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Othello Rules
Reversi or Othello mode
The above diagram gives the initial position in Othello mode. In Reversi mode play starts on an empty board and
the players first take turns to fill up the 4 central squares. Disregarding rotations and reflections,
there are two possible outcomes to start the actual game from.
The rules from that point on are the same as in Othello mode.
- Black starts. Players must move on their turn, unless they cannot legally move. In that case the turn
goes back to the opponent. If neither can move legally, the game ends
- The players share 64 bi-colored stones - black one side, white the other
- A move must be a 'custodian capture': the stone played must trap at least
one opponent's stone or unbroken row of stones, between itself and an already present stone of like color.
It can do so in up to eight straight and diagonal directions simultaneously.
Captured stones are reversed immediately
Object
- The game ends by one player's resignation or if both must pass on successive turns.
The winner is now the player with the most territory, that is: the highest number of stones on the board
Strategy
The starting point of all reasoning is obviously the fact that there are four corners where a man
cannot be captured and becomes an anchor
to capture along the edges. The fact that corners are strong makes the adjacent cells weak,
so these should be avoided....
And so on: the basic reasoning is well known, and 'minimal capture' - capturing as little
as possible during the earlier stages, to reduce the opponent's options - also seems to
apply. The finer points of strategy are admittedly no less of a mystery to me than those of
its hexagonal version
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