Great Board Games of The Ancient World: Guidebook

Topic Subtopic
Hobby & Leisure Leisure
Great Board Games of

the Ancient World
Guidebook
Tristan Donovan
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PRODUCTION
Studio Operations Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JIM M. ALLEN
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EDITORIAL & DESIGN SERVICES

Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FARHAD HOSSAIN
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MARGI WILHELM
Research Associate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L. VIOLA KOZAK
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Tristan
Donovan
Tristan Donovan is a journalist, nonfiction writer, and gaming enthusiast.
His books include Replay: The History of Video Games; It’s All a Game: A
Short History of Board Games; Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World; and Feral
Cities: Adventures with Animals in the Urban Jungle. He also contributed to
the Encyclopedia of Video Games and Video Games around the World. He is a
member of the judging panel of The Strong National Museum of Play’s World
Video Game Hall of Fame and has peer-reviewed papers on video games
for the Digital Games Research Association and MIT Press. As a journalist,
he has contributed to the BBC, The Times, Eurogamer, and The Guardian,
among other outlets.
—i—
Table of Contents
About Tristan Donovan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
1. Bearing Off: The Story of Backgammon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Senet: Egypt’s Game of the Afterlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Chess: The Evolution of a Strategy Icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4. Chess’s Eastern Cousins: Shogi and Xiangqi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5. Go: A Game of Near-Infinite Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6. Sowing Seeds: Africa’s Mancala Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
7. Decoding the Past: The Royal Game of Ur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8. Pachisi: India’s Iconic Racing Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9. Patolli: The Lost Game of the Aztecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
10. All in a Row: Men’s Morris to Tic-Tac-Toe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
11. King Me! Alquerque and Checkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
12. Morality Play: Snakes, Ladders, and Geese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
— ii —
Bearing Off: 1
TABLE OF
The Story of CONTENTS
Backgammon
B ckgammon is one of the oldest board

a
games still played today. Its lineage
stretches back more than 5,000 years. It
first appeared somewhere in the Middle
East, putting down its deepest roots in
Persia (modern Iran). It has since spread
throughout the world.
—1—
1. Bearing Off: The Story of Backgammon
The Backgammon Board

Like most ancient board games, the rules of backgammon have varied over
the centuries. But the backgammon board is one of the most distinctive and
instantly recognizable among ancient board games.
On each side of the board, there are thin triangles pointing into the middle.
These triangles are called points, and there are 12 on each side, adding up to
24 in all. They are the spaces along which both players’ checkers move.
The board is also split vertically by a divider called the bar, which breaks the
board into four zones. Two are known as the outer boards, and two are the
home, or inner, boards.
—2—
This is the normal starting arrangement for each player’s 15 checkers, which
are the pieces players move around the board. The goal of backgammon is to
be the first player to move all of your checkers off the board. You do that by
moving your checkers from their starting positions to your home board and
then off the board.
Movement is controlled by the game’s two six-sided dice. To decide who goes
first, both players roll one die. The player with the highest roll goes first.
Backgammon lets players use their dice rolls in different ways. For instance,
if a player rolls a 1 and a 4, they could move any one checker one point and
another checker four points. Alternatively, they could combine the dice and
move a single checker five points.
—3—
But the checkers can’t just move anywhere. It’s illegal to move a checker onto
a point occupied by two or more of your opponent’s pieces. However, if there’s
only one opponent checker there, you can move there and kick the opponent’s
piece onto the bar, which is somewhat like a jail for captured pieces.
Rolling a double is particularly fortuitous in backgammon because it is treated

as if you rolled four dice rather than two. That gives numerous options.
Whenever one of your checkers gets knocked out, you have to use one of your
next rolls to move that checker off the bar and back into the game. Checkers
from the bar come in from the edge of your opponent’s home board—namely,
as far away as possible from your own home board.
The Blitz
Judging when to push forward fast and when to dig in is important in
backgammon, but pushing your luck can pay off too. And thanks to the dice,
high-risk strategies are sometimes rewarded in backgammon.
One example is the so-called blitz strategy. In this approach, a player tries to
block every point inside their home board. By doing that, the opponent will
be unable to bring any checkers back into the game after they get knocked
out. The rule is they must use their turn to get their checkers off the bar and
back into the game before moving any other pieces. By blocking every point
in your opponent’s home board, you leave them unable to make a legal move,
and so they miss their turn. The blitz is a hard strategy to pull off, but if
successful, your opponent will be left unable to do anything but watch as you
plod toward certain victory.
—4—
THE BLITZ
The End Game

Once all of a player’s checkers are in their home board, they start bearing off,
which is the process of moving one’s checkers off the board. The first player
to finish bearing off wins the game. Here’s an example of how it works: If a
player rolls a 6 and a 2, they can remove a checker from the sixth point and
the second point, or they could move another checker two points toward
the exit. Additionally, during bearing off, if you roll a number higher than
your farthest-along checker, you can remove a checker from the next lowest
point. For instance, rolling a six might allow you to bear off a checker from
point five.
—5—
If a player finishes bearing off their pieces after their opponent has also begun
bearing off their checkers, they win a single-point victory. But there are better
ways to win. If you finish bearing off before your opponent starts bearing off,
you get a two-point victory. That’s known as a gammon.
The ultimate victory is a backgammon, or three-point victory. To win a

backgammon victory, you need to finish bearing off while your opponent still
has a checker in your home board or on the bar. This matters because if you’re
playing for money, the victory points multiply the amount the loser pays the
winner. For instance, if you play a game for $10 and win a two-point gammon
victory, the bet doubles to $20, and if you win a three-point backgammon
victory, the loser owes you $30.
The Doubling Cube

If you buy a backgammon set today, you’re likely to find a doubling cube.
Appealing to high-stakes gamblers, this element was added to backgammon
in the late 1920s. It is a six-sided die bearing the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and
64. It’s not used for rolling. It’s there to keep track of how often the players
have doubled the opening stakes in their game.
As an example of the doubling cube in action, if a player is off to a good

start in a game with $10 stakes, they might conclude a turn by turning the
doubling cube to show the number 2. This doubles the bet to $20. The other
player can refuse the doubling and forfeit the game, but that will cost the
forfeiting player $10.
If the player accepts the doubling, they take control of the doubling cube
and can therefore raise the stakes again if fortune breaks in their favor. Then
control passes back to the first player who doubled, and so on. In this example
game, by the time the doubling cube shows an 8, the pot will be $80, and by
the time it shows 64, the pot will be $640. Doubling can even continue past
that point. And a two-point gammon or three-point backgammon victory will
further increase the money that changes hands.
—6—
Reading
Deyong, Lewis. Playboy’s Book of Backgammon. New York: Playboy
Press, 1977.
Donovan, Tristan. It’s All a Game: The History of Board Games from
Monopoly to Settlers of Catan. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Jacoby, Oswald, and John R. Crawford. The Backgammon Book. London:
Penguin, 1976.
—7—
Senet: Egypt’s 2
TABLE OF
Game of the CONTENTS
Afterlife
T e ancient Egyptians frequently played a

h
game called senet. This game was popular
for the entire 3,000-year life span of their
civilization. Yet despite its popularity over
three millennia, senet remains a mystery
in many ways. It was played in everyday
life by common people, and yet there
are also plenty of depictions of ancient
Egypt’s nobles and rulers playing it. It was
a game rich in religious meaning, yet the
surviving records of the game show it was
also played for stakes. And even though
Egyptologists have found many references
and artifacts related to senet, its rules
remain a riddle worthy of the sphinx.
—8—
2. Senet: Egypt’s Game of the Afterlife
A Senet Board and Pieces’

