Reversi

Guilty pleasure:  MSN Reversi (a game -- also known as "Othello")

This is probably my favorite game.  Not as complex a Chess, not as  simple as Checkers.

It is a two-player game, with 64 spaces in a square.  The playing pieces are white on one side and black on the other.  You start the game with four pieces in the center in a square that is diagonal white and black.  (If I knew how to get a picture and insert it, I would.)  Black moves first.

The object of the game is to outflank your opponent, to have more pieces on the board at the end of the game.  (It is possible to win the game before the board is filled.) 

You have one of your "men" on one end, you place another opposite your opponent's piece and you turn over any and all of your opponents men that you have managed to sandwich between the piece you put down and any of your other pieces flanking his or her men.

I'm good at this game.  It's one of those, "No one wants to play with me (because I usually win)" situations.  But having this laptop has opened up my world.  I'm talking INTERNET REVERSI here people.  I love you MSN!

I have played this game with people in China, Portugal (or maybe Brazil), Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Korea, an undetermined Arabic-speaking country and I can't remember where else.  You don't know anything about your opponent other than the language that they speak.

I confess that I have been beaten several times.  And I have had my ass kicked several times, too.

I have managed to figure out some of the concepts that make you successful in this game.  Apparently there are some things, however, that I have yet to put words to.

I think I owe my enjoyment of this game to my father's love of Chess. He taught me to play and I think I actually won a game once when I played with him.  I have often applied Chess to driving in traffic.  Chess is a helpful thing to know.

Maybe one of the lessons of Reversi is that you need other people.  If there is no one on your team on the other side of your opponent, you are lost.

Wanna play?