Othello Blog

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I plan to be staying at the Hotel Stanley (the tournament hotel) for my entire trip- that’s Monday evening through the next early Tuesday morning . Just putting that out there in case anyone wants to contact me. I will try to let the front desk know that people can call up to me, etc. And if you know me well, or perhaps if you don’t, I’m interested in possibly sharing a double room with someone while I am there. So email me about that, or email Benkt Steentoft, who I think will have more frequent Internet access and said he would mention anything that comes over to me.

See you all in Athens .

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In the interest of spreading the news far and wide, so that nobody thinks I entered the WOC as a surprise player, and so that anyone who is interested can see how it happened, here is what David Parsons (president of the USOA), wrote to the NAOthelloTourneys mailing list:

Yohannes Chitra reported last week that he is unable to attend the World Championship to play for the U.S. Team.

Per our qualification rules, this meant that Jian Cai would become the third member, which would open the woman player position. The last-minute offer for the woman position was therefore extended and subsequently declined by Sharon Katzman and Cathy Elliot. While Jian will be in Athens and could represent both the U.S. team and the woman contender position, she kindly offered to give up her U.S. Team position to allow four people to attend from the U.S..

After much discussion amongst the top U.S. players, it was agreed to extend the offer to Ben Seeley, who I’m very happy to report ACCEPTED!

After a year hiatus from Othello, I’m sure Ben will be a little rusty, but we’re so very happy to have him back, playing for the U.S. Team in this year’s World Championship. And so, the U.S. Team this year will be:

Eddie Williams
Randy Fang
Ben Seeley
+
Jian Cai (woman representative)

This change has been reported to and accepted by Benkt Steentoft, the WOC tournament director.

You can bet that I’ll be watching the event, broadcast from the website as it takes place:

http://www.worldothellofederation.com/woc2007/index.htm

Go, team!!

Ortiz - Hall
White to play

Black gets 5 of the last 7 moves… and loses 47-17 ?!? Just wanted to share.

From the final team qualification tournament in Japan:

Tetsuya Nakajima won, with Kazuhiro Sakaguchi placing 2nd, Kenta Tominaga third (all had one loss apiece), Takeshi Murakami 8th, Hideshi Tamenori 9th, Kunihiko Tanida 10th, and Brian Rose 14th (with 4 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses).

Congratulations to Nakajima for his second-straight team qualification, which is a rare feat in Japan .

Official results can be found here- http://www.othello.gr.jp/ps2/o24.html

Can you name the worst move in this position?
White to move next:

When I look for the worst moves, I look at the x-squares first.. How about b2? Naw, it’s not that bad when white has parity in that region (b2 a1 b1 for the wedge) How about g7? That’ pretty bad, losing access to h8 without a wedge… but black does not have access to g8 or h7. How about g2? whoa, flipping a lot of pieces AND not poisoning h2.. That would be my vote if I have to pick for the worst move for this position.

So turns out what looks worst to me is the best move. The move g2 not only makes controls the / diagonal, but also flips e4. It manages to force black to play into the sealed odd region to get access to the / diagonal. (There is another way to get access, but it doesn’t work out so well) From that point on, white just wins due to parity.

By the way, g2 is the only winning move. G6 is a draw, and the rest are losing.

Othello is awesome.