Teema: Re: Correct opening rules and referring to black-white
Before coming to Brainking.com, I always thought that othello and reversi are exactly the same game. When I first came to this site I was really confused (and still am) about the set of rules Brainking uses. Since then i've been told several times that they actually are different games and have different rules on the opening game.
In othello the diagonal opening setup is fixed and black goes first. Some say that reversi is different and the rules used here are correct for reversi. I have not seen a official ruleset that would back this up. All of the rulebooks that i've seen explain the official othello rules. Some of them say "othello is also known as reversi" or the other way around. I really would like to see information that would end my confusion about this reversi/othello thing.
I think atleast part of the problem is that Othello is a registered trademark licensed to Mattel Inc. I've played reversi on quite a few sites and this is the only one that does not use the official othello rules. I don't know much about trademarks or licenses. Maybe just calling the game reversi instead of othello is enough to avoid licensing fees even if othello rules are used. I'm confused.