Play the Reversi board game online

How to play Reversi in four steps

The whole game fits in four rules. Nothing else is hiding behind them, which is why children pick Reversi up in a minute and adults are still losing to it thirty years later.

1. Start from the four centre discs. White sits on d4 and e5, black sits on d5 and e4, so the two colours are diagonally opposite. Black moves first.
2. Place a disc that traps a line. Put your disc on an empty square so that one or more of your opponent's discs sit in an unbroken line between your new disc and another disc of yours. The line can run across, down or diagonally.
3. Flip everything you trapped. Every opposing disc in that line turns to your colour. A single move can flip in several directions at once.
4. Pass only when you have to. If no square would flip anything, you pass and your opponent goes again. When neither player can move, the game is over and you count the discs.

A move is legal only if it flips at least one disc. That single condition is what makes the game hard. You cannot just play where you want, you have to play where the board lets you, and a large part of good play is making sure your opponent runs out of places to go.

Reversi or Othello: which name is right?

Both, depending on what you mean. Reversi was published in England in the 1880s and is in the public domain. In 1971 Goro Hasegawa published a tidied-up version in Japan under the name Othello, and that version is what almost everyone plays today.

The differences are small but real. Othello fixes the opening position, so every game starts with the same four discs in the centre. Original Reversi let each player drop their first two discs anywhere in the middle four squares, which produced a handful of odd starts nobody uses now. An Othello set holds 64 discs, usually described as 32 each, and if you run out you borrow from your opponent rather than stopping. Reversi simply used whatever discs were in the box.

Everything on this site uses the modern rules. Othello is a live trademark, so a free site cannot call the game by that name in its own title, which is why you will see "Reversi" almost everywhere and why so many people search for one word and find the other. The Reversi vs Othello page lays out the history and the rule differences properly.

Reading the board: a1 to h8

Squares are named like a chessboard. Columns run a to h from left to right, rows run 1 to 8 from top to bottom, so the top left square is a1 and the bottom right is h8. Open the settings button above the board and turn on Coordinates if you want the letters and numbers printed around the edge.

A game is written as a run of square names with no separators, so f5d6c3d3c4 is a five move game. That is the format in the move list beside the board. Copy it to keep a game, paste it back to replay one, or send someone the link and they will open the same position you are looking at. The notation page explains the format in detail, including how passes are handled.

Three habits that beat most beginners

New players try to own as many discs as possible from move one. That is the single most reliable way to lose. Disc count in the middle of the game tells you almost nothing, because a single move late on can flip twenty discs back.

• Take corners, and make your opponent give them to you. A corner is permanent, and the discs anchored to it usually become permanent too.
• Keep your options open. The number of legal moves you have is called mobility. If you can move in ten places and your opponent in two, you are choosing the shape of the game and they are just reacting.
• Stay small early. Fewer discs in the middle game usually means fewer frontier discs, which means fewer squares you are handing your opponent.

There is a lot more to it, and the strategy guide goes through mobility, parity and stable discs with diagrams. If you want to know what the first few moves are called, the openings index lists the named sequences, and this board tells you which one you are playing as soon as it recognises it.

What you can do on this board

This page is built to be a genuinely usable board rather than a demo. Every control sits under or beside the board, and your difficulty, sound and coordinate settings are remembered for next time.

Counting up at the end

When neither player can move, count the discs on the board. Most discs wins, an equal count is a draw. If one player loses every disc the game ends immediately, which is called a wipeout and is worth the maximum score in tournament play.

In tournaments, any empty squares left over are awarded to the winner, so a game that ends 33 to 29 with two blank squares is scored 35 to 29. The board here shows you the plain disc count and tells you if any squares were left empty. Scoring in full.