Reversi Board Game

The history of Reversi and Othello

The short answer

Reversi appeared in Victorian England, where Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett each claimed to have invented it in 1883 and each called the other a fraud. Around 1949 Goro Hasegawa reworked it in Japan as Othello, which Tsukuda Original sold from April 1973. Computers solved it in 2023.

One game, two names, one Victorian argument nobody ever settled, and a second life in Japan that turned a forgotten parlour game into one of the best selling board games ever made. This page follows the whole line, from the 1880s to a mathematical proof published in 2023.

The quarrel of 1883

The English record starts with two men and a fight. Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett both said they had invented Reversi in 1883, and each publicly accused the other of stealing it. Neither claim was ever proved. That is not a footnote to the game's history, it is the beginning of it, and it is the reason there is no clean answer to who invented Reversi.

The earliest printed mention historians treat as reliable is in The Saturday Review of 21 August 1886. By then the game was being sold in England and had a small following. A widely repeated account adds that Mollett had already published a close relative called The Game of Annexation around 1870, played on a cross-shaped board rather than a square one. The World Othello Federation's own history pages repeat the 1870 date, so it is worth knowing, but it does not appear in the better sourced references and should be treated as likely rather than settled.

What Victorian Reversi actually looked like

The flipping rule has not changed since the 1880s. What has changed is the start. In the Victorian game the board began completely empty, and the players took turns dropping their first two discs into the four central squares in whatever arrangement they liked. Only after those four discs were down did normal play begin.

That freedom produced starting positions no modern player ever sees. The one below is legal Victorian Reversi and illegal Othello: black on d4 and d5, white on e4 and e5, the two colours in vertical columns rather than crossed diagonally.

A legal opening arrangement in Victorian Reversi. Modern Othello fixes the start instead, so this position cannot occur.

Modern Othello fixes the four discs before anyone touches the board. White goes on d4 and e5, black goes on d5 and e4, and black moves first. Every game on this site, and every tournament game anywhere, starts from that one position. The board setup page shows it in detail.

The modern start. Black moves first and has exactly four legal moves: d3, c4, f5 and e6.

The old game also had no fixed disc supply. Players used whatever counters came in the box. Othello gives each side exactly 32 discs and ends the game if a player runs out, which is a small rule with a real effect on how the endgame is counted. The Reversi vs Othello page lists every difference.

Germany, 1893

Reversi crossed the Channel quickly. In 1893 the German publisher Ravensburger began producing it as one of its very first games, which is how a Victorian English parlour game ended up with a long continuous history in continental Europe. It stayed in print in various forms, but it never became a household name in the way chess or draughts did. By the middle of the twentieth century most people in Britain had never heard of it.

Mito, Japan, around 1949

The second half of the story starts with a schoolboy. Goro Hasegawa, born in 1932 in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, put together a flipping game using Go stones during his school years, around 1949. Go stones are black on one side and white on the other only if you use two colours of stone, so the early versions used stones and bottle caps rather than proper reversible discs.

Hasegawa registered the game in Japan in 1971, founded the Japan Othello Association in March 1973, ran a first national championship on 4 April 1973, and had the game on shop shelves through Tsukuda Original later that same month. That sequence is worth noticing: the competitive structure came before the retail product, which is a large part of why Othello stuck in Japan where Reversi had not stuck in England.

The name comes from Shakespeare. In the play, the Moorish general Othello and his white Venetian wife are turned against each other by a third party, and the board's constant reversals of black and white fit the association neatly. More about Hasegawa.

The computer era

Othello turned out to be an unusually good test bed for game programs. The rules are tiny, a position is easy to store, and yet the game punishes shallow thinking, because the disc count swings wildly and tells you very little until the end. Programs got strong fast.

The decisive moment came in August 1997, when Michael Buro's program Logistello played a six game match against the reigning world champion Takeshi Murakami and won 6-0. Chess had its Deep Blue match that year too, but the Othello result was more one sided, and no human has been the best Othello player in the world since. Today the strongest open program is Edax, written by Richard Delorme, which is free software and is the engine most research work builds on.

