GAME OF THE GENERALS VS REVERSI

The Game of the Generals, also called GG or GOG as it is most fondly called, or simply The Generals, is an educational war game invented in the Philippines by Sofronio H. Pasola Jr. in 1970. Its Filipino name is "Salpakan." It can be played within twenty to thirty minutes. It is designed for two players, each controlling an army, and a neutral arbiter (sometimes called a referee or an adjutant) to decide the results of "challenges" between opposing playing pieces, that like playing cards, have their identities hidden from the opponent. The game simulates armies at war trying to overpower, misinform, outflank, outmaneuver, and destroy each other. It optimizes the use of logic, memory, and spatial skills. It simulates the "fog of war" because the identities of the opposing pieces are hidden from each player and can only be guessed at by their location, movements, or from the results of challenges. The game allows only one side's plan to succeed, although a player may change plans during the course of the game. In addition, there are two different ways of winning the game (see below). Certain strategies and tactics, however, allow both sides the chance of securing a better idea of the other's plan as the game progresses. Players can also speak or gesture to their opponents during matches, hoping to create a false impression about the identity of their pieces or their overall strategy. This game was invented by Sofronio H. Pasola, Jr. with the inspiration of his son Ronnie Pasola. The Pasolas first tried the Game of the Generals on a chessboard. Even then, the pieces had no particular arrangement. There were no spies in the experimental game; but after Ronnie Pasola remembered the James Bond movies and Mata Hari, he added the Spies. Making the pieces hidden was the idea of the Pasolas after remembering card games. The Game of the Generals' public introduction was on February 28, 1973. After the game was made, it angered many Filipino chess players thinking that Pasola was trying to denigrate or supplant chess.

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Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. It was invented in 1883. Othello, a variant with a change to the board's initial setup, was patented in 1971. There are sixty-four identical game pieces called disks (often spelled "discs"), which are light on one side and dark on the other. Players take turns placing disks on the board with their assigned color facing up. During a play, any disks of the opponent's color that are in a straight line and bounded by the disk just placed and another disk of the current player's color are turned over to the current player's color. The objective of the game is to have the majority of disks turned to display one's color when the last playable empty square is filled. Goro Hasegawa claims that the origin of Reversi/Othello dates back 5,000 years. However, there is solid evidence that a game similar to Reversi/Othello existed since the 19th century. Each of the disks' two sides corresponds to one player; they are referred to here as light and dark after the sides of Othello pieces, but any counters with distinctive faces are suitable. The game may for example be played with a chessboard and Scrabble pieces, with one player letters and the other backs. The historical version of Reversi starts with an empty board, and the first two moves made by each player are in the four central squares of the board. The players place their disks alternately with their colors facing up and no captures are made. A player may choose to not play both pieces on the same diagonal, different from the standard Othello opening. It is also possible to play variants of Reversi and Othello where the second player's second move may or must flip one of the opposite-colored disks (as variants closest to the normal games). For the specific game of Othello, the game begins with four disks placed in a square in the middle of the grid, two facing white-side-up, two dark-side-up, so that the same-colored disks are on a diagonal. Convention has this such that the dark-side-up disks are to the north-east and south-west (from both players' perspectives), though this is only marginally consequential: where sequential openings' memorization is preferred, such players benefit from this. The dark player moves first.

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