Yes, automated moves would be nice. Besides automated passes, the program could make moves automatically in such situations where the player has only one possible move. Also, it would be nice if the player could input sequences of the type "if opponent moves here, I reply there" that the program would play automatically.

Earlier automatic passes have been objected on the grounds that it would be distracting for beginners. IMNSHO the best altenative would be, if every player could decide whether he/she would let the program pass/play the only possible move for him/her.

pipilo:

(1) Because it's that way accordingt to the official tournament rules. Some people such as myself want to practice the real game that is universally accepted, and not some local variant.

(2) Good players say that the game is more unbalanced (the beginner has a disadvantage) with the parallel opening.

BlazinBrian:

In normal games play it's possible to make an agreement, but in tournaments you do not know who you'll be playing against, and do not know whether they agree to use the diagonal opening.

Consequently, it's impossible to arrange tournaments here with the correct tournament rules.

I really do not know what this really is about, but someone in the reversi board proposed a game called "reversi race", where you count the total number of disc flips throughout the game instead of the number of black/white disks in the end.

Unfortunately, that proposer ignored the fact that if no-one passes during the game and the whole board is filled, the same player that flips more disks also has more disks in the end, so the difference between this variant and ordinary reversi is very small. Actually, we have the formulas:

BS - WS - WP + BP = 2 (BF - WF),

assuming that the total number of moves (including passes) in the game is even, and

BS - WS - WP + BP + 1 = 2 (BF - WF),

if the total number of moves (including passes) is odd.

Here BS is black's score in normal othello, BP the number of black's passes, BF the total number of disks flipped by black, and Wx similarly for white. We assume that white plays first.

IMO reversi with the tournament rules (fixed diagonal opening, black moving first) would be a far more important thing to implement.

Thanks Fencer for the Play Later option. However, it seems to have a bug. If you click "play later" for two games (in my case, one immediately after another), "go to the next game" offers the later of these games even if there are some games to play that are not "play later".

I like to play all easy moves of my games in a row, and think the difficult ones only after that. However, the "submit the move and go to the next game" option does not support my kind of play. When there's a game with a difficult move as the first on my list, the "go to the next game" option gives it always.

There should be a "skip" option for a move in a game, such that a "skipped" game would not appear by the use of the "goto to the next game" option. Such a game could, of course, be chosen from the main page.

Harley: I had in mind the model where you would see all topics, and when you choose one, you would see all the replies to the chosen topic.

The reason is that if you simply want to see the discussion on one subject, in the thread system it is easier to find all the relevant messages.

In the current system you must browse through many irrelevant messages, and this takes time that could be better used playing games:-)

(1) Discussion boards based on threads would be more readable that the present system.

(2) Shogi would be nice.

(3) Reversi could be more customizable. For experienced players non-automatic passes are a nuisance. If you want to keep the game beginner-friendly and also serve experienced players, you could make automatic passes optional, so that when starting a game you could decide which alternative to use.

In games, where the players have unequal pieces and goals (such as Tablut), it could be nice if you could create a match with two simultaneous games with different colors for players in each of the two matches.