Rose: Chapter 14
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Chapter 14: Becoming an expert
Although millions of people enjoy playing Othello with their friends and family, most of them have no idea there are experts who study the game seriously or that tournaments are being held all over the world . If you are interested in becoming an expert, or perhaps even the World Champion, this chapter will explain how to do it.
Play in tournaments
While it is certainly possible to become a strong player by practicing against friends, computers, or opponents on the Internet, nothing will raise the level of your play as quickly as participating in tournaments. There is something special about the atmosphere of a tournament, sitting face-to-face with your opponent in a game that counts (if for nothing else than rating points) that can not be matched by playing electronically. Not only does playing in a tournament give you a chance to play against experts, but it can also spur your desire to improve. More importantly, playing in tournaments is a lot of fun! Unlike some other strategy games, there are no professional Othello players, and gambling is not common. As of this writing, the biggest prize is $3,000 for winning the World Championship, and most tournaments offer only a trivial amount of prize money. In general, people play in tournaments for the fun of it, and perhaps that is why the atmosphere is fairly relaxed. The best way to find a tournament near you is to contact the Othello Association in your country (see Appendix).
If the idea of playing in a tournament seems intimidating, keep in mind that Othello players are generally very friendly people, and are always happy to see new players coming to tournaments. If you are familiar with the ideas in Part I of this book, you are certainly good enough to play in a tournament. In more than twenty years of tournament play, I have never heard anyone complaining that their opponent was too weak. By far the most common complaint about people coming to their first tournament is that they sometimes play the first couple of games and then just disappear, which can ruin the pairings for the rest of the tournament. Although rules vary, a typical one-day tournament would consist of six rounds with a time limit of 25 minutes per player. Adding in an hour for lunch and some time between rounds, it will take 7 or 8 hours to finish the tournament. If you can not stay for the entire tournament, then at least speak to the tournament director before you enter.
There are some extra rules which apply to tournament games. A device called a “chess clock” is used to keep track of the time used by each player. It has two clocks and two buttons which control its operation. The clocks are set to show the amount of time allotted to each player. To begin the game, the player with white presses his button, which starts Black’s clock counting down. Black makes his move, flips the discs, and then presses his button, which stops his own clock and starts White’s. If one player’s clock runs all the way down to zero before he hits his button to complete his last move, that player time defaults. Although the rules used for scoring games with a time default vary, the player who runs out of time always loses, regardless of the position on the board.
In a tournament game, if you touch a disc to a square where you have a legal move, then you must move there. Thus Othello is not like some games where you are not committed to making a move until you take your finger off the piece. Further, you must use the same hand to place the disc on the board, flip the pieces, and hit your clock. When time is running short it may be tempting to flip with both hands to save time, but the tournament director can impose a penalty on any player doing so.
If your opponent fails to flip all of the discs that he was supposed to, you have the option of forcing him to correct his mistake. To do so, hit your button to start your opponent’s clock and point out the discs that he failed to flip. If it is to your advantage, you are allowed to leave the board as it stands, even if your opponent realizes his mistake after he hits his clock. By the same token, if you make a move, hit your clock, and then realize that you forgot to flip some discs, you are not entitled to flip the discs even if your opponent has not yet made his next move.
Practice intensively
One of the reasons that playing in tournaments is so beneficial is that it forces you to concentrate on Othello for several hours in a row. Just as intensive exercise such as weight lifting will make your body adjust by making your muscles bigger, intensive concentration on Othello makes your brain adjust. It is certainly possible to make progress playing a little bit every day, but becoming a top player requires at least occasional periods of intensive practice.
In my view, the key to playing Othello at a high level is the ability to read ahead and visualize what the board will look like after several moves. In fact, at the highest levels of play, nearly all of the “thinking” taking place is visual. For example, scans of Japan’s top Shogi (Japanese Chess) player showed activity concentrated in the vision center of his brain.
The first time that I was able to really “see” what the board would look like was during the 1981 World Championship. I had practiced quite a lot in the month before, and then played 19 games over two days during the tournament. In the last game, I was considering a move when quite literally I saw a diagonal of pieces turn from white to black. It looked as real to me as if the pieces had actually changed color. It was not until much later that I was able to visualize this well on a consistent basis. In the summer of 1987 I visited Japan and pretty much played Othello all day for 3 weeks. By the end of that trip, when I looked at the board, it seemed to come alive, as though I was watching a movie.
Practice counting endgames
Another good way to improve your ability to visualize is to practicing counting endgames (see Chapter 13). In order to accurately count a sequence of moves in the endgame, you must correctly visualize all of the pieces that are added to the board or flipped. The level of concentration needed to do that is so high that you may find it extraordinarily tiring. In my experience, novice players are usually unable to maintain this level of concentration for more than a minute or two. Pretty soon their eyes start to glaze over, and it looks as though they need a nap. Although it might seem that they are just getting bored, in actuality it is the strain of doing something they are not used to that makes them feel tired or that their eyes can not focus anymore.
In some ways, counting endgames is like running in an all-out sprint. At first, you may find it difficult to count anything more than two empty squares. My advice would be to slowly work your way up, at first practicing by counting the last two or three moves of your games. As your ability to visualize improves, you will be able to count positions with several empty squares. At that point, it will really start to pay to devote more practice time to endgame counting. The Appendix describes software useful for practicing endgames.
