![]() The next four chapters, on openings, edge play, endgames, and defense, cover the rest of what I consider to be the fundamentals of Othello strategy.Othello, also known as Reversi, is a fun 2-player board game where players try to trap and collect more pieces than their opponent. Armed with this information you should soon see a dramatic improvement in your play! However, as was the case with the basic strategies mentioned in Chapter 2, once you start meeting opponents who are also aware of the “secret”, then you will have to dig a bit deeper in order to win. If the ideas in this chapter were new to you, then I welcome you to the relatively small percentage of players who understand the main “secret” of Othello strategy. Black does have one quiet move left in Diagram 3-10, namely c7, but the loud move to d7 has turned a complete rout into a close game. If Black tries a6 or g6 in Diagram 3-10, the black disc on d6 means that Black would have to flip some of White’s frontier discs on row 6. This sets up another quiet move for White at g5. If Black plays move 29 g4, it flips f5 and e6 because of the black disc on d7. Note how the extra black discs at d6 and d7 are poison discs, ruining many of Black’s potentially quiet moves. White gratefully plays move 28 c5 himself, a quiet move made available by Black’s loud move, and now it is Black’s turn to move again. This move may not seem that loud, because it is flipping discs in the middle of the board, but if you look at the result carefully, you will see that it creates five new frontier discs (d2, d4, d5, d6, and d7). However, suppose that Black instead plays d7, as shown in Diagram 3-9. Although this is certainly a quiet move, it is not quite as good as the previous two examples, as it opens up some new safe options for White at d7 and f7.įor example, in Diagram 3-6 Black has a wonderfully quiet move at c5. Since h2 would be a terrible move for Black, again the effect is nearly the same as White passing, and Black will have to use up one of his other remaining options. This move gives Black only one new option, namely h2. In Diagram 3-7, White can make a quiet move to g3. The result is very similar to Black passing, and now White must use up his last remaining safe move (flipping the black disc on g3). It creates no new frontier discs, and no new options for White. In general, this means that quiet moves, which avoid creating a lot of frontier discs, are better than loud moves.įor example, in Diagram 3-6, c5 would be an ideal move. However, it does stand to reason that in situations where passing would be ideal, we should be looking for moves which are as much like passing as possible. Of course, the rules of the game do not allow you to pass your turn whenever you want, and there are some circumstances under which you certainly would not want to pass, such as near the end of the game when you are trying to build as many stable discs as possible. The idea that giving up your turn could be a good thing is so alien that many people never discover it, even after playing Othello for years. In other words, WZebra’s estimate is that if both sides play correctly from this point, White will win by roughly 2 discs (33-31). ![]() According to WZebra, set to look 20 moves ahead, White’s best move is e2, and the position is worth +1.73 for white. Starting from this position, I used the Othello playing program WZebra (more information on this program appears in the Resources pages of this website) to evaluate the position. Diagram 3-4 shows an opening commonly used in expert play, leading to the position in at move 17. Building walls and running out of moves usually go hand-in-hand.Īnother example should provide further insight into basic Othello strategy. Meanwhile, the same wall gives your opponent a wide range of choices. Building a long wall leaves you with nothing to flip, cutting off your access to the squares on the other side of the wall. Remember that you must flip at least one of your opponent’s pieces in order to move. By contrast, Black’s options increase from seven prior to move 32 to seventeen after.
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