REVERSI(6) REVERSI(6)
NAME
reversi - a game of dramatic reversals
SYNOPSIS
/usr/games/reversi [ [ -r ] file ]
DESCRIPTION
Reversi (also known as `friends', `Chinese friends' and
`Othello') is played on an 8×8 board using two-sided tokens.
Each player takes his turn by placing a token with his side
up in an empty square. During the first four turns, players
may only place tokens in the four central squares of the
board. Subsequently, with each turn, a player must capture
one or more of his opponent's tokens. He does this by plac-
ing one of his tokens such that it and another of his tokens
embrace a solid line of his opponent's horizontally, verti-
cally or diagonally. Captured tokens are flipped over and
thus can be re-captured. If a player cannot outflank his
opponent he forfeits his turn. The play continues until the
board is filled or until no more outflanking is possible.
In this game, your tokens are asterisks and the machine's
are at-signs. You move by typing in the row and column at
which you want to place your token as two digits (1-8),
optionally separated by blanks or tabs. You can also type
c to continue the game after hitting break (this is only
necessary if you interrupt the machine while it is
deliberating).
g n to start reversi playing against itself for the next n
moves (or until the break key is hit).
n to stop printing the board after each move.
o to start it up again.
p to print the board regardless.
q to quit (without dishonor).
s to print the score.
Reversi also recognizes several commands which are valid
only at the start of the game, before any moves have been
made. They are
f to let the machine go first.
h n to ask for a handicap of from one to four corner
REVERSI(6) REVERSI(6)
squares. If you're good, you can give the machine a
handicap by typing a negative number.
l n to set the amount of lookahead used by the machine in
searching for moves. Zero means none at all. Four is
the default. Greater than six means you may fall
asleep waiting for the machine to move.
t n to tell reversi that you will only need n seconds to
consider each move. If you fail to respond in the
alloted time, you forfeit your turn.
If reversi is given a file name as an argument, it will
checkpoint the game, move by move, by dumping the board onto
file. The -r option will cause reversi to restart the game
from file and continue logging.