No Cloak and dagger act was pulled. We have been railing against the no-restriction variant since the moment it was created here, it just happened that Fencer's decision came at a tiem that made it appear as if we pulled a cloak and dagger act.

It is indisputable that player 1 has a sizable advantage! I don't understand how anyone can state otherwise. You ask where the proof is, but I don't see it as needing to be proved, it is a afct that stands on its own merit. To not have some sort of adjustment in a game where the player who goes first has such a big advantage just doesn't make sense to me.

Consider Rush sabotage, of which we were obth avid players. I see no advantage ofr either side in that game, espeically since there are the two strips through the volcanos. Thus, no restriction is necessary. In pente, the game is very short and having an extra stone is a big edge, I just see that as an undeniable fact.

I don't think Gary and I have done the oppositte (of our intent to bring pente players here from IYT). I could give you a LONG list of players who play pente here who used to play it at IYT.

You object to our telling others how they must have it. This is a distortion of our argument (a slight distortion anyway). All we are doing is speaking out against a bad variant that has no justification for existing. There are lots of pente variants that Gary and I support, we just don't support THIS ONE PARTICULAR variant. To me, that isn't telling people how what they MUST do, but rather, telling people what ONE thing they must NOT do. I think the difference is significant.

Again, I'll use Gary's chess example. No one is telling people they MUST play chess exactly the way the original game is played, because there are dozens of viable variants; but, we DO FORBID certain variants that have no justification, such as playing where one side only has one rook while the other side has two.

IYT made a mistake when they set up pente. What gave them the right to choose what rules to use? I don't understand this at all. Just because their error continued to go unchecked, doesn't mean it should go unchecked permanently.