Reversi

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Reversi/Othello
Screen dump of WZebra 4.1, a Reversi program by Gunnar Andersson and Lars Ivansson
Players	2
Age range	Recommended for 8 years or older
Setup time	None
Playing time	10-60 minutes
Random chance	None
Skills required	Strategy, Observation

Reversi and Othello are names for a strategic boardgame which involves play by two parties on an eight-by-eight square grid with pieces that have two distinct sides. Pieces typically appear coin-like, with a light and a dark face.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Play 3 Strategy 3.1 Corners 3.2 Mobility 3.3 Edges 3.4 Parity 3.5 Look-ahead 3.6 Endgame 4 Computer opponents 5 Console game releases 6 Trivia 7 World Othello Championship 8 Literature 9 External links 9.1 Origins 9.2 Computer programs 9.3 National organizations

[edit] Origins

The game derives from two different sources.

Reversi was originally invented around 1880 by two Englishmen, Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett, and gained considerable popularity in England at the end of the 19th century. In 1898, the well-known German games publisher Ravensburger started producing the game as one of its first titles.

The modern rule set, now universally accepted (except by those who know only the still-produced Ravensburger edition), originated in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan as Othello in the 1970s.

Mattel produces Reversi equipment under the name Othello. Anjar Co licenses the registered trademark Othello from Tsukuda Original.

Goro Hasegawa, who wrote How to win at Othello, popularised the game in Japan in 1975.

It took its name from the Shakespearean play Othello, the Moor of Venice, referencing the conflict between the Moor Othello and Iago, who describes himself as "two faced".

[edit] Play

Each of the two sides corresponds to one player; they are referred to here as light and dark after the sides of Othello pieces, but "heads" and "tails" would identify them equally as well, so long as each marker has sufficiently distinctive sides.

Originally, Reversi did not have a defined starting position. Later it adopted Othello's rules, which state that the game begins with four markers placed in a square in the middle of the grid, two facing light-up, two pieces with the dark side up. The dark player makes the first move.

Dark must place a piece with the dark side up on the board, in such a position that there exists at least one straight (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) line between the new piece and another dark piece, with one or more contiguous light pieces between them. In the below situation, dark has the following options indicated by "ghost" pieces:

After placing the piece, dark turns over (flips, captures) all light pieces lying on a straight line between the new piece and any anchoring dark pieces. All reversed pieces now show the dark side, and dark can use them in later moves -- unless light has reversed them back in the meantime.

If dark decided to put a piece in the topmost location (all choices are strategically equivalent at this time), one piece gets turned over, so that the board appears thus:

Now light plays. This player operates under the same rules, with the roles reversed: light lays down a light piece, causing one or more dark pieces to flip. Possibilities at this time appear thus (indicated by "ghosts"):

Light takes the bottom left option and reverses one piece:

Players take alternate turns. If one player cannot make a valid move, play passes back to the other player. When neither player can move, the game ends. This occurs when the grid has filled up, or when one player has no more pieces on the board, or when neither player can legally place a piece in any of the remaining squares. The player with more pieces on the board at the end wins.

[edit] Strategy

A beginner often looks for the move that will reverse the greatest possible number of pieces, trying for immediate numerical advantage. But this strategy is too shortsighted to work. In practice, the game pieces change color many times in the course of a game, so early numerical advantage is rarely an advantage, and is often a disadvantage because it reduces "mobility" for the majority player.

While it is possible to achieve complete dominance early and capture all the tiles, it is extremely unlikely. Instead of numerical advantage, the key elements of successful Othello strategy are corners, mobility, edge play, parity, endgame play, and looking ahead.

[edit] Corners

Corner positions, once played, remain immune to flipping for the rest of the game (because there is no other opposite color behind them to create a flip): thus a player can use a piece in a corner of the board to anchor groups of pieces (starting with the adjacent edges) permanently. So capturing a corner often proves an effective strategy when the opportunity arises. More generally, a piece is stable when, along all four axes (horizontal, vertical, and each diagonal), it is on a boundary, in a filled row, or next to a stable piece of the same color. Grabbing a corner too soon can be a mistake, however, if it leaves "holes" in the edge that the opponent can make use of.

[edit] Mobility

An opponent playing with reasonable strategy will not so easily relinquish the corner or any other good moves. So to achieve these good moves, you must force your opponent to play moves which relinquish those good moves. The best way to achieve this involves reducing the number of moves available to your opponent. If you consistently restrict the number of legal moves your opponent can make, then sooner or later they will have to make an undesirable move. An ideal position involves having all your pieces in the center surrounded by your opponent's pieces. In such situations you can dictate what moves your opponent can make.

