Reversi (Othello)

💡 Reversi (Othello) Strategy

• Take corners whenever you can. A corner disc can never be flipped, and it anchors the two edges running from it.
• Avoid the squares next to corners. Playing the diagonal neighbour of an empty corner hands that corner to your opponent almost every time.
• Having fewer discs mid-game is good. Only the final count matters, and a small, compact position leaves your opponent with fewer legal moves.
• Limit their options, not your total. Forcing an opponent into a position with one legal move is how strong players win.
• Expect the last ten moves to swing wildly. A single corner can flip twenty discs, so a losing position is rarely actually lost.

🧠 What Reversi Builds

Reversi is famously easy to learn and genuinely hard to play well, largely because the most natural instinct — grabbing the most discs — is actively wrong for most of the game. Learning to value mobility over material is a real conceptual shift, and it is the reason the game has a competitive scene at all. The endgame swings make it one of the most dramatic board games here.