Outflank and flip in Reversi
Reversi — sold as Othello — is the elegant flipping game with a one-minute rule and a lifetime of depth. Place a disc so it traps a line of your opponent's pieces between yours, and they all flip to your colour. When the board fills, whoever owns the most discs wins.
How to play
Reversi in 4 steps
Make a flanking move
You can only play where you'd trap one or more of your opponent's discs in a straight line between your new disc and another of yours.
Flip the line
Every opponent disc in that trapped line flips to your colour. Legal moves are highlighted for you.
Pass if stuck
If you have no legal move you pass; if neither player can move, the game ends.
Hold the majority
When the 8×8 board is full (or no moves remain), the player with more discs wins.
Controls
- Click / Tap a highlighted square
- Place your disc there
- Mode buttons
- Switch between 2-player and AI difficulties
- R
- Start a new game
Strategy
Tips to play better
Grab the corners
Corner discs can never be flipped, making them the most valuable squares on the board. Prioritise them and the stable edges they anchor.
Avoid the X-squares
The diagonal squares next to a corner often hand your opponent that corner. Steer clear unless you must.
Fewer can be better
Counter-intuitively, holding fewer discs in the midgame ("mobility") keeps your options open — owning everything early often backfires.
Think about who moves last
Late in the game, controlling tempo so your opponent is forced into bad squares is how strong players lock in the win.
About Reversi
Reversi dates to 1880s England, but its modern boom came in 1971 when Goro Hasegawa marketed it in Japan as Othello — named for the Shakespeare play, with the black-and-white discs evoking its drama. It remains one of the most-played abstract strategy games in the world.
Reversi is famous for being easy to learn yet ferociously deep. Because a single move can flip a whole line, the board can swing wildly, and good play is about long-term position — corners, edges and mobility — rather than greedily grabbing discs. It has been a benchmark for game AI for decades; computers have been superhuman at it since the 1990s.
Our AI uses minimax search with a positional evaluation that values corners and stable edges, so the harder levels play a genuinely strong game. Discs render as bold Unicode circles, legal moves are marked, and you can play a friend in pass-and-play.
FAQ
Reversi questions
Is Reversi the same as Othello?
Where am I allowed to play?
What happens if I can't move?
How strong is the AI?
Is it free?
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