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Appendix

 The following information is from 2003 and some of it is no longer up-to-date. We intend to maintain up-to-date data elsewhere (outside of this book) on the wiki.

Internet resources

There is an abundance of useful Othello websites on the Internet. The list below represents only a small fraction of what is available.

Othello Programs

WZebra http://www.nada.kth.se/~gunnar/othello.html WZebra, written by Gunnar Andersson and Lars Ivansson, is the Windows version of Zebra, one of the strongest Othello-playing programs in the world. Zebra offers a full range of features, including the ability to examine the Thor database of transcripts (see below).

Ntest http://www.btinternet.com/~chris.welty/Ntest/index.htm Ntest, written by Chris Welty, is the strongest program available to the public.

Transcript downloading page http://www.ffothello.org/info/base.html Transcripts of games played in most of the important tournaments held around the world are collected by the FFO and entered into the Thor database, which now includes more than 70,000 games. Thor is the name of the original program used to examine the games in the database. Although the database is still maintained in Thor’s format, these days most people use WZebra to access the games.

Icare http://othello.federation.free.fr/info/logiciels/ Icare, written by Luc Riviere (with help from Stephane Nicolet), is a program useful for practicing endgames. A position from an actual game is shown, with between 6 and 12 empty squares. You must finish the game, playing against the computer, which always makes the best move. In each position, only one of your available moves is correct, and you must play perfectly to win (or draw). If you fail you can try again as many times as you want, and if you really get stuck there is a “show” button which will show the correct move. Icare is a relatively simple program, but it makes practicing endgames fun.

Happy End http://www.nada.kth.se/~gunnar/othello.html Like Icare, Happy End (written by Beppi Menzonni) allows you to practice end-games, but it is has many more features and is closer to playing in a real game. The current version, Happy End III, uses WZebra’s endgame algorithm and is thus very fast. The program draws positions from the Thor database, so you should download at least some of the database files before using Happy End. Note that if you make enough bad moves, the program will insult you in broken English!