How to Play Othello
Othello is a two-player disc-flipping game played on an 8×8 board, where a single well-placed piece can swing dozens of squares from one color to the other. The whole board is visible to both players at all times, there is no hidden information and no luck involved, so every game comes down to reading the position better than your opponent. This guide covers the full rule set exactly as it plays out in our version, from the first disc to the final count.
Overview & Goal
Two players, Black and White, take turns placing discs on an 8×8 grid. Every disc is double-sided: one face black, one face white. When you place a disc so that it traps one or more of your opponent’s discs in a straight line between your new disc and another disc you already own, every trapped disc flips to your color. The game ends when the board is full or neither player can move, and whoever owns more discs at that point wins. There’s no rolling, drawing, or hidden hand — just an ever-shifting battle for territory that can turn on a single move.
Components
- One 8×8 board of 64 identical squares, with no cell coloring beyond the pieces on it.
- 64 discs, each black on one side and white on the other. A disc’s color simply shows which player currently owns that square.
- A handful of small guide dots printed at the four inner corners of the center — purely decorative, with no effect on play.
There’s no deck, no dice, no bag of tiles, and no supply to run out of. Every square is either empty or owned, and the discs already used to set up the board are the only ones that will ever be in play.
Setup
The board starts with four discs in the center two-by-two block: going by columns a–h and rows 1–8, White sits on d4 and e5, and Black sits on e4 and d5 — the two colors form an X across the center. Black always moves first. Because of how the four starting discs are arranged, Black’s opening move can only be one of four squares: d3, c4, f5, or e6, each of which traps exactly one white disc.
In casual play against the computer, you’ll typically play Black by default, with an option to switch and play White instead. In online matches, color is assigned randomly, and if you have a rematch the colors swap so nobody keeps the advantage of moving first twice in a row.
A Turn, Step by Step
On your turn, you must place one disc of your color onto an empty square — but only certain squares are legal. A square is a legal move only if placing your disc there traps at least one opposing disc.
Here’s how a trap works. Look at the eight directions leading out from your chosen square: up, down, left, right, and the four diagonals. In a given direction, your move is valid if there’s an unbroken run of one or more opponent discs immediately followed by one of your own discs, with no empty square or gap breaking the line. Any run that qualifies gets completely flipped to your color, and this happens simultaneously in every qualifying direction at once.
Worked example: picture Black to move with a lone white disc sitting at d5 and a black disc already on d6. Black plays at d4. Reading upward from d4: white at d5, then black at d6 — an unbroken run of white terminated by black. That’s a valid trap, so the white disc at d5 flips to black. If Black had discs in other directions from d4 too, each of those lines would be checked and flipped independently, all in the same move. A single placement can flip discs in two, three, or more directions simultaneously — that’s what makes Othello swing so dramatically. A disc that would be flipped by two different directions at once still only flips once, obviously ending up your color either way.
If you have no legal move anywhere on the board, your turn is skipped automatically and play passes to your opponent — you’re never allowed to pass voluntarily if a legal move exists, and you can never choose to skip a move you’re allowed to make.
Special Rules & Edge Cases
Corners can never be flipped. There’s no square beyond a corner to trap it from, so once you claim a1, a8, h1, or h8, it’s yours for the rest of the game. This makes corners the single most valuable squares on the board, and a lot of Othello strategy is about steering the game toward — or away from — a corner going up for grabs.
Forced passes. If it’s your turn and you truly have no legal placement anywhere, the game skips you rather than letting you sit out voluntarily. If your opponent then also has no legal move, the game ends immediately, even if the board isn’t full — this is actually the more common way an Othello game finishes.
Wipeouts. If you’re reduced to zero discs, the game ends right away, since you can no longer trap anything. Your opponent wins by whatever count they have — a 64–0 result is the rarest possible outcome, sometimes called a perfect game.
A run that reaches the edge of the board without one of your discs behind it doesn’t count — that direction simply isn’t a legal trap. Likewise, if there’s a gap (an empty square) anywhere in the run before your own disc, that direction fails too. A move only needs to succeed in one direction to be legal; it can fail in every other direction and still be played.
How the Game Ends & Scoring
The game ends the moment either of these happens:
- The board fills up completely — all 64 squares are occupied.
- Neither player has a legal move. This is checked after any forced pass: if you couldn’t move and your opponent also can’t move on their turn, the game is over.
There’s no separate scoring formula — your score is simply the number of discs of your color on the board when the game ends. Whoever has more discs wins. If both players end with the same number (for example, 32–32, or any even split on an early finish), the result is a draw, with no additional tiebreaker.
If the game ends early with empty squares still on the board, those empty squares don’t count toward either player’s total — only the discs actually placed are counted.
| Result | Outcome |
|---|---|
| More discs than opponent | You win |
| Fewer discs than opponent | You lose |
| Equal discs | Draw |
| Reduced to 0 discs | Immediate loss (wipeout) |
Variants
Our version ships the standard tournament ruleset — the fixed diagonal starting position, Black moving first, on the full 8×8 board — since Othello’s appeal is in its universal, well-understood rules rather than house variants. Alongside the standard game, we offer a set of Solo Challenges: preset positions taken partway through a game, each with a specific puzzle to solve (like finding the move that locks down a corner, or spotting the only move that avoids disaster). These use the exact same rules above; they just start you from an interesting position instead of the opening setup.
Quick-Reference Summary
- Black moves first, from the fixed four-disc starting cross in the center.
- A move is only legal if it traps at least one opposing disc in a straight line (any of 8 directions).
- All discs trapped in every valid direction flip at once, immediately.
- If you have no legal move, your turn is skipped; if neither player can move, the game ends.
- Corners can never be flipped once claimed.
- Game ends when the board fills or both players are stuck; most discs on the board wins; equal counts are a draw.