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### Become a Stronger Player

Pentobi has functionality that can help you to become a stronger Blokus player.

### Game Analysis

A game can be analysed by selecting Analyse Game from the Tools menu. This will make the computer player evaluate each position in the main variation. The result is displayed in a window with a diagram of coloured dots.

A game analysis of a game of variant Classic (2 players).

Each dot represents a game position in which the colour of the dot is to play. The dots are ordered horizontally by move number. The vertical axis represents the estimated probability of winning the game for the colour to play. Mouse clicks in the diagram will go to the corresponding position.

The position values are only estimates and the computer will sometimes evaluate positions incorrectly. But sudden drops in the value can help you to find moves that were potentially bad. You can go back to the position before the move and try to find a better move or ask the computer what it would have played by selecting Play Single Move from the Computer menu.

### Determine Your Rating

You can track your progress by playing rated games against the computer. The game results are used to determine your current rating. The rating is a number that represents your playing strength.

A rated game is started with New Rated Game from the Game menu. If you have not played any rated games in the current game variant, you will be asked to choose a start value, which can reduce the number of games needed for determining your real rating. If you are a beginner, leave the start value at 1000.

For each rated game, the computer will choose a playing level of the computer opponent according to your current rating. The colour you play will be randomly chosen in each game. To get an accurate rating, you should always play rated games until the end and not change the computer level or the colours played by the computer during the game. After the game has ended, your rating will be updated depending on the game result and the computer level you played against. For the game result, it only matters if the game was won, lost or a tie. The exact number of score points does not matter.

Window with the rating graph.

You can always see your current rating by selecting Your Rating from the Tools menu. This will open a window that shows the development of your rating during the last 100 games as a graph. The last 100 games are automatically saved and can be loaded by double-clicking on the rows in the game table below the graph.

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