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Or at least one of its games...
The Edinburgh Regional saw a fantastic turnout of new players. If you are one of those new players, welcome!
While the strategy can feel overwhelming, there is an easy roadmap to getting better.
As Brian Rose outlines in his excellent book (available on the British Othello website), a solid game relies on three phases:
The Opening: Memorize openings off by heart to guarantee you stay in contention, use applications like Wzebra or DroidZebra, Ntest or Saio to tell you where you should play in an given position.
The End Game: Easy to practice. Use Othello Quest solitaire puzzles or the daily puzzle on the British Othello website to master converting a win.
The Middle Game: The trickiest part. Don't stress about practicing this directly just yet. If you focus on clean openings and precise endgames, your intuition for the middle game will naturally grow.
Let's look at one of the few surviving transcripts from the tournament: James Wood (Black) vs. Andy Newman (White), to layout a few things to consider in the opening phase of the game.
Here's the transcript incase you want to take a look at it yourself:
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1. The Golden Rule of Openings
If you take only one piece of advice from this article, let it be this: Do not, I repeat DO NOT play the Parallel Opening if you are a new player and you have read this article.
In fact, it is a tough opening for any seasoned player. It puts White at a distinct disadvantage from move two. You don't need to understand the why; you just need to know that playing it means you are fighting an uphill battle from the get-go.
However, White's play in this game actually showed a great understanding of theoretical goals despite the bad opening. White was actively trying to limit Black's options—he was just going about it the wrong way and needed one extra piece of advice to find some better moves.
By the way before we dive in...
Moves 1-7 were perfectly fine. We'll pick up here in part two.
as were Moves 13–23 White took small moves and gained tempos on the edge. Because Black missed a few highly complex, unintuitive opportunities, White actually emerged from the chaos in a decent position and we'll pick up he're in part three.
2. The Move 8 Mistake: Walls vs. Shape
White made his first real mistake at Move 8 by playing D2.
By playing D2, White flipped the pieces at D3 and E3, creating a massive wall of white discs on the West side of the board. It also invited Black to play a very quiet, easy response at E2.
When playing out the opening, you can look at choices through two different lenses:
Lens A: Minimize Your Flips
Lens B: Focus on Shape
Lens A: Minimize Your Flips
The goal is to take as few pieces as possible in the opening. White could have played E6, F6, or G5, flipping just one piece rather than two. Any of these would have created a "flat position" (where one player's pieces are on one side, and the opponent's are on the other). The aim here is to avoid playing through your opponent, forcing them to play into your side of the board and hopefully give you back some good moves or even better make a mistake.
Lens B: Focus on Shape
This is trickier. Think about good "shape" as being able to scoop up all your pieces with two hands in one go because they are central and closely together. While if they are scattered and divided you cant scope them up without getting some of your opponents pieces too.
To evaluate shape, look at your opponent's outermost frontier discs. In this position, Black's outermost pieces were D3, F6 and argueably F3.
The secret? Do not flip your opponent's outermost pieces. Avoiding them keeps you safely packed in the middle of the board.
G2 is out of the question (it’s an X-square, which is essentially throwing the game away).
F2 is just like D2—it invites Black right into E2.
That leaves E2 as the ultimate move for shape.
Playing E2 leaves Black in a bit of an ugly diagonal checkerboard. Because Black’s pieces block each other, Black cannot easily cut through the middle to flip the E4 piece they would like for access to a wider array of moves. Instead they are forced to play on the outside of the bunch, which often causes opponents to pause, ponder, and make a mistake.
If White had played F2 instead, it would have been in better shape, forming White's pieces into a single clump and splitting Black's bunch. All be it White technically still being behind.
Take away…
Good shape means having a single, consolidated bunch of your own pieces, preferably tucked inside your opponent's pieces. Bad shape means your pieces are scattered, opening up the game for your opponent.
3. Move 24: The Big vs. "Loud" Illusion
Our final lesson comes at Move 24, where White played D7. This was a major missed opportunity. While D7 looked safe and avoided X-squares, it left Black with too many options on the West side, allowing Black to eventually run White out of moves.
Instead consider F7. On the surface, flipping four pieces with F7 looks "loud" and aggressive. But here is the ultimate takeaway: Just because a move takes a lot of pieces does not mean it is a loud move and therefore a bad move.
Those four discs were entirely interior pieces surrounded by other discs. Playing F7 changes almost nothing about the exterior shape of the bunch, but it completely suffocates your opponent. Suddenly, Black has absolutely zero access to the West side of the board. They are forced to move East with uncomfortable, forced replies (specifically G6), handing a massive advantage right back to White.
Finally, you should also notice that after E7, white by the same logic as before has better shape because all its pieces are connected into one big bunch. You could scoop them up without getting a single Black disc (assuming you've got sizable hands).
Summary for Beginners
Ditch the parallel opening. Start the game on the right foot.
Look for the frontier. Identify your opponent's outermost pieces and leave them alone.
Don't fear big flips if they are entirely on the inside of the bunch/cluster.
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