Characteristics
In the late 1920s, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team removed
and catalogued many important artifacts from the tomb of the Egyptian
pharaoh Tutankhamun. One of the boards recovered from Tutankhamun’s
tomb is a useful resource on the subject of senet.
As one might expect from a set made for a pharaoh, the senet board is both
elaborate and expensively made. It comes complete with its own sleigh-like
table, fashioned out of ebony. The table’s four legs are shaped like those of
a feline, and the paws rest on small cushions of gold. The board is made of
ivory and divided up by strips of wood to create three rows of 10 squares, or
30 squares in total. The senet board’s 30-square arrangement is one of senet’s
defining characteristics. The board also features hieroglyphs.
—9—
Underneath the board is a drawer for storing the game’s playing pieces. Senet
features 10 playing pieces in all: 5 tall ones that resemble chess pawns, and
5 shorter ones that look like squat cotton reels. It would, therefore, seem
that senet is a game of pawns versus reels. From tomb paintings of people
playing senet, Egyptologists have concluded that the game begins with the
rival playing pieces lined up in an alternating sequence along the top row of
the board.
Presumably, the task is to get all of one’s pieces—or as many as possible—to

a final square in the bottom right of the board. Therefore, senet appears to be
a race game. The goal is to get your pieces to the end before your opponent
does so.
It appears that to move pieces, players use four throwing sticks. They
introduce change to the game. The blank side of the sticks represents 0, and
the colored side represents 1. Tossing the sticks in the air means they will land
with the 0 or 1 side facing up. For instance, if a player throws the four sticks
and ends up with two sticks displaying the 0 side and two sticks displaying
the 1 side, they can move two squares. The possible movements in a given
turn range from no squares to four squares.
Senet’s Other Rules and Purpose

Other rules and nuances have, unfortunately, been lost to time. Researchers
can, however, try to piece together the rules by reviewing the scraps of
information and the various boards the ancient Egyptians left behind. There
are also some surviving wall paintings and writings about senet to work with.
It is thanks to these artifacts that we know the game is termed senet, which
can be translated as “door,” “passing,” or “exit.” These artifacts also confirm
the notion suggested by the two distinctive sets of playing pieces that senet is
a competitive game for two players.
— 10 —
Conversely, one painting from the tomb of Nefertari, the wife of Pharaoh
Ramesses II, shows her playing senet alone. This raises a question: Why
would someone decorate her tomb with an image of her playing by herself?
One line of thought among Egyptologists is that this painting exists because
senet was more than a mere plaything. It was also a tool of religion. Symbols
on later senet boards offer support to the idea that the game represents that
journey of the soul.
— 11 —
Egyptologist Peter Piccione has floated the idea that maybe senet came to be
seen as a divination tool. Perhaps ancient Egyptians believed that by playing
senet, they could learn the fate that awaited them in the afterlife because the
results of every throw are divinely determined rather than merely based on
luck. That reading of the game would explain the mystery of why Queen
Nefertari was playing alone.
Senet among Everyday Egyptians

Most of the senet boards that have survived and all the images we have of
the game being played were found in the tombs of the rich and powerful. It
seems likely that game boards for the ancient Egyptian elite are not going to
be representative of every senet set. And it’s easy to imagine that a senet board
connected to a burial might contain more religious imagery than one for
everyday use.
Still, we do know some information about senet away from the grand tombs.
Some senet boards have been found in the ruins of worker villages and other
places associated with ordinary Egyptians. Unsurprisingly, the boards of
everyday people were far simpler than the lavish sets owned by their rulers.
The common people’s boards were often made from cheap slabs of limestone
rather than ebony and ivory.
Notably, most of these everyday senet boards had relatively few markings.
One reason might be education. Most ancient Egyptians were peasant farmers
or laborers who were never taught to read or write. There would be no point
in putting hieroglyphs on senet boards used by those who couldn’t read them.
But regardless of the exact reason, the lack of markings on the boards of
normal folk suggests there may have been a dichotomy in senet’s role within
ancient Egyptian society. In the temples, it may have been a game of ritual
and mysticism. But on the streets outside, people probably just played senet
for entertainment. Senet may have coexisted in ancient Egypt as both a holy
object and an amusement.
— 12 —
Some senet players may have also been drawn in by the prospect of winning
big by gambling on the outcome of the game. The evidence isn’t conclusive,
but a number of the surviving writings about the game allude to it being a
gamblers’ game.
Senet’s Demise
An important question is how a game endured for 3,000 years and then
simply vanished. One factor seems to be its lack of spread: Senet was a game
played in ancient Egypt, but it seems that it was rarely played beyond Egypt’s
borders. A few senet boards have been found in the Levant, the region of
the Middle East that now contains Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and
Syria. But these boards were found in the ruins of ancient Egyptian trading
outposts, which suggests it wasn’t being played by the locals.
Cyprus was the only place beyond Egypt that seemed to embrace senet. More
than 400 senet boards have been discovered on the island, all dating from
1700 to 1050 BCE. These finds suggest that Cyprus did get into senet for
several centuries but lost interest in the game long before ancient Egypt’s
demise. Senet’s failure to catch on outside Egypt is a bit puzzling.
As for senet’s downfall, the evidence is brutally clear. After 3,000 years of
senet, the decline began in 332 BCE, when Alexander the Great led his
armies into Egypt, subdued all resistance, and declared himself the new
pharaoh. After a century of rule by Alexander and his heirs, ancient Egypt
began to crumble, disintegrating slowly in the face of droughts, rebellions,
and widespread corruption. Then, in 30 BCE, the Roman Empire moved
in and turned the once-great kingdom into its newest province. In the
historical record, soon after the Roman invasion, all traces of senet disappear.
Instead, games that placed more emphasis on strategy and wits over luck and
divination rose in popularity.
— 13 —
Reading
Griffith Institute. “Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation.”
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut/.
Parlett, David. Parlett’s History of Board Games. Battleboro, VT:
Echo Point, 2018.
Piccione, Peter A. “In Search of the Meaning of Senet.” Archaeology 33
(July/August 1980).
— 14 —
Chess: The 3
TABLE OF
Evolution of a CONTENTS
Strategy Icon
A t its zenith, the Gupta dynasty ruled

much of what is now northern India,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It lasted from
the 4th century CE to the tail end of
the 6th century. In the twilight decades
of the Gupta empire, an exciting new
board game was created. It was termed
chaturanga, and it was a game of
tabletop warfare. Chaturanga’s legacy
is huge. It would evolve into the modern
game known in the West as chess. To the
East, Chaturanga also evolved into the
variants xiangqi and shogi. This lesson
follows chaturanga’s journey to the West
and shows how it morphed into chess.
— 15 —
3. Chess: The Evolution of a Strategy Icon
Chaturanga’s Origins
Archaeologists and historians face the challenge of triangulating chaturanga’s
origins from the patchy clues left behind. The evidence suggests that
chaturanga probably existed by the time the Gupta empire collapsed in the
mid-6th century. It also seems to have first emerged in the Punjab region of the
subcontinent, which today straddles eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.
Chaturanga was played on an uncheckered