When moves seem equal with respect to what moves you will leave yourself and your opponent, playing a minimum piece strategy will tend to give you an advantage, because minimizing your discs will tend to leave fewer discs for your opponent to flip in subsequent moves of the game. One should not play the minimum disc strategy to an extreme, however, as this also can quickly lead to a lack of mobility.

[edit] Edges

While playing pieces to edges of the board may seem sound (because they cannot be flipped easily), this strategy can often prove detrimental. Edge pieces can anchor flips that influence moves to all regions of the board. This can poison later moves by causing players to flip too many pieces and open up many moves for the opponent. However, playing on edges where an opponent cannot easily respond drastically reduces possible moves for that opponent.

The square immediately diagonally adjacent to the corner (called the X-square), when played in the early or middle game, typically guarantees the loss of that corner. Nevertheless, such a corner sacrifice is sometimes played for some strategic purpose (like retaining mobility). Playing to the edge squares adjacent to the corner (called the C-squares) can also be dangerous if it gives the opponent powerful forcing moves.

In general, edge play in the early and middle game is to be avoided, unless players can gain larger concessions in terms of mobility or a mass of unflippable pieces.

A good rule of thumb is to keep pieces grouped together in the middle of the board and minimize tangents formed by a player's own pieces. This strategy leads to the greatest mobility.

[edit] Parity

As play progresses, regions of the board will typically section themselves off where neither side can prevent the other from playing arbitrarily into those regions. By simply counting out the number of squares in a region, one can ascertain whether an odd or an even number of squares exist. In the case of an odd number of squares, by playing there first you can force your opponent to play first outside of that region. You achieve this by simply playing into that region at any time it has an odd number of squares available, and by not playing into it when it features an even number of squares. If you take into consideration certain squares in a region that seem very dangerous (like an X-square or an edge square that leads to an obvious trap) then you can either force your opponent to play elsewhere or to occupy one of these dangerous squares.

The term parity is also used for the last move in the game. While black plays the first move white will play the last move of the game if there is no pass during the game, which is the usual outcome if no one has great advantage early in the game. The last move flips a number of discs that can't be re-flipped and therefore increases the player's final number of discs. To prevent this, black should try to make an odd number of passes in the game occur, to get the last move instead. This is called "to win parity".

[edit] Look-ahead

As in any good strategy for chess or for checkers, a player should not consider only the current situation on the board. For each move you consider, you must consider possible responses from your opponent, then the subsequent responses you will make to those moves and so on. The aspects of the current position may not remain relevant a few moves hence. So when optimizing your mobility, gaining corners or anything else, you should consider how best to do this for the long term rather than just for the next move.

[edit] Endgame

For the endgame (the last 20 or so moves of the game) the strategies will typically change. Special techniques such as sweeping, gaining access, and the details of move-order can have a large impact on the outcome of the game. At these late stages of the game no hard-set rules exist. The experienced player will try to look ahead and get a feel for what will lead to the best final outcome.

[edit] Computer opponents

The best Othello computer programs can easily defeat the best humans. As early as 1980, the program The Moor beat the reigning world champion. In 1997, Logistello defeated the human champion Takeshi Murakami in a score of 6:0. This dominance is unparalleled in other games; in chess, the best computers are about equal to the best humans. In Go, even average human players can trounce the best computers.

Human beings cannot generally win against computer intelligence in Othello because computers can look ahead much further than humans can. Analysts have estimated the number of legal positions in Othello is at most 10²⁸, and it has a game-tree complexity of approximately 10⁵⁸. ^{[citation needed]}

Mathematically, Othello still remains unsolved. Experts have not yet figured out what the outcome of a game will be where both sides have perfect play. However, analysis of thousands of high-quality games (most of them computer-generated) has led to the conclusion that, on the standard 8-by-8 board, perfect play on both sides results in a draw. ^{[citation needed]} When generalizing the game to play on an n-by-n board, the problem of determining if the first player has a winning move in a given position is PSPACE-complete. On 4-by-4 and 6-by-6 boards under perfect play, the second player wins.

[edit] Console game releases

• The first publicly sold version of Othello was for the Atari 2600 in 1980, which was developed and released by Atari, Inc..
• Other console versions included one for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988, developed and released by Acclaim Entertainment.
• Despite owning the license to Othello, Mattel released Reversi, rather than Othello, for the Intellivision in 1981, due to Atari owning the electronic game rights to the brand.
• This game was included in Clubhouse Games under the title of Turncoat.

