Games are well appreciated for teaching strategy. In another column, I’ll talk about that, relating Chess, Gomoku, strategy and AI. Here, I’d like to introduce another useful game that teaches not so much about strategy as about the important concept of initiative. It’s called Pente. Pente is deceptively simple, easy to teach and fun to play. Games are short. Beyond initiative, it offers insight into the delicate interplay between psychology and victory or defeat, the direct versus indirect approach, and a good deal more. But for now we’ll just introduce the game, discuss the concept of initiative, and show how it can help to exercise the relationship between initiative and the offensive in a way that may be useful in strategy, in war, in business, in swordsmanship, in life.
Pente was created not in ancient China (as with Gomoku), or in another ancient culture (it’s unclear where Chess originated), but in Stillwater, Oklahoma…in 1977 by Gary Gabrel. Starting as a dishwasher at the iconic Hideaway Pizza restaurant, Gabrel created the game and it was played in the restaurant’s white-and-red checked table covers, which where I learned to play it, from Mr. Gabrel himself, in 1980. Gabrel struck it big with Pente, catapulting himself to momentary fame by 1983 as he sold the game to Parker Brothers for an undisclosed sum. It remains a classic, if sadly less known than it ought to be.
The game is super easy to play. Played on a 19 x 19 grid board, as with Gomaku, players with different colored glass stones alternate placing a stone at a grid intersection. The objective is simple: win by getting five in a row, with no spaces, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. This sounds simple, and in this regard resembles a simplified version of Gomaku.
But Pente offers an interesting wrinkle: players may also win by capture. To capture, two stones are enclosed between two of a single color, without spaces. Capturing ten stones is also a way to win. This deceptively simple change gives the players a way to restructure the board through clever captures, perhaps even securing victory. Unlike in Gomaku and chess, there is more than one way to win. For a short history of the game, rules and some hints, see https://www.hideawaypizza.com/pente.
Copies of the original, elegant tube-packaged game may be found sometimes on Ebay or Etsy, while Winning Moves Games has the license, thankfully going back to the popular roll-up board format (Parker Brothers had done a version with a traditional folding board). I offer a myriad of colors for (replacement) stones on my Amouricum site. You can also easily make a board at home, using pennies and dimes.
Pente is fun because it is so easy to learn, and the available colors give the game a unique personality, a connection to each player. Interestingly, it can be played with multiple players, in teams or my favorite, in a free-for-all. I’ll discuss that in a bit below.
The classic game is played between two players. Each selects a color. We randomly select who will go first, and that player places their stone, traditionally in the center. Players alternate, looking for patterns that will let the player complete the five-stone structure necessary to win, or, to capture ten stones.
Because of this curious dynamic, which is different from Chess or Gomaku, play progresses at a good pace, but the shape of the board can be reshaped by captures. This makes the game less linear and less organic. When coupled with the slightly irregular glass stones, the effect is a fine blend of the rational and the emotional.
Central to this dynamic is the concept of initiative. As a concept, initiative is key to understanding how polarity and control work together and in opposition. Looking again at Clausewitz, we find one of the few theorists who really discusses these important and useful concepts.
For Clausewitz, the idea of polarity—war—rests on the collision of two entities, where “Polarity [lies]…in the object both seek to achieve: the decision.”1 War, as an act of politics, was the use of violence to bring the enemy to adhere to your wishes by force, but it was more than mere inanimate calculus, more than formula. Clausewitz wrote, “War, however, is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass…but always the collision of two living forces….”2
This idea of war as a collision of living forces was fundamental to his understanding of war as an elemental force, the clash of wills that resulted more in the unknown than in the known. This observation has profound implications. While we are surrounded by systems, by engineered environments, by technology, this humanist argument posits that beneath all of that are collisions of entities, of humans. While AI may change this calculus, the essence of war is not merely the measurement of force A versus B, but is rather than interaction of will-driven intelligences. Col. Boyd understood this, discussing it extensively in his later years, emphasizing the need not just to beat the opponent to the punch in terms of time (the simple OODA loop), but rather to discombobulate him, sowing doubt and mistrust.
Clausewitz’s comment describes the case where both intelligences seek control, but usually, neither have it: “Thus I am not in control: he dictates to me as much as I dictate to him.”3 This state describes the lack of control held when neither party holds the advantage of initiative. But what is initiative?
