Pointy Stone is a free Windows computer program that plays the popular game of Othello, (also known as Reversi,) and follows all the standard rules. It plays well enough to provide a challenge for any human player. However, even the 2 ply skill level will be quite tough for those new to serious Othello... when you find that it really isn't too tough to beat, then you'll know you've become a good player. On first start up Pointy defaults to easy (1 ply).
Feature overview:
- Strong AI that uses learned patterns to evaluate the board and can search millions of positions/second- Internet Play via a direct connection to friend. Read more about Internet Play
- Opening book to add common openings and an element of randomness to games.
- Many difficulty levels, including different play-stayles
- Save/Load games and read transcripts of most types
- Analysis Mode and info display on Pointy's thinking
Download
Do you think you have what it takes to beat Pointy Stone at his own game? Click below to find out.Download Pointy Stone 3.5 64-bit (530 KB): Full Pointy Stone 3.5
What's New for 3.50, 3.45 and 3.40
Older Versions:
Download Pointy Stone 3.5
Download Pointy Stone 3.45
Pointy Stone 3.5 Source Code on Github
Files:
| Pointy.exe | The main program. (All the graphics are also in the .exe) |
| book.pnt | The opening book. |
| pointy.txt | Text about the program... same as info on this web page. |
| openings.txt | This allows Pointy Stone to display the names of common openings. |
| patterns.jef | The precomputed pattern values that Pointy uses to evaluate the position. |
If Pointy seems to be always beating you, in addition to changing the difficulty level, you can go to the Brain and select RandomMax (or Greedy). The 3 brains have different styles of play.
( I found the openings.txt names from various sources on the internet ... The ones from Robert Gatliff seem pretty standard... I don't guarantee the accuracy of the others. )
Note: There is a possibility I'll release the Pointy 3 source. I've recently cleaned it up some. But I noticed that there are now a lot of strong othello programs that are open source (see links), so I haven't felt the need to finish checking the code and put together a source release.
Comments & Suggestions & Bug Reports are welcome. Mail me.
Requirements:
It is for Windows only. Pointy should run fine on most modern computers. Think time will be slower on slower PCs.
At least 26 MB free memory recommended for the transposition table, and various move tables,
and evaluation tables.