We are delighted to announce the release of a new variant, Grand Othello, that's right Othello but on a 10x10 board!

You can find a description of the rules here: playstrategy.org/variant/flipello10

PlayStrategy will also have an Introductory Arena tournament for Grand Othello on Sunday 10th July 17:45 (UTC), with the Introductory trophy up for grabs: playstrategy.org/tournament/yOKhQBCJ

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The Introductory Arena is timed so its just before the weekly PlayStrategy Medley - where Grand Othello could feature: playstrategy.org/swiss/5lJSKxKz

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Nice! There are also 2 interesting variants for 10*10 othello which features 8 corners instead of the normal 4, one of those variants is Octagon 88, a variant playable in eOthello.com played in a 10*10 board, however the corner squares and the squares orthogonally adjacent to it is out of bounds, leaving 88 squares and 8 corners.
Another variant is Annexation Cross 10, a variant in Jocly (the actual Jocly is shut down around a year ago (or maybe 2?) but someone created Jocly Games Panel, which is basically a "mini-Jocly") with 10*10 board, but now the corner squares and every squares up to 2 squares away from the corner squares (including squares a knight's move away from the corner squares) is out of bounds, leaving a cross shaped board with 64 squares and 8 corners. Note that there's also Annexation Cross, played in a 8*8 board with the corner squares and squares adjacent to it being out of bounds, leaving a cross shaped board with 48 squares and 8 corners.

I think it'd be interesting if one of those variants are added to Playstrategy, especially for the Annexation Cross variants, since i'm not aware of any website (other than Jocly or Jocly Games Panel) offering online play for any of those variants.

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Thanks, we will take a look and add them to our list of variants to possibly support. The ones that change the board shape look fun, like the Annexation Cross and Octagon88! There is also anti-Othello which could be interesting.
At the moment I don't think these variants are supported within the Fairy-Stockfish Engine, if they were then it would be a lot simpler to add them to the site, and they would come with an AI.

I want to ask, why is the Fairy-Stockfish unable to support Othello variants that just change the board shape and nothing else? Is it on the board shape, or is there something else that makes Fairy-Stockfish unable to support those variants?

I think @Jheps means they aren't supported by default and so we would have to write some config to add them and test them, and then also do some changes on PlayStrategy's side - PlayStrategy doesn't have irregular board shapes yet and there will be some stuff to do to make that work seamlessly. As such its not a zero effort job to include and so we can't just do it at the drop of a hat when we've got other things we're working on.

I agree they look like fun variants and add more depth than Grand Othello. I expect they'll make it onto PlayStrategy given a bit more time so watch this space!

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