In October 2023 Hiroki Takizawa published a proof that 8x8 Othello, played perfectly by both sides, is a draw. Smaller boards had fallen decades earlier: 4x4 and 6x6 Othello are both won by the second player. Our is Othello solved page explains what "solved" does and does not mean here, and how Reversi AI works takes apart the engine that runs on this site.

The game today

The World Othello Federation runs the World Othello Championship, which has been held annually since 1977 apart from interruptions. The 2025 event in Ankara was won by Seiya Kurita of Japan, his second title in a row. Japan remains the strongest playing nation by a distance, with Thailand, France, Singapore and the United States all producing regular contenders.

Commercially, the Othello name is a registered trademark held by MegaHouse Corporation, a Bandai Namco company, which inherited it through Tsukuda Original's successor. Ravensburger took over distribution in the United States and Canada in August 2024. The underlying Victorian game is in the public domain, which is why free sites, open source engines and generic sets all use the name Reversi. See what to look for in a physical set.

Timeline

Year What happened
around 1870 John W. Mollett's The Game of Annexation is described as a forerunner. Repeated by the World Othello Federation, hard to verify elsewhere.
1883 Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett each claim to have invented Reversi, and each accuses the other of fraud.
1886 First reliable printed mention, in The Saturday Review of 21 August.
1893 Ravensburger begins producing Reversi in Germany.
around 1949 Goro Hasegawa devises his version as a school student in Mito, Ibaraki, using Go stones.
1971 Hasegawa registers the game in Japan.
1973 Japan Othello Association founded in March, first national championship on 4 April, Tsukuda Original release later that month.
1977 First World Othello Championship.
1993 Joel Feinstein solves 6x6 Othello. The second player wins 20-16.
1997 Logistello beats world champion Takeshi Murakami 6-0 in August.
2023 Hiroki Takizawa proves that 8x8 Othello is a draw with perfect play.
2025 Seiya Kurita of Japan wins the 46th World Othello Championship in Ankara.

What is still disputed

Three things in this history are repeated far more confidently than the evidence allows, and it is worth naming them.

  • Who invented Reversi. Waterman and Mollett both claimed 1883 and neither was proved right. Anyone who tells you flatly that Waterman invented Reversi is choosing a side in an argument from the 1880s.
  • The 1870 Annexation game. It appears in the World Othello Federation's history pages and in many secondary accounts, but the detail, including the cross-shaped board, is hard to trace to a primary source.
  • Whether Othello is a new game. Hasegawa's own description of what he did changed over time, and Othello's rules are recognisably Reversi's with the opening fixed. This page works through it.

Sources

Keep reading

Who invented Othello?

The 1883 quarrel, Hasegawa's claim, and what the evidence supports.

Goro Hasegawa

The man who turned a Victorian game into a Japanese institution.

Is Othello solved?

The 2023 proof, what it covers, and why you can still lose.

Variants

Anti-Othello, small boards, 10x10 boards and four player Rolit.

Reversi vs Othello

One game, two names, a handful of real rule differences.

Play a game

The modern rules, against the computer or a friend, free.

Frequently asked questions

How old is Reversi?

Reversi dates from Victorian England. Two Englishmen, Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett, each claimed to have invented it in 1883, and the game's first reliable printed mention is in The Saturday Review of 21 August 1886.

Is Othello the same game as Reversi?

Almost. Othello fixes the four opening discs and gives each player 32 discs, while Victorian Reversi let players place the first four discs where they liked. The flipping rule is identical. Full comparison.

Who invented Othello?

Goro Hasegawa of Mito, Japan, devised the modern version around 1949 and launched it commercially through Tsukuda Original in April 1973. Whether that counts as inventing a new game or tidying up Reversi is still argued about. The full story.

Why is the game called Othello?

The name refers to Shakespeare's play, in which the Moorish general Othello and his white Venetian wife Desdemona are set against each other. The black and white discs, and the constant reversals, made the association obvious.

When was Othello solved by computer?

In October 2023. Hiroki Takizawa published a proof that 8x8 Othello is a draw with perfect play from both sides. Smaller boards were solved decades earlier. What that proof actually shows.

Is Reversi in the public domain?

The Victorian game is. The name Othello is a live registered trademark, which is why free sites and open source programs use the older name for a game that is otherwise identical.