WHAT IS XOT ?

 

"XOT IS Othello in its purest, most creative form!"        Matthias Berg

 

XOT is a variant of the game of Othello using random openings.

The first 8 moves are played out based on an opening sequence randomly selected from a large predetermined list of openings that lead to a balanced position (established to be "drawing positions" by computer evaluations). The actual game starts with black's move number 9.

The main purpose of XOT is to remove  "opening memorisation" from the game. World class players tend to memorise many opening sequences, sometimes they even play the entire game following a known "draw line". With XOT both players immediately face an unknown position from the start of the game. 

On some online game sites you can find this variant referred as "X-Othello" or simply "Random openings Othello".

For more information check out Matthias Berg's XOT webpage.