Othello

How to Play Othello

In a nutshell: The standardised, tournament version of Reversi - fixed opening, pure skill. You play on an 8 × 8 board (64 squares), it's rated tournament standard, and it's a razor-thin margin at the top level - single discs decide titles.

Othello is the modern, standardised form of Reversi, the version played at the World Othello Championship every year. The rules are the same flank-and-flip capture, but Othello fixes the opening: the four central squares always start with two dark and two light discs in a diagonal cross, so every game begins from the identical, balanced position. That single change turns Othello into a game of deep, studied theory - openings have names, edge shapes are catalogued, and the strongest computer programs play far above any human. Underneath the theory, the appeal is the same wild swing that makes Reversi famous: the disc count can reverse in a single move, and the player quietly steering toward the corners usually wins, no matter how far behind they look.

Othello at a glance

Goal	End the game with more discs of your colour than your opponent. The board holds 64 discs; whoever owns more when play stops wins.
Board	8 × 8 - 64 squares
Players	1 player vs the computer, or 2 players online
Difficulty	Tournament standard
How it plays	A razor-thin margin at the top level - single discs decide titles
Computer levels	Easy, Medium, Hard
Category	Classic Reversi

Step by step

History of Othello

Othello was created in its modern form by Goro Hasegawa in Japan and released commercially in 1973. Hasegawa took the Victorian game of Reversi, fixed its opening into a set diagonal cross, standardised the rules, and gave it a memorable name - inspired, he said, by Shakespeare's play about a Moor, echoing the black-and-white discs.

The game was an immediate sensation in Japan and spread rapidly around the world through the 1970s and 1980s. The first World Othello Championship was held in 1977, cementing the fixed-opening version as the competitive standard and giving rise to a body of opening theory, edge analysis and endgame technique.

Othello also became a landmark in artificial intelligence. In 1997 the program Logistello defeated the reigning world champion Takeshi Murakami six games to nil, and modern engines now play far beyond human strength. In 2023 the 8x8 game was weakly solved and proven to be a draw with perfect play, yet Othello endures as one of the most elegant abstract strategy games ever standardised - unbeatably deep for humans even when the theoretical result is known.

How to Win Othello: Strategy

💡 Top tip: Corners are everything - an Othello disc in a corner is permanently stable, so most sound plans revolve around safely capturing corners and denying them to your opponent.

Winning tips, in order of importance

1. Prize mobility over material: keep your legal-move count high and squeeze your opponent's down until they are forced into a corner-giving square.
2. Stay small and central in the opening; a compact position gives your opponent fewer discs to flank and keeps your options open.
3. Never play an X-square (diagonally adjacent to a corner) unless the corner is already yours or dead - it is the most common way strong players lose.
4. Build stable edges only when they are anchored; an unanchored edge line can be undermined and flipped wholesale.
5. Think about disc parity in the final dozen moves - arranging to make the last move in each empty pocket often swings the count decisively.
6. Resist grabbing a big pile of discs mid-game; the flashy move usually loosens your position and hands the initiative back.

Advanced tactics for Othello

1. Memorise the danger squares around each corner - the X-square and the two C-squares - and treat any move onto them as a last resort until that corner is resolved.
2. Evaluate positions by stable-disc count, not total discs: a piece is only truly yours once it can never be flipped, which starts from corners and grows along anchored edges.
3. Aim to reach positions where your opponent has only bad moves. A single well-timed quiet move that removes their options is worth more than any flip.
4. Learn common edge configurations; knowing which edge shapes are safe and which can be split lets you take edges without exposing a corner.
5. Track parity late: count the empty squares in each region and manoeuvre so you make the final move where it flips the most.
6. Sacrifice discs on purpose in the middlegame to preserve mobility, then cash that freedom into corners in the last fifteen moves.
7. When two moves both look fine, prefer the one that keeps your position compact and your opponent's frontier discs exposed to future flanks.

Common Othello mistakes to avoid

• Building loosely along an edge without an anchor - an unanchored edge can be split and flipped wholesale, so only extend edges you can hold.
• Chasing disc count in the middlegame - top players hold few discs on purpose to keep mobility and flip a majority near the end.
• Moving onto a C-square or X-square before the corner is resolved - it is the single most common way a promising Othello game is lost.
• Forgetting endgame parity - failing to count who makes the last move in each region gives away the tight margins that decide Othello.

Othello Variations

Reversi (free opening)

The older classic that lets players choose where the first four centre discs go, producing far more varied starting shapes than Othello's fixed cross.

Anti-Othello

The misere version where the player with the fewest discs at the end wins - the same board, every instinct inverted.

Different board sizes

6x6 and 10x10 Othello change the theory entirely; 6x6 is a solved second-player win, while 10x10 adds extra corners and edges.

Rolit

A four-player, four-colour cousin using the same capture rule, designed as a lively party game rather than a two-player duel.

Blitz and correspondence

Othello is played at fast time controls in club blitz and at slow, deeply calculated speeds by correspondence and email, each rewarding different skills.

Othello FAQ

Othello guides & strategy

• What is Othello and how is it played?
• Why corners decide almost every game
• Browse the full Reversi FAQ

Still have a question about Othello? Browse the full Reversi FAQ, look up a term like flank or mobility in the Reversi glossary, or compare Othello with the other variants in the rules for every Reversi game.

Last updated 2026-07-03.