of going first so much as to eliminate the need for the move restriction. The problem is it wouldn't be Pente any more. As Keryo isn't Pente either. I believe Keryo was made up in response to the very thing you pointed out.... "First to move"'s big advantage in Pente. From your posting you argue that it wasn't very successful in this regard. It also sounds like the move restriction in Pente hasn't been very successful either. Least ways not very much so in your tournament. To win the tournament you must win when going second. I imagine anytime someone of your playing ability wins going second in the finals of a tournament everyone else analyzes the game to find out what happened.

I just scrolled down to find your previous posting. It appears I've made a couple of mistakes about what I thought I read in the two newest postings. You are for two game matches in tournaments. You like the Sonne thingy for breaking ties in two game match tournaments also. As I'm not familiar with it, nor having seen it in use, I'll reserve my judgment on it until it comes up involving me. It might even be something I might want to use in the Building tournaments for breaking ties. Currently we use games won as the determining factor except for the championship. For that a tie breaking game is used. Since there isn't sides in Building (Though there is argument about who's advantage it is (Dealer versus Non-dealer) it is not a factor as both players take turns during a game being the dealer) Games won is determined by the final scores ratio win to loss. Winning the game still counts first.

Thank you for your replies and I hope some others weigh in on this. Pente and its variants are good games. Perhaps I should check out the Pente.org site, eh?