Reversi is an abstract strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. It was invented in 1883. Othello, a variant with a fixed initial setup of the board, was patented in 1971. Two players compete, using 64 identical game pieces ("disks") that are light on one side and dark on the other. Each player chooses one color to use throughout the game. Players take turns placing one disk on an empty square, with their assigned color facing up. After a play is made, any disks of the opponent's color that lie in a straight line bounded by the one just played and another one in the current player's color are turned over. When all playable empty squares are filled, the player with more disks showing in their own color wins the game.
History
Original version Englishmen Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett both claim to have invented the game of reversi in 1883, each denouncing the other as a fraud. The game gained considerable popularity in England at the end of the 19th century. The game's first reliable mention is in the 21 August 1886 edition of The Saturday Review. Later mention includes an 1895 article in The New York Times, which describes reversi as "something like Go Bang, [...] played with 64 pieces." In 1893, the German games publisher Ravensburger started producing the game as one of its first titles. Two 18th-century continental European books dealing with a game that may or may not be reversi are mentioned on page fourteen of the Spring 1989 Othello Quarterly, and there has been speculation, so far without documentation, that the game has older origins. A Japanese publication in 1907 titled World Games Rules Complete Collection (世界遊戯法大全) describes the board game reversi with the same rules as Othello where the first four pieces go in the center in a diagonal pattern and the player who cannot make a move simply passes.
Othello
The modern version of the game—the most regularly used rule-set, and the one used in international tournaments—is marketed and recognized as Othello (オセロ, osero). It was patented in Japan in 1971 by Goro Hasegawa (legal name: Satoshi Hasegawa), then a 38-year-old salesman. Hasegawa initially explained that Othello was an improvement on reversi, but from around 2000, he began to claim that he invented it in Mito regardless of reversi. Hasegawa also claimed that the origin of reversi/Othello dates back 5,000 years. Hasegawa established the Japan Othello Association in March 1973, and held the first national Othello championship on 4 April 1973 in Japan. The Japanese game company Tsukuda Original launched Othello in late April 1973 in Japan under Hasegawa's license, which led to an immediate commercial success. The name was selected by Hasegawa as a reference to the Shakespearean play Othello, the Moor of Venice, referring to the conflict between the Moor Othello and Iago, and to the unfolding drama between Othello, who is black, and Desdemona, who is white. The green color of the board is inspired by the image of the general Othello valiantly leading his battle in a green field. It can also be likened to a jealousy competition (jealousy being the central theme in Shakespeare's play, which popularized the term "green-eyed monster"), since players engulf the pieces of the opponent, thereby turning them to their possession. Othello was first launched in the U.S. in 1975 by Gabriel Industries and it also enjoyed commercial success there. Sales have reportedly exceeded $600 million. More than 40 million classic games have been sold in over 100 countries. Hasegawa's How to play Othello (Osero No Uchikata) in Japan in 1974, was published in 1977 in an English translation entitled How to Win at Othello. Kabushiki Kaisha Othello, which was owned by Hasegawa, registered the trademark "OTHELLO" for board games in Japan; Tsukuda Original registered the trademark in the rest of the world. All intellectual property regarding Othello outside Japan is now owned by MegaHouse, the Japanese toy company that acquired Tsukuda Original's successor PalBox.
Rules Each of the disks' two sides corresponds to one player; they are referred to here as light and dark after the sides of Othello pieces, but any counters with distinctive faces are suitable. The game may for example be played with a chessboard and Scrabble pieces, with one player letters and the other backs. The historical version of reversi starts with an empty board, and the first two moves made by each player are in the four central squares of the board. The players place their disks alternately with their colors facing up and no captures are made. A player may choose to not play both pieces on the same diagonal, different from the standard Othello opening. It is also possible to play variants of Reversi and Othello where the second player's second move may or must flip one of the opposite-colored disks (as variants closest to the normal games). For the specific game of Othello, the game begins with four disks placed in a square in the middle of the grid, two facing light-side-up, two dark-side-up, so that the same-colored disks are on a diagonal. Convention has this such that the dark-side-up disks are to the north-east and south-west (from both players' perspectives), though this is only marginally consequential: where sequential openings' memorization is preferred, such players benefit from this. The dark player moves first.
Dark must place a piece (dark-side-up) on the board and so that there exists 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. For move one, dark has four options shown by translucently drawn pieces below:
Play always alternates unless one player has no legal move, in which case they pass. After placing a dark disk, dark turns over (flips to dark, captures) the single disk (or chain of light disks) on the line between the new piece and an anchoring dark piece. Multiple chains of disks may be captured in a single move. No player can look back to the previous status of disks when playing moves. A valid move is one where at least one piece is reversed (flipped over). If dark decided to put a piece in the topmost location (all choices are strategically equivalent at this time), one piece gets turned over, so that the board appears thus:
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