Othello

Othello is a strategy game played on an eight by eight square grid - a chess or draughts board can be used. The rules are very simple, and the game deceptively so.

The object is to capture as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. Play simply consists of each player in turn adding a piece to the board, until the board is full. Each player starts with two pieces and tries to capture those belonging to the other by 'surrounding' them. This is done by placing an extra piece at the end of a row so that the opponent is flanked by your pieces. All the opposing pieces between your pieces are then replaced by yours.

The score is simply the number of pieces that belong to each player that are on the board at any one time. The winner is the player who has the greatest number of pieces when the board becomes full.

On this computer version, you play against the machine, which also displays the board and keeps track of the score.

Hints And Tips

Like any other strategy game, there are various tricks you can use to help you along. If you have never played Othello before you may find the following hints useful.

The corner pieces are extremely valuable as they cannot be retaken once they are captured - the reason for this is that they cannot be surrounded like any other positions on the board. As a result, they can prove vital to success, and it is well worth capturing the corners even if an alternative move may yield a greater score. Any edge pieces which are touching the corner pieces are also untakeable.

Since a piece can link with more than one line - up and down and diagonally - the most obvious move may not be the best, as in the later stages of the game you can often link two or three lines by adding just one piece.

Think ahead. It may be possible to manoeuvre your opponent into creating opportunities for you to capture vital positions by making a seemingly bad move.

Playing The Game

When you RUN the program you will be asked if you want to go first. When you move you will have to input two coordinates. These make up your position and are in the range one to eight - the row and column numbers are displayed along the top and down one side of the board. The coordinates are entered with the row position first, followed by the column.

The program doesn't recognize a stalemate, nor will it be able to judge if you are bored, so entering 0 as a coordinate will end the game.

Originally published in Input #31, page 980