Thad, regarding your analogy to the kids who had three shootouts and then coin tosses. you said "Sometimes a game is a tie and it's just something we have to deal with. "

YEs, obviously after many hours of shootouts, sometimes a tie has to be called. But your analogy is extremely weak, because a game of pente does not require more than another few mmoves to break the tie. My opint is, a tie should only becalled when NECESSARY, after a simple means of breaking a tie has failed!

in thep ente game, you and Walter arew advocating that NO reasonable measures ne taken to decide a tie, when in fact, a tie could be decided WITHOUT an alteration in the game play (as opposed to a sporting event where thye go to a shootout of some sort, wihch isd vastly different from the actual game).