Othello Game Rules and World Othello Championship:

Othello Game Rules and World Othello Championship:

Othello Game

Othello also known as Reversi, is a classic strategy game.  It is played by two players on a 8 x 8 board.   The pieces that a player plays with are disks with a light and a dark face. Each side belongs to one player. The objective of this game is to finish the game with the greater amount of pieces (circles) of the same color.

Rules :

Each of the two sides of the disk 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.

The game starts with four markers placed in a square in the centre of the grid, two facing light-up, two pieces with the dark side up. The dark player goes first.

Dark Disks must be placed is such a way that there forms at least one straight (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) occupied line between the new piece and another dark piece, with one or more contiguous light pieces between them.”

After placing the piece, dark player 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 player can use them in later moves — unless light player has reversed them back in the meantime.

Players take alternate turns. If one player cannot make a suitable move, the other player gets the turn to play  The game comes to an end when neither player can make a move. This occurs when the board 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 the maximum pieces on the board at the end of the game wins.

World Othello Championship (courtesy: wikipedia) –

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	Hidenori 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	Hidenori 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	Stéphane 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
2007	Athens	Kenta Tominaga	Japan	Japan	Stéphane Nicolet	France
2008	Oslo	Michele Borassi	Italy	Japan	Tamaki Miyaoka	Japan

*This rivalling Monte Carlo world championship is usually not considered to be an official world championship. In official homepages it is called the first Europe Championship.

Othello computer games are also very exciting. Even if you do not have company to play with; the online version would surely give you the same or even more competition than that of a human being. So go on try out, if you are looking out for some competitive and thrilling experience of playing online. I’m sure you would enjoy online Othello without a shred of regret…