Comparison
Othello vs chess
The short answer
Both are played on 64 squares by two players with no luck involved. After that they share nothing. Chess pieces move and capture; Othello discs are placed once and flip colour forever after. Chess takes half an hour to learn. Othello takes a minute.
The board is the only real overlap. It is still a useful comparison, because most people meeting Othello have played chess, and the habits they bring lose them the first ten games.
The numbers
| Othello / Reversi | Chess | |
|---|---|---|
| Board | 8 by 8, 64 squares | 8 by 8, 64 squares |
| Pieces | 64 identical two-sided discs | 32 pieces in 6 types |
| What a move does | Adds a disc and flips others | Moves a piece, sometimes capturing one |
| Who moves first | Black | White |
| Choices per turn | About 10 | About 35 |
| Typical game length | About 60 moves | About 70 moves |
| Legal positions | Roughly 1028 | Roughly 1044 |
| Possible games | Roughly 1058 | Roughly 10123 |
| Named openings | 71 in the standard catalogue | Thousands, with published books on single lines |
| Origin | England, 1883; fixed and renamed Othello in Japan in 1971 | India, around the 6th century; modern rules settled in Europe in the 15th |
| Solved? | Weakly solved in 2023: perfect play draws | No. Positions with 7 pieces or fewer are solved exactly |
| Time to learn the rules | About a minute | Half an hour, plus the special cases |
Complexity figures are the standard published estimates and shift a little depending on the method used.
Nothing ever moves
This is the idea chess players have to unlearn. In Othello a disc is placed on an empty square and stays on that square for the rest of the game. It can change colour any number of times, but it never moves and it is never removed. There is no development, no piece activity and no exchanges.
What replaces piece activity is the shape of the board you are leaving behind. A good Othello move is often the one that changes the least.
Counting material actively misleads you
Chess trains you to count. A queen is worth nine, a rook five, and a player up a rook for nothing is usually winning. In Othello the equivalent count, how many discs you own, is worse than useless in the middle of the game.
A single late move can flip twenty discs, so a 40 to 12 lead at move thirty can turn into a loss twenty moves later. Strong players often aim to have fewer discs through the middle game, because fewer discs usually means fewer discs touching empty squares, which means fewer squares handed to the opponent. Mobility explained.
You are not always allowed to play
In chess you always have a legal move unless the game is over. In Othello you may have exactly one, or none. A move is only legal if it flips at least one disc, so the board itself decides where you are allowed to go. Legal moves.
When you have no legal move you pass and your opponent goes again. That is not stalemate; the game carries on and you rejoin as soon as a move appears. Squeezing an opponent down to one or zero moves is a normal winning plan. Passing.
How you win
Chess ends when a king cannot escape capture. It is possible to be losing on material and win instantly. Othello has no equivalent; there is no piece whose loss ends the game and no sudden mate.
An Othello game ends when neither player can move, and then you count. Most discs wins, an equal count is a draw. The one dramatic finish is a wipeout, where a player is left with no discs on the board at all and play stops immediately. Scoring.
Opening theory, at a different scale
Chess opening theory is enormous, and at a high level it is compulsory. Othello has 71 named openings in the standard catalogue, and the longest line in it runs eighteen moves. You can reach a strong club level knowing none of them.
There is also less to choose from at the start. Black has four legal first moves and they are all the same move seen a different way up, so the first genuine decision in an Othello game belongs to White. The openings index.
Coordinates that look the same and are not
Both games name squares with a letter and a number, a1 to h8. Chess counts ranks from the bottom of the board, so a1 is the bottom left. Othello counts rows from the top, so a1 is the top left corner. Everything else about the grid matches. Othello notation.
Computers cracked one and not the other
Chess programs passed the best humans in the late 1990s and are now far beyond them, but chess is not solved and will not be soon. Only endings with seven pieces or fewer have been worked out exactly.
Othello went further. Programs overtook the world champion in 1997, and in 2023 the whole game was weakly solved: with perfect play from the opening position, the result is a draw. What that means, and how the computer here plays.
Which one should you play tonight?
- You want a game in twenty minutes with someone who has never played. Othello. Two-player board.
- You want a lifetime of study material. Chess, comfortably.
- You like endgames you can calculate exactly. Othello. The last dozen moves can be solved perfectly by hand with practice.
- You want your first win against a computer this week. Othello. Four difficulty levels, starting very gentle.
Related pages
- Reversi vs Go, a much larger board and the opposite capture rule.
- Reversi vs Othello, why the game has two names.
- Games like Reversi, where to go next.
- How to play, the rules in four steps.
Frequently asked questions
Is Othello harder than chess?
Chess is bigger and takes far longer to learn. Othello is smaller, easier to start and still hard to play well, because the thing that looks like progress, owning more discs, is usually the opposite. Chess has roughly 1044 legal positions to Othello's 1028.
Which is easier to learn?
Othello, by a long way. It has one move rule and no special cases. Chess has six piece types plus castling, promotion and en passant, and a new player needs a lot of practice before the pieces stop surprising them.
Does chess strategy help at Othello?
Some habits transfer: thinking a few moves ahead, valuing options over material, and watching what your move gives your opponent. Counting material does not transfer at all, and chess players lose their first Othello games by playing greedily.
Who moves first in each game?
White in chess, Black in Othello. It catches out people who play both. In Othello, Black also has only four legal first moves, and all four are the same move seen from different angles.
Are the board coordinates the same?
The letters are, the numbers are not. Chess counts ranks from the bottom, so a1 is the bottom left corner. Othello counts rows from the top, so a1 is the top left. Othello notation.