The board game Othello was invented in the nineteenth century, it is believed by John W. Mollett or Lewis Waterman, with the name Reversi. The game was renamed "Othello" in the 1970s by Goro Hasegawa and sold by the Japanese game company Tsukuda Original. Described as a game that takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to perfect, it is for 2 players and requires strategy to outflank your opponent and capture and rotate his pieces. The following steps describe the rules of the game, as well as some notions of strategy.
Steps
Step 1. Assign colors to players
Othello is played on an 8x8 board with 64 discs, black on one side and white on the other. One player plays with the discs on the black side, the other with the discs on the white side. In some versions of Othello, the player with the black discs begins; in others, that player chooses who goes first.
Step 2. Place 4 discs in the center of the board, 2 with the black side up and 2 with the white side up
Arrange them so that the two black discs form one diagonal and the white ones form the other.
In the original Reversi game, players did not have to arrange the first 4 discs this way
Step 3. Let's assume that the Black player starts
Black places a disc so that 1 of its starting discs is next to a white disc (i.e. a white disc is between two blacks).
Step 4. Black flips the side-by-side white disc which becomes black and is one of his tokens
Step 5. White places a disk to flank 1 or more disks that belong to Nero
These flanked discs will be flipped and will become White's.
Step 6. Repeat the previous steps until you can no longer make legal moves
A player must always place a disc on the board so that it flanks at least one disc of the other color. If a player cannot make a legal move, he must pass the turn.
It is possible to flank an opponent's discs in more than one direction. All flanked discs are flipped at the end of the turn and become the property of the player who captured them
Step 7. Count the number of discs of each color
The player with the most discs is the winner.
Advice
- The most important squares to check, after the corners and adjacent spaces, are the edges of the board. The innermost lines on the other hand are more dangerous, because your opponent will always have the possibility to capture your pieces.
- To figure out which discs to flip, keep your finger on the newly placed disc as you trace the path to the disc of your color that flanks your opponent's checkers. You can flip discs in 8 directions at the same time.
- Illegal moves (i.e. if you flank any opponent's checker) can be corrected before the opponent makes his move.
- Try to capture the corners. Discs in the corners cannot be turned over. If you can't grab a corner, reduce its effectiveness by capturing adjacent squares.
- Othello's capture strategy is similar to that of the Go and Pente board games; in Othello however the captured discs are turned upside down and not removed from the board.