Clausewitz discusses the concept using the term uberfall, which Paret and Howard translate directly as initiative, “In strategy as well as in tactics, the defense enjoys the advantage of terrain, while the attack has the advantage of initiative.”4
Initiative is the ability to drive the action, forcing the opponent to move in a defensive way rather than to seize the initiative on his or her own. The opponent has little or no choice in the matter. It is a central tenet of the tempo-based approaches to war that Col. Boyd launched with his OODA-loop concept, and even today, Western militaries have this idea woven deeply into their cultural DNA, holding to the tenet that if one can seize and hold the initiative, one can win. There are issues with relying exclusively on initiative, as Clausewitz noted, but I’ll leave that for another time. So important is it, however, that I am continually surprised that it is not discussed as a Principle of War, at least from the Western perspective. It should be.
In Pente, we can see the initiative work with unusual clarity, and players can exercise their ability to blend offensive and defensive moves towards the goal of capturing the initiative.
For example, since the goal is to win by setting five stones in a row, three stones in a row represents a threat that must be addressed in some fashion.
In the perfect case, an “open” three created by the attacker forces the defender to act. If he or she does not, it becomes a four, which cannot be countered and the game is over.
Therefore, the player must either close the three, by placing a stone at one end, build a more advantageous structure of their own, or capture stones to demolish the three.
A closed three retains its threat, because with one more stone placed, either appended to the end of the three or, more deceptively, with leaving a space, the defending player must place the stone in the spot or suffer loss of the game.
Things get really interesting when you remember the capture. Because you can force a player to place their stone blocking your game-winning “five,” or “pente,” you can engineer, through planning and pattern-recognition, a case where when forced to block your five, they open themselves to a capture. Remember, one can win by capturing ten stones. Sometimes, these captures cascade into a landslide that racks up the captures.
A player caught in this circumstance has lost the freedom of maneuver, of action, and must simply respond to the attacker’s action, prompting reaction, rather than action. Getting out of this can be done, however, if not perfectly executed by the attacker, by setting up counters that provide threats of your own, either with the magical “three” structures, or through captures. Initiative can go back and forth. As I like to say, it is possible that neither player has the initiative; one or the other can have it; but both cannot hold it simultaneously.
This is because initiative is the ability to force the opponent into a reaction, stealing their ability to act according to their own wishes. Pente offers a very fun, very clear presentation on how the principle of initiative works.
In swordsmanship, initiative works similarly. One player strikes at the other, or moves provocatively, forcing the other to react. The other player must make cover, so they react. If they continue to react rather than driving the action, they will lose, no matter the strength of position in the defense. They must make an action to recover the initiative, seizing it from the opponent if they are to win.
Clausewitz noted this in his discussion of the defensive and the offensive. Famously, he stated boldly that the defensive is the stronger form of war. But he also noted that, one cannot win without attacking, without initiative. For Clausewitz, one used strong defensive positions to draw out the opponent, counter-striking at the right time to seize and then retain the initiative. Initiative wasn’t everything to Clausewitz, and it interacted with the principle of polarity and opposition to create a sense of uncertainty that Boyd argued extended to all conflict, in war, in business and in life.
The power to adapt to the opponent’s challenge, while simultaneously seeking to arrange the key building-blocks of life or business to one’s advantage was key to Boyd’s expression of his expanded OODA-loop. In life, I’ve found initiative equally valuable; if we drift along, reacting to life instead of making that clever, difficult, but all-too-important move to win back the initiative, I think we find ourselves reacting to others instead of writing our own life’s script.
Pente seems such a simple, easy game to learn—just as its easy in life to do just the minimum. But understanding the importance of initiative is a key insight, and Pente can help us perceive that importance, as well as exercising it while having a great deal of fun. In future columns I’ll write more about the concept of initiative, and about multi-player Pente, which adds a whole new dimension of complexity between the human and rational domains.
For now, go out and play Pente! Make a board with paper or cloth and sharpie lines, using pennies or dimes, get yourself one of by Winning Moves Games, or, express yourself with color. One thing that Pente does well, and partly why it might capture the imagination, is the expressiveness of the colors. Players might well invest more of their attention when they have a color they like, rather than just black or white—another aspect of the game that is penultimately Western. There are a few colors with nice bags available up on my Armouricum site noted above, or you can use anything you can imagine as a stone.
Carl von Clausewitz, vom Krieg, translated as On War by Peter Paret and Michael Howard, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, 83.
Clausewitz, 420.
Clausewitz, 77.
Clausewitz, 363.