<story><title>Othello Is Solved?</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.19387</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>charcircuit</author><text>&amp;gt;That means it&amp;#x27;s still possible to win a game by intentionally deviating from the perfect sequence&lt;p&gt;Someone with perfect strategy would have an answer for any deviation. Playing imperfectly would likely get you into a losing position. There is no way to go from a game being drawn if played perfectly to being winning if the then loser were to be using perfect strategy.</text></item><item><author>cvoss</author><text>This paper &amp;quot;weakly solves&amp;quot; Othello. That means that we know for the initial board state both 1) the final win&amp;#x2F;lose&amp;#x2F;draw outcome (it&amp;#x27;s a draw), and 2) the sequence of moves that should be taken by perfect players to get there (Figure 1, right).&lt;p&gt;In particular, the paper does not &amp;quot;strongly solve&amp;quot; Othello. If you have an arbitrary board state, 1) and 2) are are not necessarily known for it. That means it&amp;#x27;s still possible to win a game by intentionally deviating from the perfect sequence and betting on the fact that your opponent doesn&amp;#x27;t know how to recover.</text></item><item><author>bediger4000</author><text>Does this paper render the championship moot? Is any software based on the paper entered?&lt;p&gt;Is Othello like checkers, where there were mostly draws in high level games?</text></item><item><author>Tepix</author><text>For those interested in the game (it&amp;#x27;s popular among computer science and AI scholars), the Othello world championship is currently underway in Rome, Italy with games live streamed on liveothello.com and Youtube @WorldOthello</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lcuff</author><text>I agree.  As a nuance, (and I&amp;#x27;m not an Othello player, but a chess player) in many positions in chess, there are many moves that, while not the best, are just slightly worse. Finding the &amp;#x27;refutation&amp;#x27; for a weaker move is the measure of the strength of a player, and playing a few slightly weaker moves in a row will almost certainly take even high level players out of &amp;#x27;book&amp;#x27; (the memorized sequence of best moves). At that point, the strength of the players becomes important, as opposed to how much they have memorized. The strategy, then, is to have a _slightly_ worse position from which one can recover and go on to win. Obviously, if the opponent plays perfectly, it is either a win for him or a draw. Typically the &amp;#x27;slightly weaker&amp;#x27; move still keeps the game a draw. The advantage is not a game-winning sized advantage. I wonder if in Othello there are positions where there are multiple possible moves which &amp;#x27;preserve&amp;#x27; the draw.</text></comment>
<story><title>Othello Is Solved?</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.19387</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>charcircuit</author><text>&amp;gt;That means it&amp;#x27;s still possible to win a game by intentionally deviating from the perfect sequence&lt;p&gt;Someone with perfect strategy would have an answer for any deviation. Playing imperfectly would likely get you into a losing position. There is no way to go from a game being drawn if played perfectly to being winning if the then loser were to be using perfect strategy.</text></item><item><author>cvoss</author><text>This paper &amp;quot;weakly solves&amp;quot; Othello. That means that we know for the initial board state both 1) the final win&amp;#x2F;lose&amp;#x2F;draw outcome (it&amp;#x27;s a draw), and 2) the sequence of moves that should be taken by perfect players to get there (Figure 1, right).&lt;p&gt;In particular, the paper does not &amp;quot;strongly solve&amp;quot; Othello. If you have an arbitrary board state, 1) and 2) are are not necessarily known for it. That means it&amp;#x27;s still possible to win a game by intentionally deviating from the perfect sequence and betting on the fact that your opponent doesn&amp;#x27;t know how to recover.</text></item><item><author>bediger4000</author><text>Does this paper render the championship moot? Is any software based on the paper entered?&lt;p&gt;Is Othello like checkers, where there were mostly draws in high level games?</text></item><item><author>Tepix</author><text>For those interested in the game (it&amp;#x27;s popular among computer science and AI scholars), the Othello world championship is currently underway in Rome, Italy with games live streamed on liveothello.com and Youtube @WorldOthello</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SonOfLilit</author><text>No, the paper only &amp;quot;weakly solves&amp;quot;, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t give a perfect strategy of the type you talk about.&lt;p&gt;Imagine finding a pamphlet written by God that contains a listing of a perfect game of chess. Armed with it, you will still lose easily to Magnus Carlsen. He will deviate fro| the sequence and you won&amp;#x27;t know the perfect responses to his moves.</text></comment>