thanks : ) it certainly fits most of the argruments and discussions i've been reading by everyone; if I may I'll use it in the future. Life would be so much easier if everyone had my opinion.

btw congratulations to DK and GB on OKC-fantastic!!!

Yes, congrats to Gary and Dmitri for playing so strongly against a tough field. And a huge thanks to pyloric valve (and others) for putting it together. It was great to meet all of you who were able to make it.

Congrats to winners Gary Barnes and Dimitri King and special thanks to Gary Gabrel for inventing Pente and allowing the tournament to be held at Hideaway Pizza, birthplace of pente.

I asked Mark to check how frequently draws occur in renju for me and he said "Scanning results of renju (live) championships, I see about 1 in 10
ending in a draw." Just a little trivia for all of the opponents of draws out there. :~)

HELP!! Game 108274 will not allow me to make my move in M-11. Is there something wrong with this game board? Also this game does not have the option "play later" on the screen.

Please try it again, there is nothing wrong with the game. Perhaps your browser showed an old version of that page from its cache ...?

Thanks Fencer....whatever was wrong with it yesterday, it is working today with no problem.

I have a game I can not bring up at all, so I do not know the game number...but it is Easy Keryo Pente with player Shariann33....any suggestions??

That would be Game number 108316. Even if you can't access the page, you can find the game number: if you look at the address that appears at the bottom of the window when you hold your mouse over the link, it will say "http://www.brainking.com/showgame?g=#####" Where the numbers represent the game number. If you are on webTV and do not have anything like that, i'm sorry :-)
I can access it fine - what does it do when you click on it...anything?

This morning I can bring it up. But last night when I tried I would get message from MSN (web-tv) that it contained information that could not be used and then the screen would go white. It was the only game I could not play last night.

The only thing i could think of is to try and refresh it - but i really am not familiar with any form of webTV, so i can't really help ;-)

I too am on webtv, and every so often I get that message when clicking on things here. It isn't very often, and I don't know the reason why, but I just move to something else, and the next day it is fine. (Could be sooner, I don't know)
For a long time this would happen to me when clicking on the "Who is online" link. Now it never happens there and it now seems to happen in specific backgammon games when I'm trying to move. I have no idea if it is a webtv problem or a brainking problem.
Just wanted to let you know you arent alone. And again, it is fixed when you go back at a later time.

At least I am not the only one getting that message from MSN....of course, I haven't had any problems with that since May 28....thank goodness!!

No one sent in a correct solution to arrive at the 10-10 score in six moves in my puzzle(if someone did and I accidentally missed it, please let me know the approximate date and I'll check again), so here is the solution: 1.K12 K13 2.O10 K7 3.K6 N7 4.O7 N9 5.R11 Q12 or K16 6.O8. I think the solution(s) to win in 7 moves if black has one less stone captured should be obvious from here, so I'll leave them as an exercise for the reader.
Mark has modified his program to play poof pente and it plays VERY well, so soon anyone who wants to try it will be able to play against the computer. I am thinking about trying to get a poof pente discussion board set up somewhere, so that people can post strategy tips, puzzles, etc. I am also looking forward to the time when Mark has his AI modified so that we can try out different variants on the theme of poof pente (and others also) to see what seems to be the fairest game (Gary's suggestion of playing into poofs being forbidden, only P2 can make poofs,etc.) Tom

Has anybody authoritive information on the origins and antiquity of Pente? I believe it's Greek but would like to confirm that and know for how long it's been around. I apologise if this question has been asked before, this is my first visit to this board and there are 162 posts to search through for a possibly non-existent answer.

Pente was invented in 1977 (approximately) by Gary Gabrel. THe game Go-Moku, which is similar to pente has ben around for a long time.

Thanks for the reply. Does go-moku also allow captures?

no. Go-moku with captures is what pente is. THe only other difference is htat 6 in a row or more wins in pente but does not win in go-moku.

Okay, thank you very much.

Really it were old Japanese games Pente name was Ninuki-Renju. Go-moku have sport variant Renju.
You can see my page at http://nosovsky.narod.ru
USA only simplified rules of Ninuki and so we have this variant of Pente.

I'm particularly interested in the method of capture in pente. In Japan this method is also used in (at least) hasami shogi while in the west it is used in tafl type games. I'm wondering if this similarity was the result of cultural interaction among sub-arctic tribes, so I would be very interested if you have any information about traditional/ancient Siberian boardgames especially games of the Nenets.

Yes, it is interesting to know but it is far from Moscow and Pente. May be other are not interesting this theme.

