The 1st World Othello Championship
Tokyo, Japan 28-29 October, 1977 .
The 1st WOC (originally called "International Othello Tournament") was held in October 1977. In the early years each country taking part could only have one representative at the WOC. However the organisers defined qualification rules that limited the number of participants even further. While several national championships were organised all over the world, only Japan, the USA and Great Britain would be "pre-qualified" and be able to send their national representatives at the 1977 WOC. The other countries would have to first send their national representatives to international qualification tournaments for regions such as "Europe", "Scandinavia" and Asia (not including Japan) and only the winners of those larger tournaments would be able to go to the WOC.
A European WOC qualification was held in Monte Carlo. The winner would represent "Europe".
France, Italy, The Netherlands, West Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Spain participated in this qualification tournament which was organised by Anjar Co. (US sponsors of the WOC) and the Othello licensees in Europe.
Sylvain Perez of France, a youth player, won the championship, and the runner-up was Michel Rengot-Blanchard, also from France. This tournament has sometimes been called "the European WOC" or "the first European championship".
A Scandinavian qualification tournament was also planned but was canceled because the Othello licensees in the Scandinavian countries didnt have time to promote the tournament. It was postponed to the following year for the 1978 WOC. Instead a young Norwegian chess Grand Master was chosen to represent Scandinavia and Norway.
Asia did not organise any international qualification tournament either. A staff member from the Filipino company, which was a reseller of the Othello board game, joined the tournament.
Six players in total were scheduled to participate, but the winner of the "European WOC qualification" tournament, Sylvain Perez, was not allowed to play since he was deemed "too young to play the WOC". Therefore the runner-up of that tournament, Michel Rengot-Blanchard, was asked to attend instead. However Rengot-Blanchard and all the other players from the tournament thought this was the wrong decision, so they refused to attend the WOC. The consequence of this decision, and the fact that no regional qualifying tournaments were organised in other areas, was that the WOC organisers decided that in the following years these larger qualifying tournaments should be removed. Instead, each country with an Othello licensee would send a player to the WOC.
As none of the players from the "European WOC qualification" went to Tokyo, the final number of international participants for the inaugural WOC was just five.
Decisions about future WOCs.
In 1977 there was no World Othello Federation yet, as it was created 29 years later. A World Othello Championship committee (WOCc) was created by Goro Hasegawa, Othello Co. and Jim Becker from Anjar Co. Anjar would be responsible for all WOCs outside Japan, and Othello Co, for WOCs in Japan. Jim Becker was nominated "chairman" of that committee, most likely because Anjar was responsible for most of the WOCs (9 out of 10 WOCs were held outside Japan).
The owner of Othello, Goro Hasegawa, and the companies who sold Othello all over the world, Tskuda (Japan) and Anjar Co. (USA) decided that the WOC should be held in Japan every 10 years starting with 1986, and in the USA also every 10 years starting in 1991. The other years it should be held in Europe. It was decided that Anjar Co. would organise the WOC all over the world except for Japan which would be organised by Tsukuda.
The first WOC was held in Tokyo, Japan 28-29 October, 1977.
The 1977 WOC was organised by the Japan Othello Federation and sponsored by Anjar Co, Yomiuri Shimbun and Tsukada Original Co.
The five players were Hiroshi Inoue from Japan (29 years old, Mikimoto employee), Thomas Heiberg from Norway (21 years old, chess master, student), Carol Jacobs from the USA (27 years old, university mathematics teacher), Alan Woch from the United Kingdom (30 years old) and Rey Ilagan from the Phillippines (23 years old, civil servant).
The main tournament format was a single round-robin consisting of just 4 rounds. Hiroshi Inoue won all 4 games quite convincingly. Thomas Heiberg and Carol Jacobs were both tied on 2 wins but Heiberg advanced to the final due to a better disc total (he also defeated Jacobs in the second round).
The final of the very first WOC was just one game (the following year the final format would be changed to a best-of-three). Inoue narrowly defeated Heiberg in the final by just four discs, which was the world champion's only close game in the tournament.
|
"The Othello game which was born and raised in Japan, has been released in 32 countries this year and its fan base is steadily expanding. I can assure you that it will soon come to be enjoyed in more than 100 countries. In the midst of constant conflict in in the international community, countries around the world will gather around one game and do their best to win. I think that this is a very unique and wonderful thing."
|
 Mr. Jim Becker, Anjar Co. |
||||||||
| "It is a great joy to become the long-awaited world champion which cannot be expressed well in words. ……. The players from each country took pride in representing their nations, and I felt that their energy and spirit were extraordinary. " Hiroshi Inoue - The 1977 World Othello Champion |
|
||||||||
|
1st World Othello Championship Final 1977.10.29. Tokyo
|
|||||||||
|
Information from Othello Bulletin Anjar and Goro Hasegawa book Othello 2003 |
|
|