Othello news

Fun & Chaos: The Double Showdown at the XOT European Championship

7 September 2026
Written by Carlo Affatigato

There were 30 of us in Dortmund. Thirty fearless players ready to test themselves in a completely new arena: the infamous XOT openings, which turn the game into a pure test of analytical vision.

Anyone watching how things played out has surely noticed plenty of surprises compared to standard tournaments. You can lose much more easily, even if you're a top player. The standings are more dynamic, there's a stronger element of randomness shuffling the deck, and even the positions analyzed live were much more dramatic. Often, it wasn't about finding the most analytically natural or safe move, but the one capable of navigating the chaos most effectively.

Therefore, huge congratulations to Felix, the 2026 European Othello XOT Champion, to Michele as runner-up, and to everyone else who finished near the top. But since we experienced it firsthand, it's worth taking a look at what actually makes XOT Othello so unique.

Pure Analytical Vision

In a standard Othello tournament, players typically have a few different weapons at their disposal to succeed. Core Othello skills form the baseline, of course, but alongside them comes the option to do targeted preparation, sharpening other tools that can give you an extra edge.

The recent debate around memorizing long draw sequences is just one of those weapons. Using memory to cut down on real-time calculation, save precious time, and handle the gameplay dynamics top players force on you is one of the things you can build up through hours of study before a major tournament. It doesn't strictly require Othello skills so much as pure memory, and it obviously gives you a concrete advantage. For some, that's just part of the game, while for others it can make the sport boring to watch from the outside. We won't get into that debate here.

Other ways to prepare for a tournament include studying specific players, perhaps steering them onto familiar ground based on their usual openings, or preparing alternative lines to catch opponents off guard. All things considered, the conclusion is obvious: a player can perform much better if they spend hours every day preparing for a specific competition. The longer the preparation, the bigger the potential edge over someone who prepared less, or didn't prepare at all. From this perspective, a standard Othello tournament rewards the player with the highest combination of raw skill plus preparation. And when you think about it, that makes total sense: in every sport, an athlete's success depends not just on natural talent, but on the effort put into training before a specific competition, and it's only right for that effort to be rewarded.

By contrast, with XOT Othello, preparation is essentially off the table (assuming that attempting to memorize every single XOT opening in existence and study its continuations is an almost superhuman feat, and completely impractical in terms of effort versus reward). Without that prep work, XOT Othello comes down to pure skill and raw natural talent. From a purely theoretical standpoint, that's fascinating, and it makes sense why so many players have fallen in love with it, while others still prefer having those surrounding variables that give them more control over the outcome.

So, have we found the perfect answer for the future of Othello? Yes and no, actually. Because alongside the thrill of a competition purely driven by raw skill, there's a subtle, trickier side to it...

The Weight of Chaos

XOT Othello carries a much heavier element of randomness. Chaos on the board isn't the exception, it's the rule. And chaos naturally creates more unpredictable situations, which can lead to a loss even if you execute all your Othello skills to perfection. That explains why we saw lower average scores compared to standard tournaments. Simply put, everyone loses more often. And it isn't something you can prevent with extra preparation or hours of study.

Playing XOT constantly forces you into uncomfortable situations. Taking an edge very early, playing outside the sweet sixteen ahead of time, finding an X-square already occupied, or being forced to play into one ridiculously early... these are all things that can happen in standard Othello too, but there we usually have freedom of choice. We can opt for acceptable continuations in more standard directions, or we can choose to switch openings earlier to avoid landing in positions where we lack confidence.

In XOT, on the other hand, you often don't have that luxury. Either there is no alternative, or there is one, but it leads to an even worse disadvantage. It happens all the time that there's only a single move keeping you afloat, and if you happen to miss it, or reject it because it leads to something completely absurd, the game can effectively be over long before the end.

In short, you just have to embrace the chaos. And because it's chaos, the entropy is higher, and the odds of making a mistake go way up. It feels as if a heavier element of randomness was suddenly introduced, almost like rolling dice at the start of the match. It's still a completely deterministic game, of course, where the outcome depends solely on the decisions players make. But luck comes into play when you land in a position where the only correct move is so absurd or counter-intuitive that practically no human on earth would ever spot it. When that happens, you just have to accept that you lost simply because you were unlucky enough to get dealt an unreasonably difficult board. And that isn't just true for the first eight moves, the ripple effect can carry right through the midgame, or even show up in the final stages.

Naturally, you either love this or you don't. Many of us play Othello rather than Yahtzee or Texas Hold'em precisely because we love the deterministic nature of the game, and might not be thrilled about adding more chaos to it. On the flip side, others welcome it with open arms, feeling that complete control over every variable (including software-backed memorization during prep) is slowly killing the fun. It's the other side of the coin, and something worth keeping in mind if you plan on entering more XOT tournaments in the future.

Personally, I had an absolute blast. As some of you already know, riding the chaos has basically become my modus operandi, so XOT feels much more aligned with how I like to play than standard Othello. Plenty of players feel the same way, while just as many prefer sticking to safer ground. There is no single right answer here, and hopefully both formats will keep developing side by side, offering full variety to both players and spectators.

Either way, we encourage you to take the plunge. Drop the hesitation and dive headfirst into this unpredictable chaos, the wild combinations, the improbable board states, the sudden momentum shifts, the unbelievable comebacks, and the jaw-dropping blunders. Othello needed a shake-up, and now that it's here, it might just become our regular shot of adrenaline.

1st European XOT Championship - Final standings