[edit] Trivia

• Since at least 1977, an annual World Othello Championship has taken place. Each country can send a maximum of three players. As of 2005, each country can send an additional female player.
• The Mattel version of the game advertises it as "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master."

[edit] World Othello Championship

Year	Location	World Champion	Country	Team	Runner-Up	Country
1977	Tokyo	Hiroshi Inoue	Japan	N/A	Thomas Heiberg	Norway
1977*	Monte Carlo	Sylvain Perez	France	N/A	Michel Rengot (Blanchard)	France
1978	New York	Hideshi Maruoka	Japan	N/A	Carol Jacobs	USA
1979	Rome	Hiroshi Inoue	Japan	N/A	Jonathan Cerf	USA
1980	London	Jonathan Cerf	USA	N/A	Takuya Mimura	Japan
1981	Brussels	Hideshi Maruoka	Japan	N/A	Brian Rose	USA
1982	Stockholm	Kunihiko Tanida	Japan	N/A	David Shaman	USA
1983	Paris	Ken'Ichi Ishii	Japan	N/A	Imre Leader	Britain
1984	Melbourne	Paul Ralle	France	N/A	Ryoichi Taniguchi	Japan
1985	Athens	Masaki Takizawa	Japan	N/A	Paolo Ghirardato	Italy
1986	Tokyo	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	N/A	Paul Ralle	France
1987	Milan	Ken'Ichi Ishii	Japan	USA	Paul Ralle	France
1988	Paris	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	Britain	Graham Brightwell	Britain
1989	Warsaw	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	Britain	Graham Brightwell	Britain
1990	Stockholm	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	France	Didier Piau	France
1991	New York	Shigeru Kaneda	Japan	USA	Paul Ralle	France
1992	Barcelona	Marc Tastet	France	Britain	David Shaman	Britain
1993	London	David Shaman	USA	USA	Emmanuel Caspard	France
1994	Paris	Masaki Takizawa	Japan	France	Karsten Feldborg	Denmark
1995	Melbourne	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	USA	David Shaman	USA
1996	Tokyo	Takeshi Murakami	Japan	Britain	Stephane Nicolet	France
1997	Athens	Makoto Suekuni	Japan	Britain	Graham Brightwell	Britain
1998	Barcelona	Takeshi Murakami	Japan	France	Emmanuel Caspard	France
1999	Milan	David Shaman	Netherlands	Japan	Tetsuya Nakajima	Japan
2000	Copenhagen	Takeshi Murakami	Japan	USA	Brian Rose	USA
2001	New York	Brian Rose	USA	USA	Raphael Schreiber	USA
2002	Amsterdam	David Shaman	Netherlands	USA	Ben Seeley	USA
2003	Stockholm	Ben Seeley	USA	Japan	Makoto Suekuni	Japan
2004	London	Ben Seeley	USA	USA	Makoto Suekuni	Japan
2005	Reykjavík	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	Japan	Kwangwook Lee	South Korea
2006	Mito	Hideshi Tamenori	Japan	Japan	Makoto Suekuni	Singapore

*This rivalling Monte Carlo world championship is usually not considered to be an official world championship

[edit] Literature

• Othello: Brief and Basic, An introduction to strategy and tactics for the game of Othello, Ted Landau, 1987
• Othello: A Minute to Learn - A Lifetime to Master, Brian Rose, 2005

[edit] External links

• The Othello Wiki Book Project
• Othello World
• Othello Blog
• Othello Gateway

[edit] Origins

• A History of Othello
• Manual by Ravensburger (In german)
• Pictures of the 19th century reversi boards

[edit] Computer programs

• WZebra One of the strongest freeware Othello programs; also contains general information and advice for creating Othello computer opponents.
• Happy End A solitaire/puzzle game to play Othello endgames from a selection of thousands of real matches played by world-level champions
• Othbase Othello Games Database Manager
• Moby Games - Atari 2600 version
• Moby Games - NES version

[edit] National organizations

• Australian Othello Federation
• British Othello Federation
• Czech Othello Federation
• Danish Othello Federation
• French Othello Federation
• German Othello Club
• Hong Kong Othello Association
• Italian Othello Federation
• Japan Othello Association
• Malaysia Othello Association
• Norwegian Othello Federation
• Polish Othello Federation
• Swedish Othello Federation
• U.S. Othello Association