Player’s guide

Reversi Strategy Guide

Reversi is the game where being ahead early is often a bad sign. Discs change color all game long, so the count in the middle of the game means little. What matters is which squares you hold and how many moves you leave yourself. This guide covers where the game came from, the ideas that turn it around, and how to get a game going here.

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01 · Reversi

A Victorian game with a modern name

Reversi was invented in England in the 1880s, and two inventors, Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett, each claimed it. It was popular in Victorian parlors and was sold under several names.

In 1971 a version called Othello was published in Japan, with a fixed starting position of four discs in the center. That is the start used here. Othello became an international competition game, and most published strategy comes from its players.

02 · Reversi

Corners first

A disc in a corner can never be flipped, because no line can bracket it. Corners also anchor the edges next to them: discs along an edge that connect to your corner become permanent too. Taking a corner is usually the biggest single gain in a game.

Avoid the X-squares, the squares diagonally next to an empty corner. Taking one often hands your opponent that corner.
Be careful with the C-squares, the edge squares right beside an empty corner, for the same reason.
Edges are good when they connect to a corner you own, and risky when they leave a gap your opponent can use.

03 · Reversi

Mobility: fewer discs, more moves

The strongest idea in Reversi is mobility, the number of legal moves you have. If you keep your options open and squeeze your opponent’s, they will eventually be forced to play somewhere bad, such as an X-square, and give you a corner.

That is why flipping many discs in the middle of the game is often a mistake. Every disc you add to the outside of the group, next to empty squares, gives your opponent something to bracket. Quiet moves that flip one or two inner discs are usually better.

Discs next to empty squares are called frontier discs. Try to keep your frontier small and your opponent’s large.

04 · Reversi

The endgame: count and take the last move

Near the end, the board breaks into small empty regions. With only a few squares left in a region, it helps to be the player who moves last there, because the last move cannot be answered. Players call this parity. Once there are only a dozen or so empty squares, count the discs each line of play would leave you with: that is the only time the disc count really matters.

05 · Reversi

Playing Reversi on LarkSpark

You can start a game on the Reversi page without an account. Play against one of eight bots, from Altair at level 1 to Orion at level 8. The lowest levels play at random, the middle levels go for the move that flips the most discs, and from level 5 up the bots value corners and edges much more highly, so they take a corner you hand them.

To play a person, pick an online match, or sign in and open a private room to send a friend a code. Games can be untimed or played with a clock. Legal moves are marked on the board, passes happen automatically when you have none, and your recent results are listed on the game’s stats page.

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