board of eight squares by eight squares. In
ancient India, these boards were termed
ashtapada and were used to play a variety
of different games. While chaturanga’s
precise origins are unknown, we can be fairly
confident that it stood out from the other
games of the time. That’s because of its playing
pieces. The playing pieces of most ancient
games are abstractions. Examples include the
ASHTAPADA round checkers of backgammon or the pebbles
used in the ancient Chinese strategy game go.
But chaturanga was different. Instead of simple markers, its wooden playing
pieces were carved so that they resembled a real-life army—the kind of army
the Gupta rulers used to build their empire. There were foot soldiers, war
elephants, horsemen, chariots, and even a raja (or chief). There was also a
mantri—the Sanskrit word for a government minister.
These pocket-sized fighters make the link between chaturanga and chess
apparent. The foot soldiers are just like the pawns of chess: They move one
square forward and capture diagonally. If they reach the far end of the board,
they can be promoted into an already-captured piece.
— 16 —
The chariots function like rooks. They can move any number of spaces
horizontally or vertically, but they can’t pass through other pieces. The horse
riders are chaturanga’s equivalent of knights and move the same way: leaping
around the board in L-shapes. The raja is the equivalent of the king, and it
can move one square in any direction.
However, there are some divergences between chaturanga and chess as well.
The mantri occupies the same board position as the queen in chess, but the
mantri isn’t as powerful. It can only move a single square diagonally. The
elephant, meanwhile, is the ancient ancestor of the chess bishop; however, no
one is sure how it moved.
There are some other differences between chaturanga and modern-day chess
too. For example, chaturanga doesn’t have castling or en passant, which lets
pawns capture other pawns who have just moved next to them horizontally.
In chaturanga, pawns also can’t move two squares on their first move. Those
modifications came during chess’s surge of popularity in medieval Europe.
Checkmating the enemy raja remains the goal in chaturanga, but it isn’t the
only way to win. For instance, a player who captures their rival’s entire army
except for the raja will
also win.
Interestingly, chaturanga
wasn’t the only game to
use these playing pieces.
Another game, termed
chaturaji, was also doing
the rounds in ancient
India. It was also played
on an ashtapada and used
the same raja, elephant,
pawn, and horseman
pieces seen in chaturanga.
Chaturaji stands out for
being a four-player game
that uses dice.
CHATURAJI
— 17 —
Chaturanga’s Spread
After chaturanga took root in India, its distinctive pieces and strategic play
quickly caught the attention of the traders who traveled the old Silk Road.
These merchants took the game out of the Punjab and carried it westward.
The game made its way through what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan before
reaching the game-loving kingdom of Persia by 700 CE. There, the game
found a warm embrace.
The Persians set about both mastering and tweaking the game. They termed
their version chatrang and turned the rajas into shahs. The mantri became
the farzin, an advisor to the shah, and the chariots also came to known by
their Persian equivalents—rokhs—from which we derive the modern name
for the piece. The Persians also started the tradition of warning opponents if
their shah was threatened with the spoken term shah mat—their equivalent of
saying “checkmate.”
The 7th century was a time of turmoil for Persia’s Sasanian empire, with
widespread conflict among royal figures. Arab followers of the new religion of
Islam saw an opportunity. Muslim armies surged into Persia and made short
work of its disunited rulers. By 650 CE, the Sasanian empire was gone. Now,
Persia was part of a new and mightier empire—the first Islamic caliphate.
The Arab
conquerors took
quickly to the
Persian game of
chatrang. In their
version, termed
shatranj, the Persian
farzin was renamed
the vizier, or
“political advisor.”
Shatranj spread
fast through the
SHATRANJ caliphate.
— 18 —
Moving West
The game continued its westward march. It spread through the growing
Islamic world. From the Middle East, shatranj traveled north and into Russia.
It also moved across North Africa, and in the early 8th century, it followed
the Muslim armies across the Strait of Gibraltar and into Spain.
Soon after, most of the Iberian Peninsula fell under Islamic rule. Christians
and Muslims battled for supremacy over the region for several centuries.
But it was also a period of significant scientific and cultural diffusion
between the Islamic
and Christian worlds.
Along with important
texts and discoveries,
pastimes like shatranj
also crossed the
borders here.
It eventually split into

various versions of
chess. By 760 CE, chess
had reached France.
Swiss monks were
playing it by the end
of the 10th century. By
1050, it had spread to
what is now southern
Germany. Come the
12th century, chess
was being played in
Scandinavia.
— 19 —
Chess made itself part of daily life, especially among Europe’s aristocracy.
Pages training to be knights could be required to learn the game. Chess
masters were added to the ranks of entertainers in royal courts. Chess even
became a game of love, adored by courting couples—primarily because
playing chess was one of the only excuses that allowed a man to visit a
woman’s chambers unaccompanied.
But while Europeans agreed chess was fantastic, there was little agreement on
the rules of how to play the game, and soon every corner of Europe seemed
to have its own take on chess. Germanic players, for example, decided pawns
could advance two spaces on their first move. In the kingdoms of what is now
northern Italy, kings were given the ability to leap over pieces—a first step on
the way to castling.
The pieces also changed to mirror their European equivalents. The horseman
became a knight, the shah a king, and the Arabian vizier a queen. The
elephant was removed. The French turned it into a fool or jester. The
Germans recast it as a messenger, and the Italians made it a flag-carrying
standard bearer. The English replaced it with a bishop. The rook took on a
castle-like appearance.
Speeding Up the Game

The Europeans were seeking ways to address one of chess’s most glaring
problems: speed. Medieval chess was quite slow. The king, the pawns, the
queen, and the bishop were all limited to moving one or two spaces. They
plodded rather than charged around the tabletop battlefield. Only when the
rook got a chance to shoot around the board did chess really convey a sense of
action.
The Europeans weren’t the first to spot this. Arab players did, too. They tried
fixing it by letting players make multiple moves on their first turn. But the
Europeans felt that wasn’t enough, so they set about experimenting with the
rules in a quest to give chess more speed.
— 20 —
In Spain, players started letting dice rolls determine which piece they could
move. Dice chess flourished for a while, but it faded as people turned back to
the more strategic challenge of standard chess.
Elsewhere, players tried enlivening the game by making the board bigger, only
to find that slowed things down even more. Other variants switched up the
starting positions of each piece to shorten the game. Players also turned the
plain boards of old into checkered ones, which made it easier to see the moves.
Somewhere during this several-hundred-year period of chess experimentation,

players began to realize that the answer to speeding up the game lay in letting
the playing pieces move greater distances. The bishop suddenly gained the
ability to travel any distance diagonally. Now, both it and the rook could
sweep aggressively around the board.
— 21 —
The two-space opening move of the pawns that was pioneered in Germanic
Europe began to spread across the continent as well. That made it quicker
to open up the board and move stronger pieces early in the game. Around
the same time, the en passant rule spread widely—except in Italy, where this
change was resisted until the late 19th century.
The most radical change of all was to the queen. From its origins as the
mantri in India, the queen had been limited to a single diagonal move. It was
a weak piece—perhaps the weakest. This was largely reflective of the queen’s
original designation as a courtier or vizier: Few could probably imagine policy
wonks being much good on the battlefield.
But then, at some point during the 15th and 16th centuries, the queen
transformed in Europe. It went from the bottom of the food chain to being
the apex predator. Like a bishop and rook rolled into one, the queen could
now move any number of spaces in any direction.
Suddenly, the queen was a piece to be feared. It would shoot around the
board, taking down enemies with abandon. It made the game fast and
exciting. Now, a game of chess could end in checkmate in just four moves,
and the loss of a queen could be devastating.
The development of all-powerful queens on the chess board seemed timely,

