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I read that same byte article, wrote a basic version that played the heuristic way, and was unable to beat it. Good times.

Not the article you mention but there is a fun article in this BYTE from 1981 on a computer Othello tournament that really illustrates how far we've come. This edition of tha mag is also notable for its point in time history, as it has an editorial about the coming IBM PC and quanit ads from Apple and Microsoft that give no clue as to the revolution coming.

https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/198107_Byte_Magazine_Vol_0...

A very effective heuristic is to count the number of legal moves for each player.