Welcome to Matthias-Berg.eu

Othello/Reversi is a strategic game played by two players on a board with 64 squares using two-colored discs. Invented in England in the late 19th century, Reversi was licensed by Goro Hasegawa in the 1970's, updated with some new rules and renamed Othello. Since then, Othello has been sold worldwide and it is now the most sold strategy board game under license. Since 1977 there have been annual World Othello Championships held in cities around the globe.

Matthias Berg, Liya Ye, Othello inventor Goro Hasegawa 2006 in Mito, Japan

In June 1999 I began playing Othello online. After a few months I quickly became stronger at it and got in contact with many more good players. In April 2000 I went to my first tournament in Amstelveen in the Netherlands and was surprisingly successful, even beating the tournaments eventual winner. At this tournament I met Andreas Höhne, another player from Germany who was also playing his first tournament. Together we went to many tournaments and presently, (early 2012), we are the only German players to have both reached a WOC semi final and won a German national Othello title.

Andreas Höhne, Takeshi Murakami, Matthias Berg, Copenhagen 2000

In June 2000 I founded the Othello Club Deutschland. That summer I organised the first German championships which was a qualification tournament for the World Othello Championship held that fall. Since 2000 I have participated in every World Othello Championship and many other international tournaments. Moreover, there are 1-2 tournaments in Germany organised by me every year.

Takuji Kashiwabara, Matthias Berg, David Shaman, Marc Tastet in Amstelveen 2002

My two biggest successes in my early years was a 4th place at the WOC 2001 in New York and overall victory at one of the strongest European Grand Prix tournaments in 2002 in Amstelveen, NL.

From 2007 to 2011 I have reached the WOC semi finals four times. The most successful was in 2009 when I reached the final.

Andreas Höhne, Matthias Berg, Sebastian Schmidt. The German WOC Team 2009.

Othello has influenced my life in many positive ways. I have travelled to many countries on three continents and have met friends from around the world. You can find an overview over my journeys here.

During my studies of Software system engineering at Potsdam University and Diplom-Informatik in Bonn I have been affected and motivated by Othello. I have learned programming languages and new technologies with the perspective in mind of, "how can I apply what I have learned for Othello?" That made me search for examples on my own and certainly helped learning considerably.

I have created several websites (e.g. www.othello-club.de), the Othello applet XOB to display Othello positions in message boards, the program XOT for random openings, the game server project ZoLu and an unpublished practice program with MySQL connection.