too. Across Europe, female rulers like Jadwiga of Poland, Isabella I of Castile,
and Elizabeth I of England were showing strength.
Chess Crystallizes
With the queen installed as the supreme warrior of the chessboard, chess’s days
of transformation drew to a close. As the industrial age approached, rich, chess-
loving Europeans began traveling to play competitively in other countries, and
they soon realized that the various rules were a bit of a mess.
— 22 —
However, by the mid-19th century, the rules had become settled, and so
had the pieces. The standard chess pieces that we are familiar with today
are called the Staunton chess set. They were designed by the British game
manufacturer John Jaques of London in 1849 and named after the renowned
chess player Howard Staunton, who would later run the first international
chess tournament in 1851.
The standardization of the rules and pieces effectively trapped chess in amber.
After centuries of shape-shifting to fit in with various cultures, chess became
static. Though variants of chess have continued to appear in the past century,
from hexagonal chess to Fischer random chess, they have not spurred further
evolution of the standard game. Chess would, of course, follow the European
colonists across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, but the chess of the
Americas was the same as European chess.
Reading
Murray, H. J. R. A History of Chess. London: Oxford University
Press, 1913.
Shenk, David. The Immortal Game: A History of Chess. New York: Anchor
Press, 2006.
Yalom, Marilyn. Birth of the Chess Queen: A History. New York: Harper
Collins, 2009.
— 23 —
Chess’s Eastern 4
TABLE OF
Cousins: Shogi CONTENTS
and Xiangqi
T is lesson focuses on two Eastern

h
relatives of chess: xiangqi and shogi.
Xiangqi enjoys great popularity in China
and has ancient roots. Shogi, meanwhile,
has Japanese roots and stands out for its
unique treatment of captured pieces.
— 24 —
4. Chess’s Eastern Cousins: Shogi and Xiangqi
Xiangqi Basics
Xiangqi is a game played by millions of people in China, but it has not
gained a large following outside Chinese-speaking communities. The reason
is language. In xiangqi, the pieces are not shaped to indicate what they are.
They are distinguished solely by the character written on them. If you don’t
read Chinese, identifying the pieces is challenging.
— 25 —
A xiangqi board has 64 squares like chess, but there is a big gap in the middle.
That gap is the so-called river, which divides the board between opponents’
territories. Then there are square sections with diagonal lines running through
them. Each of these is known as a gong, a word meaning “castle” or “palace”
in this context. The castle is where a piece termed the jiàng, or “general,” lives.
He’s the equivalent of the king in chess, and he starts the game in the castle.
In xiangqi, unlike in other forms of chess, the pieces move from intersections
of lines to other intersections of lines rather than square to square. For his
part, the general can move one point horizontally or vertically. He can’t move
diagonally or leave the castle.
Another piece is termed the shì, which has been translated into English in
different ways, including “advisor” or “warrior.” There are two per player, and
they start on either side of the general. They can move one point diagonally,
and—like the general—they are confined to the fortress.
Each player starts with five soldiers—xiangqi’s pawns. Soldiers move one
point forward vertically. Once a soldier enters enemy territory, however, that
soldier’s abilities change. It can then move one space forward or sideways.
Each player also gets two chariots. Chariots can move any number of points
horizontally or vertically but can’t jump over pieces.
— 26 —
Another type of piece is the horse. Each player starts with two, and they move
one point horizontally or vertically, then one point diagonally. This creates an
L-shaped movement reminiscent of the moves of chess knights. But xiangqi’s
horses can’t leap over pieces to reach their destination. If another piece is in
the way, they can’t make that move.
Also present for each player are two elephants. Interestingly, the Chinese
word meaning “elephant” is xiang, and qi means “game board.” Therefore,
the literal translation of xiangqi is the “elephant game.” The elephant pieces
move diagonally two points. The elephant can’t jump over pieces to reach its
destination. Despite doing so with ease in real life, in xiangqi, elephants can’t
cross the river.
The last two pieces are the pào, or cannons. Like rooks, the cannons can move
any distance horizontally or vertically. Cannons can only capture pieces if
they jump over another piece on the way. The piece that the cannon leaps
over is called the screen. Because of this unique way of capturing pieces, a
cannon can put a general into check or checkmate even when there’s a piece
between them.
The Goal of Xiangqi

While the pieces in xiangqi differ from Western chess, the goal is the same:
to checkmate the enemy general. But there are other ways to win. If you
stalemate your opponent, you win the game, rather than the game resulting
in a draw. Draws only happen in xiangqi if neither player can achieve a
checkmate or stalemate.
The rules for a stalemate are also stricter and much more complicated in
xiangqi. Generally speaking, you’re not allowed to simply harass the other
player. Using the same piece to continuously place the enemy general in
check, or using one piece to chase another around the board, can result in a
draw or a loss for the harassing player.
— 27 —
Another way the game can end is if the players’ generals end up facing each
other across the board without any other piece blocking their line of sight. If a
player moves a piece and causes this to happen, their opponent’s general is in
check, and they must move their general out of the way or move another piece
between them. If the player in check fails to do this, they lose the game. This
is known as a flying general move, where the winning general moves right
across the board to kill his rival.
Shogi
Japan is home to shogi, another notable game. Its board is nine squares by
nine squares, a clear departure from xiangqi’s arrangement. There are no
castles, and no river either. Four small marks indicate the beginning and end
of each player’s territory. The space in the middle is no man’s land.
As is the case in xiangqi, shogi’s pieces are represented by Japanese characters

rather than by the shapes of figurines. But unlike xiangqi’s round discs, shogi
uses five-sided flat wooden pieces that come to a point at the top. The point
indicates which way is forward for that piece.
The pieces also have characters on both sides, one written in black and the
other in red. The black character indicates a piece is in its regular form, while
the red side is used when a piece has been promoted. Promotion is one of
shogi’s most distinctive elements. Most shogi pieces that enter or move within
enemy territory can be promoted.
Like all chess-type games, the goal of shogi is to checkmate your opponent’s
most important piece. In chess, that piece is the king. In xiangqi, it’s the
general. In shogi, it’s the jeweled king.
The jeweled king moves one space in any direction, and he can’t get
promoted. Next to the king at the start of the game are the two gold generals.
Gold generals move one space horizontally or vertically, or one space
diagonally forward—that is, toward the enemy. Like the jeweled king, gold
generals can’t be promoted.
— 28 —
— 29 —
The two silver generals, meanwhile, move one space in any direction
diagonally, including backward, or they can move one step forward. If a
silver general reaches enemy territory, they can be promoted to a gold general.
To promote a piece, the player simply flips over that piece so that the red
character is now face-up. Players can only promote a piece after moving it,
and once promoted, pieces stay promoted.
The silver general’s attributes reflect how promotion is a tactical decision in shogi.
The gold general does offer one extra movement choice. However, sometimes it
can be beneficial not to promote the silver general if you want a piece that can
move and attack diagonally, or one that can move backward more easily.
Next onto the battlefield is the honorable horse, sometimes known as a

