Prev | Home | Next

## How to Use Pentobi

## Board

Pieces can be selected by clicking on one of the unplayed pieces or by using shortcut keys. Pieces can be played by dragging them to a place that corresponds to a legal move with the mouse or arrow keys and pressing the left mouse button or the Enter key.

Played pieces on the board can have numbers on them that indicate the move number in which the piece was played. A letter after the move number indicates that there exists a variation to this move (see below).

The score display shows the current points for each color or player. The points are the sum of on-board points and bonus points. Points are underlined if they are final because the color cannot play more pieces. A small star indicates that the points include a bonus.

## Playing Against the Computer

The board can be used for creating game records of games played by humans or for playing games against the computer. In games against the computer, the computer can play any (or several) of the colors.

When you start a new game, the human will play the color(s) of the first player by default and the computer all other colors. To change this, use Settings from the Computer menu or toolbar and select the colors the computer should play.

The exception is that the computer will play no color by default if it played no color in the previous game. This prevents the computer from automatically starting to play if the user mainly wants to use the board for entering move sequences or similar editing tasks. After loading a saved game, the computer also plays no color by default.

Selecting Play from the Computer menu or the toolbar always makes the computer play a move for the current color. If the computer did not already play this color before, it will also make the computer play this color (and only this color) from now on.

## Move Variations and the Game Tree

When you play a game, Pentobi will store the sequence of moves and it is always possible to go back to a previous position and play differently. If you do this, the new sequence is stored as an alternative sequence (called variation). Variations can also be used by annotators for commenting on existing games. Variations can exist at any board position and can have subvariations themselves. The game can therefore become a game tree, in which each node represents a board position. You can navigate in the game tree with the items in the Go menu and the navigation buttons.

The main variation is the sequence of moves that starts at the start position and always selects the first child node in each position (e.g. by pressing the forward button). The main variation is supposed to represent the real game played. If you want a side variation to become the main variation, select Make Main Variation from the Edit menu.

Prev | Home | Next