Reversi vs Othello

Almost every answer you will find on this question is either "they are the same" or "Othello has a fixed start", and both stop too early. Here is the whole thing: what differs, when it changed, and who owns the name.

The short version

Difference one: the starting position

This is the difference that matters. Othello begins the same way every time. Four discs sit in the centre, the two colours diagonally opposite each other, and Black moves first.

abcdefgh

12345678

Original Reversi began with nothing on the board. The players took turns placing discs in the four centre squares, two each, with no flipping, and only then did the game proper begin. Because the placements were free, the game could start in shapes Othello never sees.

abcdefgh

12345678

Some Reversi rule sets went further and let a player refuse to put both discs on the same diagonal, which was a real decision with real consequences. That whole layer of the game was removed in 1971, and almost nobody misses it. A fixed start makes games comparable, which is what a competitive scene needs.

Difference two: the discs

Othello is sold as a boxed set with exactly 64 discs, 32 to each player. Old Reversi used whatever discs came in the box, and a set was not standardised.

One myth is worth killing here. Running out of discs does not end an Othello game. The official rules say that a player who has used all their discs and still has a legal move takes as many as they need from their opponent, and the opponent has to hand them over without argument. The game ends when neither player can move, and nothing else ends it. When a game ends.

Difference three: passing

Modern rules are unambiguous. If you have no legal move you pass, your opponent plays again, and you rejoin as soon as a move appears. You may never pass by choice. How passing works.

Nineteenth-century Reversi was less settled. Some published rule sets ended the game the moment a player could not move, which changes the endgame completely, because a position with no move for one side is a normal and recoverable thing. Others already used the pass; a Japanese description from 1907 uses the modern rule. If you find an old Reversi rule sheet, read that clause before you play from it.

Where the two names came from

Reversi appeared in England in 1883. Two men, Lewis Waterman and John W. Mollett, both claimed to have invented it, and each publicly accused the other of stealing it. The row was never settled. The game sold well enough that Ravensburger was manufacturing it by 1893, one of that company's earliest titles.

Othello came 88 years later. Goro Hasegawa published it in Japan in 1971, fixed the opening, standardised the equipment, and named it after Shakespeare's play, where a Moor and a Venetian stand on opposite sides of a conflict. The tidied-up version was a hit, and it is the version the whole world now plays. The full history, and Hasegawa's story.

The trademark, and why it matters to you

Othello is a live registered trademark. Outside Japan the rights are held by MegaHouse Corporation, which acquired them through the successor to Tsukuda Original, the original overseas licensee. Reversi carries no trademark at all; it is a public-domain name for a game published in the 1880s.

That single fact explains something people find confusing. Free websites and apps almost always say "Reversi" while teaching Othello's rules, because using the trademarked name for a product you do not license is a problem and using the public-domain one is not. If you searched for one word and landed on a page using the other, that is why.

What is identical

Everything else, and it is most of the game.

• The 8 by 8 board and the 64 two-sided discs.
• The move rule: place a disc so that a straight line of your opponent's discs is trapped between it and one of yours. Legal moves.
• Flipping every trapped disc, in every direction at once.
• A move being illegal if it flips nothing.
• Counting discs at the end, most wins, equal is a draw. Scoring.
• Every scrap of strategy. Corners, X-squares, mobility, parity and stable discs behave the same in both.

Three things people get wrong

1. "Reversi has no fixed start, so it is a different game." It had no fixed start in the 1880s. Every set, app and site sold as Reversi today uses the Othello start, so the distinction is historical rather than practical.
2. "You lose if you run out of discs." You take more from your opponent. The 32 discs each is a packaging decision, not a rule that can end a game.
3. "Othello is the tournament version and Reversi is the casual one." There is only one competitive version. The World Othello Federation has run a world championship since 1977, and it uses the rules described here under the Othello name because that is what the game is called.

So which one are you playing?

Othello's rules, under whichever name your app prefers. Free-placement Reversi is a historical curiosity; you will not meet it in a modern app, a modern box or a modern tournament. The World Othello Federation runs the world championship under the fixed-start rules and has done since 1977. The official rule text.

The board on this site uses the modern rules exactly: fixed start, Black first, passing when there is no move, and disc count at the end.

Related comparisons

• Reversi vs Go, two territory games that work nothing alike.
• Othello vs chess, why one is learnable in a minute.
• Games like Reversi, what to play next.
• Reversi variants, including anti-Othello and larger boards.
• Is Othello solved?, what the 2023 result actually says.