A minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Every move flips discs to your colour — and the lead can flip just as completely, right up to the final turn.
How to play Reversi
When the board is full, or neither player can move, the player with more discs wins. Don't count too early: Reversi is decided in the last few moves, and a comfortable majority in the middle game means very little.
How to set up a Reversi board
Only the four centre squares are occupied at the start, and they sit diagonally: white on d4 and e5, black on d5 and e4. Nothing else is on the board — the other sixty discs come out as the game goes on. Black always moves first, and on the opening move Black has exactly four legal squares to choose from.
How a turn works
- Place. Black moves first. You may only place a disc where it flanks at least one enemy disc in a straight line — every move must capture.
- Flip. Every enemy disc caught between your new disc and one of your own flips to your colour, in all eight directions at once.
- Pass. No legal move? Your turn is skipped automatically. When neither player can move, the game is over.
Flanking works in several lines at the same time, which is why a single quiet looking move can turn a dozen discs.
Controls on this board
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Amber dot | A legal square — click it to place your disc. |
| Flipping discs | Captured discs turn in a wave spreading out from your move. |
| Amber ring | Circles the last move played, so you never lose track. |
| Glowing board edge | It is your turn. |
| Disc counters | The live score beside the board. Most discs at the end wins. |
In the side panel you choose your opponent — the computer or a friend online — set the difficulty, play as Black or White, undo your last move, toggle the sound and reopen the rules.
Four difficulty levels: Easy plays reasonably but forgives a lot, Medium is an even match for most people, Hard punishes a loose move, and Expert searches as deep as it can and shows no mercy. The difference between them is how much slack they allow themselves, not how long they think — a deeper search only makes an opponent harder to beat, not better company.
Play 2 player Reversi online with a friend
Most Reversi you find online is you against a machine. This one is also a two-player game over the internet, and it takes about ten seconds to start.
- Pick With a friend online beside the board.
- Press Open a table. A four-character code appears.
- Send that code to your friend — message, email, however you like.
- They open the same page, pick the same option, type the code and press Join.
That is the whole setup. No account, no download, no app, nothing to install on either side, and it works the same on a phone, a tablet and a desktop.
Whoever opened the table plays Black and moves first. Both of you see the same board, the same disc counters and the same move list, and a chat button sits in the turn card so you can talk while you play — it shows a red dot when a message arrives and stays out of the way otherwise.
If your connection drops the table stays open, so you can come back and carry on. When the game ends, either of you can offer a rematch without swapping codes again.
How does a game of Reversi end?
You win when you hold more discs once neither player can move — or immediately, if you wipe out every enemy disc. If both players finish on exactly 32 discs, the game is a draw.
Reversi strategy: three things that decide most games
- Corners are gold. A corner disc can never be flipped, and it anchors whole edges. Never hand one over without a very good reason.
- Fewer is better, early on. A small, compact position leaves your opponent fewer targets and you more choices. Grabbing discs greedily backfires.
- Avoid the corner traps. The squares directly beside an empty corner usually gift that corner away. Touch them last.
Reversi openings and deeper strategy
The full Reversi and Othello guide covers where the two names come from, why holding more discs in the middle game is usually losing, the squares that hand away corners, and what happened when the game was solved in 2023.
Reversi or Othello — which is this?
Both names describe what you are playing here. Reversi is the English original from the 1880s, Othello the standardised Japanese version from 1971 that fixed the opening four discs and put all sixty-four discs in a shared pool. The modern rules are the Othello rules, and that is what this board uses; the name Reversi simply stayed in wider use outside Japan. The full guide tells the rest of that story, including the two Victorian inventors who each accused the other of stealing it.
Printable Reversi board
No board in the cupboard? The printable Reversi board puts a full-page board on one sheet and all sixty-four discs on another, with the rules on a third — in colour or in an ink-saving version for a class set. The discs are single-sided on purpose: the back of the paper is the white side, so one sheet gives you sixty-four two-colour pieces. If you would rather not cut anything out, sixty-four coins work exactly as well.
Teaching the game, or writing about it? The Reversi puzzle generator builds any position, marks the best move, and exports the question and the answer as separate images for a worksheet or a blog post.
Where Reversi comes from
Reversi was invented in England in the 1880s and reborn in Japan in the 1970s under the name Othello, the version most people know today. It is still played competitively at world championship level, and in 2023 the 8×8 game was weakly solved: with perfect play on both sides it is a draw.
Openings, and the name
The first few moves are more constrained than they look: the three Reversi openings sets out the diagonal, parallel and perpendicular replies and what each one commits you to.
And the question everybody asks eventually — is Reversi the same as Othello? The short answer is almost, and the difference is worth a paragraph.
