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The player with the larger number of options is said to have greater mobility. At any given moment both players have a certain amount of legal moves to choose from. This is where your mobility comes into play. Naturally, your goal should then be to make your opponent do just that! However, as long as your opponent has any other legal moves we have to assume he will play one of those instead. Experienced players will never play a move like that unless they have a well thought out plan.Īs mentioned before, playing squares adjacent to the corners can often be a bad thing. This is a fairly common mistake made by beginners. White will not be able to protect the corner with D8, since black then will flip the whole edge with the move at A8. White has played the C-Square at B8, effectively giving the A8 corner to black. The danger of playing the C-Squares is illustrated in figure 6. Had black just had a disc on G1, leaving no possible wedges for white, white would instead have lost the game 11-53. In this example white is about to do just that! If white plays G2 he is indeed giving away the H1 corner to black, but he is at the same time setting up a beautiful wedge for himself at G1! After white has played his wedge at G1, black is forced to pass 6(!) times while white plays all the remaining moves on the board: G1, A1, A8, H8, G7, B2 and finally B7 to win the game 57-7. Having these types of edges usually give your opponent the chance to wedge in when you eventually decide to take the unbalanced corner. In figure 5, row 1 is what is called an unbalanced edge.
![othello rules othello rules](https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wyprmain/files/styles/x_large/public/201802/ChesShakes.jpg)
Wedges and unbalanced edges are topics closely tied together. However, since white has left three empty squares, this will create wedge for black at A6 giving him access to both corners. If black was to play A4, threatening to take the corner, white's usual response would have been A5. After black has played D1, white can not stop black from also taking the corner! Looking at column 1, black also has the opportunity to create another wedge where white has left three empty squares. White has just played E1 and created a perfect wedge for black at D1. Placing a disc between two of your opponents discs is called wedging.Īs seen in figure 4 this can be devastating. The X-Squares are the from the corners diagonally adjacent squares (shown with black discs in figure 3) while the C-Squares are the adjacent edge squares (shown with white discs).Īs soon will become apparent, these squares should always be played with caution since there are numerous ways your opponent can take advantage of it (see "2_stable discs"). The squares next to the corners are so important in Othello there are specific names for them. So as rule of thumb, do not let you opponent get a corner unless you have a very good reason to! In figure 2 black has 22 stable discs and is clearly winning the game. If one manages to get a lot of stable discs in a game, a win isn't far away. These unflippable discs are usually referred to as stable discs. This also applies to any neighbouring discs of the same colour along the edge. The corners of the board for instance, can never be flipped. 'Enclosing' a disc isn't always possible. So this 'drastic' case shows you that in most cases it isn't good to be to greedy. In this classic example, black is left with all four of the remaining moves, ending the game in 40-24 in black's favour. What almost always will happen is the game will reach the end looking more or less like figure 1, the maximizing player having almost all of the discs until the last few moves of the game when it all changes. This, the most basic of all strategies, is seriously flawed and will not win you any games. Since the goal is to end up with more discs than your opponent, many beginners try to flip as many discs as they can every turn throughout the game.
![othello rules othello rules](https://i.etsystatic.com/6520455/r/il/8819c1/1768270419/il_1588xN.1768270419_1st0.jpg)
Meer info, applets and several other tips and tricks can be found on the site of Steve MacGuire. The next list covers some othello basics and misconceptions, which, once known, can improve your game. Fortunately, the way to achieve that goal is more complicated. The rules of Othello are fairly simple to grasp.