[pbmserv] Five in a row.... with a twist

[juman <juman@chello.se>]

A Swedish publisher is just launching a new game called Pentago
(http://www.pentago.se/) the page is still only in Swedish. The game is
a simple five in a row but with a little diffrent concept as the board
moves...

The board is made of 4 pieces with 3x3 holes in each looking something
like this :

+---------+ +---------+
| O  O  O | | O  O  O |
| O  O  O | | O  O  O |
| O  O  O | | O  O  O |
+---------+ +---------+
+---------+ +---------+
| O  O  O | | O  O  O |
| O  O  O | | O  O  O |
| O  O  O | | O  O  O |
+---------+ +---------+

The game is then played by placing a piece of your color and twisting a
block 90 degrees. If you look at the animation of the homepage it might
be more clear then my ascii graphics here :-).

Now to why I am actually writing all this is to see if anybody can see
if this game have the same disadvantage as a standard game of five in a
row? In five in a row the first player has quite an advantage compared
to the second player. It is evem proven that with a perfect game the
first player can always win but what do you think about this version?

/juman