Tips and Tricks

• If you’re serious about mastering Reversi, Emmanuel Lazard wrote an online book detailing many of the possible strategies and when you should use them. (The toy company Pressman sells Reversi under the brand name Othello.) You may also want to read Reversi — An Animated Guide, which discusses the possible opening moves and how to develop a long-term strategy by choosing one and formulating a plan of attack.
• You can find more links at Wikipedia’s Reversi page.
• If you have a fourth generation iPod nano, you can play the game in landscape mode by turning the device on its side. Note that the clickwheel functions change too, so, for example, Fast Forward becomes Menu.

Over a Century in the Making

Like many games, Reversi’s history is one rife with competing ideas and parallel development. In 1888, Englishman Lewis Waterman invented Reversi, although fellow countryman James Mollett claimed it was similar to his effort, The Game of Annexation, which he first published in 1870. Waterman’s game proved to be the more popular of the two, although in 1971 Goro Hasegawa of Japan made some minor modifications, such as starting a match with a block of two white and two black pieces.

Hasegawa called his version Othello, after Shakespeare’s play. The game became increasingly popular during the 1970s and 1980s, although the name Othello was trademarked, forcing anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for the rights to call their version Reversi. For example, Atari licensed the name Othello to publish a game for its Atari 2600 console, but Mattel went with the generic Reversi for its version on the competing Intellivision. Many videogame versions under both names have been published during the nearly three decades since then.

The first Reversi world championship was played in 1977 in Tokyo and has taken place every year since. The World Othello Federation has more information, including current rankings for the top players worldwide.