knight. Each player gets two of them. They move forward two squares and
then one square left or right. Honorable horses only move forward, never
retreating. This piece can leap over other pieces when moving. Once behind
enemy lines, the honorable horse can be promoted to a gold general.
Two more pieces are known as lances. They also only press forward. They can
move any distance forward but can’t leap over pieces. Upon promotion, they
become gold generals.
Each player also starts the game with nine soldiers, or pawns. Soldiers can
only move forward one space, and that’s also how they capture other pieces.
On reaching enemy territory, soldiers can be promoted to gold generals.
Another piece is the flying chariot, which moves any distance horizontally or
vertically, though it can’t leap over pieces. Functionally, the flying chariot is
similar to a rook. When a flying chariot makes it into rival territory, it can be
promoted into an extra-powerful dragon king. The dragon king combines the
movement of the jeweled king and the flying chariot. In other words, it can
move one space in any direction, or it can move like a rook.
The final type of piece is termed the kaku, which means “angle mover.” This
is a literal description: Just like a chess bishop, this piece moves any distance
diagonally. On promotion, it becomes a dragon horse, which mashes together
the movement of the angle mover and the jeweled king.
— 30 —
Shogi Strategy
Shogi’s most distinctive feature is how it treats captured pieces. When a player
captures an opponent’s piece, it doesn’t disappear. The player who captured
it has the option to bring it back into the game. Instead of moving a piece
already on the board, you can use your turn to reintroduce a captured piece
onto any unoccupied space. This time, the piece will be fighting for you. That
means in shogi, losing a piece not only weakens your army—it gives your rival
reinforcements.
There are some limits on reintroducing captured pieces. First, captured pieces
always return to the game in an un-promoted state.
Second, captured soldiers can’t be added to a column where you already have
a soldier. If you do this, you forfeit your turn, and the soldier you tried to
place is removed from play for good.
Third, you cannot put a soldier, lance, or honorable horse so deep into the
enemy side of the board that it can’t move forward. And finally, you are not
allowed to achieve a checkmate by the reintroduction of a captured piece.
However, you can place it to cause check and force your opponent to make a
move that will cause checkmate.
Despite the differences, the kind of strategies and tactics that work in Western
chess also work when playing shogi. Chess tricks like sacrificing pieces to lure
opponents into traps are just as effective in shogi. But shogi’s slightly bigger
playing field and larger variety of pieces does make it a more complicated
game than chess.
The fact that no piece is eliminated from play for good also changes the
nature of the game significantly. In chess or xiangqi, players try to wear their
opponent down by removing their pieces from the board. But in shogi, pieces
keep returning to the board, which means stalemates are rare, and most
games end in checkmate.
— 31 —
Reading
Banaschak, Peter. “Facts on the Origin of Chinese Chess (Xiangqi).”
http://history.chess.free.fr/papers/Banaschak%201997.pdf.
Cazaux, Jean-Louis, and Rick Knowlton. A World of Chess: Its Development
and Variations through Centuries of Civilizations. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland & Company, 2017.
Leggett, Trevor. Japanese Chess: The Game of Shogi. North Clarendon, VT:
Tuttle, 2009.
— 32 —
Go: A Game of 5
TABLE OF
Near-Infinite CONTENTS
Complexity
I much of the world, chess is treated as

n
the ultimate strategy game. Because there
is no luck involved, only skill, chess skill
represents a person’s mental prowess
and logical thinking. However, in eastern
Asia, a game known as go holds exalted
status—and with good reason. Next to go,
chess looks simple. In chess, there are an
average of 35 possible moves you can make
in any given situation. In go, the average is
250 possible next moves. Yet despite this
daunting jump in complexity, the rules of
go are more straightforward than those of
chess. It is the ultimate example of a game
that takes minutes to learn and a lifetime to
master.
— 33 —
5. Go: A Game of Near-Infinite Complexity
Basics of Go
Go is a two-player game played with black and white playing pieces called
stones. The stones in many modern sets are biconvex, as is traditional in
Japan. In China, the stones are usually flat on one side. The goal of the game
is to control the most territory on the board. To claim territory, you need to
surround an area with your stones and capture any enemy stones within.
The board is divided into a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines. The
intersections, or points, at which the lines cross are important. On a standard
go board, there are 361 intersections. Players take turns placing a single stone
of their color onto one of these intersections. In a standard game of go, the
player with black pieces places the first stone.
— 34 —
You can place stones onto any unoccupied intersection, and once you place a
stone, you can’t move it again. The only time a placed stone can move is when
it gets captured by the other player and removed from the board altogether.
Stones capture each other by surrounding other stones.
Each line that links a stone to a vacant intersection is called a liberty. Even
though the stones in go don’t move around the board, you can imagine these
liberties as escape routes for a stone. When a stone has at least one liberty
available, it can escape. If it has no liberties, then it is captured.
Liberties don’t just apply to individual stones. They also apply to groups of
stones that are adjacent to each other vertically or horizontally, though not
diagonally. For instance, imagine a row of three white stones with eight free
adjacent intersections, thus eight liberties. That makes it much harder for the
black stones to surround and capture them.
Keeping your stones connected to each other is an important part of go. As

games progress, bigger groups of stones tend to form on the board as both
players try to form safer groups of stones while trying to stop their opponent
from achieving the same.
Go Strategy
One of the more advanced
ways to keep a group alive
involves placing your stones
to form a so-called eye.
An eye can include a free
intersection in the middle,
keeping the involved
stones alive.
EYE
— 35 —
In go, you generally cannot place your stones in positions where they would
have no liberties. However, it is allowed if doing so would capture an
opponent’s stone—or stones—and create a liberty for you. That creates a
vulnerability for lone eyes, but creating two eyes next to each other can lead to
an advantageous situation:
In this situation, there are two free interior spaces keeping the white group
alive. The black side can’t do a thing about it because placing a stone within
either eye won’t remove both liberties to capture the group.
Combinations of eyes can be very strong structures. That is why a key strategy
in go is to find ways to create them, while denying your opponent the chance
to do the same.
— 36 —
The Complexity of Go
Working out where to place a stone, how that move helps you gain territory,
and how it helps entrap your opponent’s stones takes plenty of strategic
planning and thought. As the groups get bigger and more complicated, so too
do your possible moves.
At the height of the game, there might be hundreds of potential moves you
could make. All over the board, there are multiple battles underway as players
try to gain an edge over their rival while safeguarding their stones’ liberties.
The game can conclude in multiple ways. One way is if both players run out
of stones. Another way is via one player’s resignation. However, the most
common trigger is when both players pass on their turns. This normally
happens near the end of the game, when the board is full of stones and it gets
harder and harder to identify suitable and legal moves. But players can pass on
their turn at any point in the game.
Once the game stops, it’s time to find out who won. In go, that’s not always
obvious. To find out who won, players need to calculate their scores.
There are multiple ways to calculate the

score, and the method often varies from THE RULE OF KO
region to region. But the scoring method
usually won’t change who wins. The
In go, the rule of ko
simplest method is known as area scoring. exists to prevent
loops in which players
The players start by agreeing which of become stuck trading
the stones on the board would have been stones back and
captured if the game continued. These
are usually the stones that are isolated
forth. It states that
or sitting within the opponent’s territory players can’t make
and don’t have the ability to form an eye moves that return the
or some other stable structure to prevent game to the same
them from capture. These are called dead state it was before
stones.
the last player’s turn.
— 37 —
They are removed the board as if they were captured by the rival player. Next,
players calculate their territory by counting the intersections their stones have
surrounded, including the edges of the board. For instance, imagine that
adding up the vacant intersections produces a score of 62 for the black side
and 59 for the white side.
Next, the players count the number of their stones that are still on the
board and add that to their score. If, in this example, the black side has 121
remaining stones, that would add to their vacant-intersection score of 62 to
produce 183. If the white side has 119 remaining stones to add to their vacant-
intersection score of 59, their final score would be 178. The black side wins in
this example.
Tips for Beginners