Record and review your games
One of the best ways to improve is to review your games. WZebra can analyze your games and show you where you made mistakes and how much those mistakes cost you. Of course, in order to review, you have to be able to remember the games you play, and it is well worth the effort to take a transcript of your games as you play. Simply start with an empty 8x8 diagram, put in the initial four center discs, and then write in the moves as they are made. I usually use a small notebook containing graph paper, but it is not difficult to make your own transcript sheets using Excel or other software.
One problem with taking transcripts is that in a timed game, it may seem like a waste of precious seconds to record the moves. With practice, it should become possible for you to write the transcript after the game is complete, without using a board. t the 1987 All Japan Championship, Takeshi Murakami played in nine games, including two tie-breaker games that were held with 5-minute time limits. The following day, while sitting on a train without a board, Murakami was able to write down transcripts of all nine games! Although there are not many people capable of that, it really is not too difficult to learn how to write down your game right after you finish it. At first you might only be able to write down the first 10 moves, but as you practice you will make it further and further until finally you are able to record the entire game.
Review transcripts of experts’ games
Besides the transcripts published in magazines such as Othello Quarterly, a large collection of games is available over the Internet from the French Othello Federation (FFO, see Appendix). These games can be examined using WZebra. When reviewing transcripts, I usually try to put myself in the shoes of one of the players, normally the stronger of the contestants. It is possible to think before every move, considering moves for both sides, but this can get confusing, particularly if one of the players is not very strong. When it is “my” player’s turn to move, I think for a while about where I would have moved, and only then look at how the game actually proceeded. Sometimes the actual moves turn out to be better than the moves I thought of, and when this happens it can provide tremendous insight into the blind spots in my play.
While there are a lot of players worth studying, by far my favorite is the transcripts of 5-time World Champion Hideshi Tamenori. There are more than 200 of Tamenori’s games in the FFO database, and I highly recommend playing through all of them. I also recommend the games of 2-time World Champion Masaki Takizawa, especially his games as black. In particular there is a lot to learn from Takizawa’s defensive plays.
Play on the Internet
If there are no strong players near where you live, it is possible to find opponents from all over the world on the Internet. If you want to play against experts, the best site is probably Vinco Online Games (www.vogclub.com), although there is a small charge to become a full member. You will find some of the world’s best playing there, and compared to other sites, many of the experts seem willing to share strategy tips with newcomers. VOG also features the automatic recording of game transcripts; a large archive of transcripts is available for study.
Another good site for Othello is Yahoo Japan (www.yahoo.co.jp). Although it is a bit difficult to set up an ID (unless you can read Japanese), the buttons and boxes are more or less in the same places as they are on other Yahoo sites. It helps to look at the bottom of the screen as you point at various hyperlinks, since the address usually contains English words which will give you a hint as to what the link is. When registering your ID, use 000-0000 as the postal code, indicating that you are outside Japan. If you can not manage to create your own ID, you can use the ID foreign_guest. The password is guest. It is polite to type “yoroshiku”, which means something like “do me the honor (of playing)”, before the game starts.
There are several sites where Othello is played under the name “Reversi”. Most of these sites feature chat that could make a sailor blush. I would encourage you to play on the genuine Othello sites as much as possible, and when you do, please keep sportsmanship in mind.
One of my pet peeves about playing online is that most of the good players set very short time limits, sometimes only 1 minute per game! One reason this happens is that there are a lot of people who cheat by using WZebra or other computers to play, and it is much harder to cheat in a 1-minute game. While it can be fun to be play 1-minute games, it is not a good way to become a better Othello player. A steady diet of 1-minute games can create all sorts of bad habits, especially moving before really thinking. By the way, if you are tempted to cheat with WZebra, I urge you in the strongest terms not to. Almost everyone playing on the Internet has their own copy of WZebra, and they are not on the Internet because they want to play WZebra. Sometimes I see people “playing” each other, both using WZebra!
Read Othello Magazines
Currently the only regularly published Othello magazine written in English is the Othello Quarterly, published by the United States Othello Association. Back issues of OQ are available and are well worth reading (Othello Quarterly, 7 Peter Cooper Rd. #10G, New York, NY 10010). In particular, many of the earliest issues of OQ featured articles appropriate for beginners. The USOA also sells “Othello: Brief and Basic”, written by former U.S. Champion Ted Landau. Some newsletters produced by the British Othello Federation are available online for free (www.ugateways.com/ bofmain.html). They offer a wealth of strategy tips and game analysis, and are highly entertaining as well. If you can read French, the FFO produces an excellent magazine (FFO, BP 383, 75626 PARIS Cedex 13).
Play in the World Othello Championship!
The World Othello Championship (WOC) has been held annually since 1978, usually in late October or early November. Under the current format, each country is allowed to send up to three representatives. The three-day competition consists of 13 preliminary rounds, with the top 4 players advancing to the best 2-of-3 semifinals and finals. The results of the preliminary rounds also determine the team championship, which goes to the country with the greatest number of total wins.
Each country has its own rules for choosing the representatives sent to the WOC. Some countries simply select the top 3 finishers at their national championship, while others have several qualifying tournaments, with the winners of those tournaments earning the right to represent their country. If you would like to participate in the WOC, the first step is to contact the national Othello association in your country (see Appendix). If you live in a country that does not have an association or has never participated in the WOC, it may still be possible for you to play. A good first step would be to contact the tournament director, who can help guide you through the process of being invited to participate. See www.worldothellochampionships.com for details.
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