If you're interested in discussing these ideas please e-mail me: ughaibu@yahoo.com

although it's an open-pente game
(again could not resist a tourney-group vegetating with 3 players only)
I'd lightly apply for a brilliancy-prize
( for that game-type after all ... ) :D

a hammer-formation won by black,
and my opponent asked me where he missed his chance ...

I had a surgery around noonish and would doubt the accuracy
of my analysis today ... maybe one of our sharks cAn spare a moment.

thanks and, have a great day yet ... ~*~

I would say a combination of move 6.G6 surrendering the initiative and move 13.K9 allowing L10 to be played were the most costly mistakes for white. But I'm no expert...

this game was over very early on, white never had a chance after move 4 or 5....

i invited a player to a game they accepted and moved,i cant load the game,must be to big,so neither of us can play or delete,im on NTL HELP!!

I think I heard that WebTV can't load regular Pente or Keryo-Pente, which is why Fencer created Small Pente and Small Keryo-Pente (13x13 instead of 19x19). I'm not sure what you can do if neither of you can open it! Probably message Fencer and he'll help you :-)

Regular keryo pente loads up fine with webtv. I'm on webtv and I play it just fine.

It could depend on what kind of WebTV you had - i heard something about older units loading even smaller pages than newer ones.

I've read all the discussion about Poof-Pente here at the discussion boards and have implemented (one of the possible implementations) of Poof-Pente at DSG (http://pente.org/).

See the full annoucement here http://pente.org/gameServer/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=4&threadID=1130&tstart=0

Enjoy!

I'm seeing if I can make it a link
Poof-Pente Annoucement

what's up with the database ?

3 days ago I checked a game KingCrimon vs Krasnososov (wedge main line)
when I wanted to share it with my opponent today, it was gone - and the stats
are telling me unlikies, like only 4 games played on that ... :O ... ~*~

PS identical to game 135896 upto move 12

Thanks, Dweebo, you are awesome! Come and play all. Tom

Now available: test version of my program for Poof Pente!
at http://users.erols.com/msmammel/marksfiv.html
It will count a poof into a 10-10 capture count as a draw.
Just put the file into the same directory as the regular pente program (WPente.exe) and run PoofPente.exe
No help is available, see the posts for rules.
-Mark

You are right dano- the database is screwed up after we made some changes to accomodate the new variants, it seems to make errors in recognizing the boards after captures are made. Dweebo is working on it, Thanks.
Mark

I checked the tea in my laboratory ...
so I felt quite safe about hallucinations ... :D

and indeed the wedge is 'perfect' for capture-related missing matches ... ~*~

If you notice problems with DSG, please post at the DSG forums or email me directly. I don't check these discussion boards very frequently so the only reason I knew about the problem was because Mark told me.

Thanks,
-dweebo

Sign UP for the VERY FAST "Small Pente", everybody who loves the fast games this is the tourney :)

Thanks and regards to all

Sign UP for the VERY FAST "Small Pente", everybody who loves the fast games this is the tourney :)

Thanks and regards to all

Okay, I've got a game of pente where I placed five in a row, but it's now in my oppenent's turn to move column... why didn't I win? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?

Ankhaw -

I found your game where you should have already won. Wow, I've never seen that before!

Here's what you need to do. Send a message to 'Fencer', the owner of the site and tell him what happened. It will be easiest for his reference if you give him your game I.D. of 174787.

He is usually fairly quick to respond and will take care of it for you.

By the way, who is Beuller?


Gary

This has been happening to lots of people it seems lately - you win a game (or a game finishes) and it still goes to your opponent. I had one game of Spider Line4 where i placed 4 in a row, and it was my opponent's turn for a few minutes before it realized i'd won. Hopefully he'll look at it soon.

<> By the way, who is Beuller?

Ferris Bueller
http://imdb.com/Title?0091042

Is it anybody can give me address of Internet sites allowing to find information about tactics and strategies of Pente ?

Pente/Renju Theory
Alexander Nosovsky's Pente Guide

Mark Mammel's Pente-Site

Also the site www.playpente.com may help.

Hello all pente players!

I've re-posted my tournament game since the last one was lost in the crash. I really hope that all of you who signed up before will sign up again. Let's not let a little thing like a site crash, and a bunch of data lost to stop us from getting back in to the swing of things.

I'll see you in the tourney!!! (I hope)

-Scott

Not everyone who was once signed up for my tournament has re-signed up... Come on guys. I know that server problem pissed everyone off, but let's get to it. I'd like to see a lot of people in the tourney. We've got some excellent players in it already. It's going to be cool! If you haven't already, please join in!!!

-Scott