Go’s rules are deceptively simple. To really get a sense for how the game
plays out and the complexity its simple rules generate, there’s nothing like
watching two seasoned players battle it out. If you’re at the other end of the go
experience spectrum, the following basic tips can help you get started.
First, start small. Learn to play the game using either 9-by-9 or 13-by-13
sections of the board. Playing on these smaller areas introduces you to the
basic strategies before you dive into the full-sized game.
Second, think about territory. It’s important to always remember that the
primary goal and best way to score in go is to control territory, not to capture
your opponent’s stones. Don’t get distracted from the bigger picture just
because an opportunity to snap up a rival stone presents itself.
Third, start in the corners. The edges of the board are your friend. It is much
easier to capture territory in the corners early in the game than it is if you start
by placing stones close to the middle of the board.
— 38 —
Finally, keep in mind that if you try to surround territory by placing stones
next to each other one by one, your plans will quickly become obvious to your
opponent. Instead, try to spread your stones around as if you’re creating an
outline sketch before linking them together.
Reading
Shotwell, Peter. Go! More Than a Game. North Clarendon, VT:
Tuttle, 2003.
Yang, Yilun. Fundamental Principles of Go. Richmond, VA: Slate &
Shell, 2004.
— 39 —
Sowing Seeds: 6
TABLE OF
Africa’s Mancala CONTENTS
Family
T e word mancala is a catch-all term for

h
hundreds of distinct games based on
similar principles. These games have long
been associated with Africa, and early
examples can also be found across Asia
and the Middle East. There is no luck in
the mancala family; everything is about
calculating the right strategy.
— 40 —
6. Sowing Seeds: Africa’s Mancala Family
Elements of Mancala
All mancala games have two common elements. The first is a board with at
least two rows of holes or pits. The shape of the board and the number of rows
and pits can vary, but that basic design is common to all mancala games. The
second common element is the playing pieces. Traditionally, they were just
objects from the natural world, such seeds, beans, shells, or pebbles. Today,
most manufactured mancala games come with pieces shaped like seeds. (From
this point on, this lesson uses the words pieces and seeds interchangeably.)
Crucially, in mancala, the pieces are not differentiated. In all other ancient
games, the playing pieces are owned by a specific player. But in mancala
games, players instead own the holes on their side of the board, and the pieces
act more like a means of tracking the score.
— 41 —
Awari and Bao

To get a better understanding of how these elements interact, it’s helpful to
look at the broad strokes of two mancala games. One is termed awari, among
other names, and it’s thought to have originated among the Akan people who
live in modern-day Ghana in West Africa.
Awari has a simple board, featuring two horizontal rows of six pits. The game
starts with 4 seeds in each pit, for a total of 48 seeds. To win, a player needs to
harvest—that is, collect—a majority of those seeds, so at least 25. But before
you can harvest, you must sow the seeds. The players therefore take turns
picking up all the seeds in one of the pits on their side of the board, then
redistribute—or sow—them around the board. Mastering the game requires
accurate arithmetic and careful planning to calculate how best to distribute
your seeds to harvest as much as you can, while leaving your opponent as few
opportunities as possible.
— 42 —
One of the most complicated mancala games is bao. Different versions of bao
exist in various parts of Africa and Arabia, and each one has slightly different
rules. This lesson focuses on the Swahili version. Its board features four rows
of eight pits. There are two curious pits within the inner rows that are square
instead of round. These are the nyumba, which means “house” in Swahili, and
special rules apply to these pits.
The two pits on the far left and right of the inner rows are also special. They
are known as kichwa, the Swahili word for “head,” and the pits immediately
next to them are termed kimbi. Unlike the nyumba, these pits aren’t usually
distinguished visually from the others.
The board isn’t the only difference between bao and awari. The goal of the
game is different, too. In bao, you don’t win by removing a majority of the
seeds from the board. Instead, you win by forcing your opponent into a
situation where they cannot make a legal move or where all the pits in their
inner row are empty.
— 43 —
The process of sowing and harvesting seeds is different as well. Players still
sow by selecting a pit and distributing the seeds one by one. But in bao, you
can only sow from pits that contain at least two seeds. You can choose the
direction in which to sow: clockwise or counterclockwise. Furthermore, you
can only sow seeds around your half of the board.
You harvest or capture your opponent’s seeds if you sow your last seed into a
pit on your inner row that already contains seeds. Additionally, the adjacent
hole on your opponent’s inner row of the board must also contain seeds.
In bao, you don’t remove captured seeds from the board. Instead, you
immediately sow them on your side of the board, starting from either of the
two kichwa pits. When sowing from a kichwa, you must sow toward the
nyumba square. Normally you get to choose which kichwa to sow from, but if
you capture seeds from one of your opponent’s kichwa or kimbi pits, then you
must sow from the kichwa on that side.
A player’s initial moves can spark chain reactions of sowing and capturing
that can play out for some time. In fact, it is theoretically possible to wind up
in a situation where the sowing and capturing process becomes a continuous
loop, and the game continues endlessly.
Importantly, though, chained captures can only occur if your move starts
with a capture. If you start your move by simply sowing and not taking
opponent seeds—a so-called takata move—then you cannot capture on that
turn. Compared to awari, bao is more complicated, more strategic, and more
difficult to master because of the difficulty of calculating the chain reactions
that will be set off by a particular move.
Games of bao are divided into two distinct phases: the namua, or sowing,
phase and the mtaji, or harvesting, phase. As the game progresses, players
obey various rules on seed placement and harvesting. The game ends when a
player has no seeds in any of their inner row pits or none of their pits contains
more than a single seed. That means they can’t make a legal move.
— 44 —
Though bao starts out simply enough, as more seeds enter the board and
more chain reactions occur, the impact of moves become harder and harder
to predict. The challenge is such that masters of the game are sometimes
called fundi, or “artists” in Swahili, and watching a game of bao unfold at
rapid speeds by practiced players can truly feel like a work of art unfolding on
the board.
KALAH
Kalah is the mancala game that has become most
widespread in America. A crude summary of this
game is that it is similar to awari but features a bao-
like ability to capture pieces from opposing pits. Kalah
came to prominence in the US during the 1950s and
1960s, when William Julius Champion Jr. founded the
Kalah Game Company in Holbrook, Massachusetts,
and started selling sets. In his sales pitch, Champion
emphasized the game’s ancient origins and blurred the
distinction between Kalah and the mancala family of
games it belonged to.
Mancala’s Routes and Survival

There are many other mancala games played in Africa, and each nation or
region tends to have its own popular local variant. Owela, for example, is
widespread in Angola, Botswana, and Namibia. In Ethiopia, the three-row
mancala game gabata is dominant. There are also plenty of mancala variants
in Asia.
— 45 —
Mancala games reveal certain routes of the trade in enslaved people. While
traders sought to rip people from their homelands and cultures, they struggled
to eliminate mancala. That’s because all the enslaved needed to play the game
of their homelands was their memories of the rules, dirt or sand to dig holes
in, and a few nuts or shells for pieces.
When ships carrying enslaved people took West Africans to the Caribbean,
awari came too and put down roots in islands like Antigua, Barbados,
Martinique, and St. Kitts. The same happened with a close relative to bao:
njomba, which spawned in Mozambique and followed enslaved people to
Arabia. As such, mancala games double as a historical record of the African
diaspora. They form a breadcrumb trail that traces how people were uprooted,
then bought and sold. That enslaved people played on was an act of resistance
against slavery. And mancala games may have been one of the ways the
enslaved people could hold onto their identity.
NJOMBA
— 46 —
Reading
Botermans, Jack. The Book of Games: Strategy, Tactics & History. New York:
Sterling, 2008.
De Voogt, Alex. “Distribution of Mancala Board Games: A
Methodological Inquiry.” Board Game Studies 2 (1999).
Parlett, David. Parlett’s History of Board Games. Battleboro, VT: Echo
Point, 2018.
— 47 —
Decoding the 7
TABLE OF
Past: The Royal CONTENTS
Game of Ur
T e Royal Game of Ur dates to the

h
Sumerian civilization, which originated
circa 4500 BCE in southern Mesopotamia.
At the heart of this Bronze Age civilization
was a city called Ur. At its height, Ur
was probably the wealthiest and most
populated city on the planet. Its residents
enjoyed and gambled on the Royal Game
of Ur, a two-player race game almost as
ancient as senet. The game eventually
spread until people were playing it
throughout the Middle East.
— 48 —
7. Decoding the Past: The Royal Game of Ur
Ur’s Rise, Fall, and Rediscovery

The game is played on a distinctive bottle-shaped board decorated with
rosettes, eyes, and other intricate patterns. It reached ancient Egypt during
the New Kingdom period that lasted from the 16th to the 11th century BCE.
Its popularity in Egypt was such that the Royal Game of Ur would often be
featured on the flip side of senet boards. By the 11th century BCE, the ancient
Egyptians were also playing what appears to be a variation of the game with
31 instead of the usual 20 squares—although just three of these bigger boards
have ever been found. More evidence of the game’s spread has been found in
Dur Sharrukin, the citadel of King Sargon II of Assyria.
After many centuries as one of the world’s premier cities, Ur’s fortunes took
a turn for the worse. The city suffered from drought and war. By the tail end
of the 6th century BCE, the once-grand city was now deserted. The Royal
Game of Ur met a similar fate. For reasons that remain unclear, the game
faded away.
But centuries later, European archaeologists began descending on the Middle

East on a mission to recover the long-lost relics of the ancients. It wasn’t long
before they started pulling boards for the game out of the dirt.
British archaeologist Sir

Leonard Woolley was among
them. He began excavating
the royal tombs of Ur in 1922
with funding from the British
Museum and the University
of Pennsylvania. In ancient
burial chambers, he found
plenty of note, including
four well-preserved copies of
the Royal Game of Ur, each
made with different materials
and with varying levels of
ornateness.
— 49 —
The most lavish of the boards dates back to 2600 BCE and belonged to a
princess. It is made from wood inlaid with shell, carnelian, red limestone, and
lapis lazuli—an expensive gemstone that would have been brought to Ur all
the way from mines in Afghanistan.
The dig recovered the playing pieces, too. There were 14 in all: 7 black
counters and 7 white counters. Even the pyramidal dice and four-sided
throwing sticks used for the game were present. However, there were no rules
or instructions present, so though a fully intact set of the Royal Game of Ur
had been recovered, archaeologists had no idea about how the game might
be played.
UR
— 50 —
Figuring Out the Rules

There was no shortage of theories about the rules for the Royal Game of
Ur. Among those trying to imagine how this game worked was a young boy
named Irving Finkel. His heart was set on working for the British Museum,
and the Royal Game of Ur fascinated him. He made a copy of the game
Woolley recovered in Ur.
Then he made his sister play it with him over and over while he tested every
theory about the game’s rules and tried out some of his own. His interest in
ancient games never faded away. Years later, as a British Museum curator, he
chanced upon a cuneiform tablet that seemed to explain the rules to some
kind of board game. He began the laborious task of trying to make sense of
the cuneiform signs etched into the clay.
Compared to the board recovered in Ur, Finkel’s tablet was recent. It dated
back to 177 BCE. The tablet also didn’t come from Ur. It was written in
another ancient city—Babylon—by a scribe named Itti-Marduk-balātu.
Babylon had eventually fallen into decline and ruin.
In 1879, a team of European archaeologists set up camp in the ruins of

Babylon and started digging. And amid the ruins, they uncovered the tablet.
The archaeologists promptly sold it to the British Museum, where it was
catalogued and then carefully filed away. One century later, Irving Finkel
pulled it out of the vaults.
As Finkel decoded this message from the past, it became clear that it was
more than just a list of rules. It was a proposal for how to enhance the game.
Understanding the tablet took months, but eventually he had a near-complete
set of rules. All that was missing was explicit confirmation of which direction
pieces should travel around the board. But even without that missing piece
of knowledge, the rules fit the recovered boards and pieces. After many
hundreds of years, the Royal Game of Ur could be played again.
— 51 —
Playing the Royal Game of Ur

Let’s check out what he discovered. The goal of the Royal Game of Ur, like
backgammon and senet, is to get all your pieces to your exit and off the board
before your opponent. The game starts with both players rolling the dice.
There are two kinds of dice that have been found with the Royal Game of Ur.
One type consists of tetrahedrons—four-sided triangular pyramids—made
of stone or lapis lazuli. These pyramids have their corners either marked or
unmarked, meaning that when you throw them, the corner that’s sticking
up when the die settles represents either a 1 or a 0. Several of these would be
thrown at once to produce a variable score depending on the total number of
marked corners sticking up.
The other type of dice associated with the Royal Game of Ur consists of
throwing sticks like those associated with senet, though some of the evidence
suggests they were foreign additions to the game. Whichever type of dice is
used, the player who throws highest gets to go first.
Players start with all seven pieces off the board. They then roll the
tetrahedrons again, and depending on what number they get, they can move a
piece onto the board and that number of squares along. If no marked corners
are sticking up when you roll, you miss your turn. Once a piece is on the
board, players can either bring another piece onto the board or move a piece
already on the board toward the exit. All told, the Royal Game of Ur is a race
game with some clear similarities to backgammon.
Itti-Marduk-balātu didn’t just record the usual rules on his tablet. He wanted
to spice up the game by supplementing its race game action with a side
of fortune-telling. In his vision for the game, players who land on certain
squares would get vague predictions such as, “You will find a friend.” These
predictions seem to add fun, but they likely also had implications for betting
on the game. Like backgammon, the Royal Game of Ur was heavily associated
with gambling.
— 52 —
The Game’s Lineage

Finkel’s investigation into the ancient rules of the Royal Game of Ur also
yielded another surprising discovery: The game wasn’t as dead as everyone
thought it was. While trying to decipher the cuneiform tablets, Finkel found
an old photograph of a game owned by a Jewish family who lived in the city
of Kochi in southwest India. The game in the photograph also had a board of
20 squares, and it looked very much like the Royal Game of Ur.
No one is quite sure when Jewish settlers came to Kochi. It could have been
as early as the 6th century BCE, after the Neo-Babylonian empire destroyed
Jerusalem, or as late as 70 CE, when the Jews of Judea were fighting the
Roman Empire. Regardless, at least 2,000 years ago, a group of Jews packed
up their belongings and headed east in search of a better life. Their search
took them on a 5,000-mile trek that ended in Kochi, India.
The existence of a game that looked like the Royal Game of Ur doing the
rounds among the Jews of Kochi caught Finkel’s attention. Keen to learn
more, Finkel contacted his sister, who was living in Jerusalem at the time.
Most of the Jews who lived in Kochi had emigrated to Israel after World
War II, and many had settled in a kibbutz in the north of the country.
Soon, Finkel’s sister was going door to door, seeking anyone who might
recognize the game in the photograph. She eventually found Ruby Daniel,
a retired schoolteacher. Daniel was in her seventies at the time and had left
Kochi for Israel in 1951.
She recalled playing the game as a child in India with the board drawn out
on a sheet of paper. The gameplay she described confirmed what Finkel had
gleaned from the cuneiform tablets. Daniel’s information also rewrote the
history books. Until Finkel’s sister found her, it was assumed the Royal Game
of Ur died out around 2,000 years ago, but in reality, the Jews who went to
Kochi had taken the game with them.
— 53 —
Suddenly, the Royal Game of Ur was no longer a game abandoned in ancient

times. It was a living game—the oldest continuously played game in human
existence. People have now been playing the Royal Game of Ur for about
4,500 years.
Reading
Finkel, Irving. Ancient Board Games in Perspective. London: British
Museum Press, 2007.
Mark, Joshua J. “Ur.” https://www.worldhistory.org/ur/.
Point, 2018.
— 54 —
Pachisi: 8
TABLE OF
India’s Iconic CONTENTS
Racing Game
H iling from India, pachisi has ancient

a
roots, and it and its close relatives are
widely played all over the world under
various names. They use a distinctive
cruciform—or cross-shaped—board.
Like many ancient games, the origins
of pachisi and the family of cruciform
games it sired are foggy. Pachisi-style
games are now world-famous thanks
to variants like ludo and Parcheesi, but
the original Indian game is noticeably
different and more complex than its
simpler Western cousins.
— 55 —
8. Pachisi: India’s Iconic Racing Game
Pachisi Basics
There is no definitive set of rules for pachisi. The rules have been tweaked
over time, and people in different regions often play the game differently.
Generally, though, the differences are minor, and the broad rules explain the
basic principles for understanding how Indian pachisi plays.
A typical board has four arms of eight by three squares, with a large square
in the center that doubles as the opening and ending space in the game. The
game is for four players, and a player sits at the end of each arm. Every player
gets four pawns of their color. Traditionally, these are shaped like domed
beehives and are termed the ghoda, which means “horses.” Some newer
variants feature players playing individually against one other. But in ancient
pachisi, you played in a team with the player sitting opposite from you.
— 56 —
The aim of the game is to get your pieces and your ally’s pieces to complete
one counterclockwise circuit of the board before the other team can do so.
Your pieces start off the board and then enter through the central square,
which is termed the charkoni.
Once a piece enters the board, it starts its journey by moving down the inner
track of the arm toward you. It must then travel around the entire board
counterclockwise before heading back up the inner track to return to the
charkoni. Movement is determined by rolls of dice, which in parchisi consist
of cowrie shells. When it’s a player’s turn, they throw all the shells, and their
score is the number of shell mouths that land facing upward. The number
of cowries thrown varies across different versions of the game; five-, six-, and
seven-cowrie variants are the most common.
For simplicity, this lesson describes game events as they would occur in a five-
shell version. The first player is determined by a throw of the dice. Whoever
throws highest gets to roll again and make their first move. But in pachisi,
moving isn’t always as straightforward as simply counting the cowrie mouths
and moving that number of squares.
A throw of 2, 3, or 4 on the shells is simple enough: You get to move one of

your pieces 2, 3, or 4 squares, respectively, and your turn ends. But if you
throw a 1, you get to move one of your pieces 10 squares, and you also get a
grace. Throwing a 5 lets you move 5 squares and also produces a grace. If you
dislike the number you’ve thrown, it is possible to pass your turn and avoid
moving altogether.
Finally, if you get a throw of 0, you can move one of your pieces 25 squares,
and you get a grace, too. A grace means that right after making your move,
you also get to move any one of your pieces one square forward, and then you
get to roll and move again.
However, if you roll three graces in a row, instead of moving again, you ignore
that throw and miss your next turn as well. In some variants, the moves your
made on the first two rolls are annulled—that is, your pieces move back to
where they were at the start of the turn—and your turn is over.
— 57 —
Pachisi Strategies
Although pachisi involves luck, there is some skill to the game, too. That’s
because you can use your moves strategically to hinder the progress of your
opponents and protect your own pieces.
If you move a piece onto a square occupied by an enemy, you knock them off
the board. Pieces that are removed from play in such a manner get sent back
to the starting middle square and must restart their journey around the board.
As a bonus for knocking out a rival piece, you get to throw again.
There are defensive strategies players can deploy to fend off would-be attackers.
The first concerns the squares on the board marked with a cross. These are safe
havens, and any piece sitting on those squares is protected from attack.
The second defensive move is to double up your pieces so that you have two
on the same square. When you have pieces in such a formation, they can’t
be attacked. Your teammate’s pieces can also double up with your pieces to
provide protection from attack. But doubled-up pieces don’t get to move
together, so the tactic only lasts until you or your teammate decide to move
one of these pieces again.
Notably, once the pieces have completed their trek around the board, they
need to get back home. To do this, they need to land there with an exact
throw. If the throw is too high, the piece moves backward from home to use
up the excess moves.
One important tip to remember is that pachisi is a team game. There is no

advantage in racing ahead if your partner is lagging. If you clear your pieces
from the board long before your partner does, then your two opponents will
get two throws for every one your remaining teammate gets. This generally
gives your opponents with more opportunities to capture your teammate’s
pieces while leaving you unable to help defend them. Sometimes, if you
are significantly ahead of your partner in the game, it could even be worth
sending a piece around the board for a second time to keep you in the game
rather than leaving your partner playing solo.
— 58 —
Once all of a team’s pieces are home, the game is over. Because of the large
range of movement possible in pachisi and the fact that captured pieces return
to the beginning, games can vary greatly in length.
The Pachisi Family

Many distinct yet very similar games also use pachisi’s cross-shaped board.
Chaupur, another Indian game, is pachisi’s closest relative. Its exact origins
are murky, and it’s even possible that chaupur is the older game.
Both chaupur and pachisi enjoyed many centuries of popularity in India.

However, it took until the 19th century and the days of the British raj before
these ancient games finally put down roots in the West. During this time,
the British who were in India learned how to play pachisi and began taking it
back home to introduce to friends and family.
CHAUPUR
— 59 —
As awareness grew, game makers in both Europe and North America began
producing their own versions of the Indian game. But the cross-shaped design
of the game presented an immediate problem: The design didn’t translate well
for the game factories of the West. The manufacturers of the time mainly
produced games that used square or rectangular folding boards.
But when pachisi’s cross is put onto a square board, most of the board is left
empty. Game publishers in Europe and North America started looking for
ways to use that wasted space. In 1891, a British designer called Alfred Collier
patented one of the most popular European pachisi variants. He called it
Royal Ludo, but today it’s known to the world just as ludo. Its name means “I
play” in Latin.
For his design, Collier separated the start and end of the game. The middle
square served only as the goal, and the spare corners of the board were
transformed into individual starting areas for each player’s four pieces. Collier
also radically simplified the game’s rules. The result erased all strategy from
the game. Other variants that cropped up all over Europe also cut down on
the strategic elements.
In the United States, another reimagining of the Indian game, Parcheesi,

would find fame. It features some simplifications as well, but it also
introduces a fresh idea that adds another dimension of strategy to the game:
blockades. In Parcheesi, blockades are formed when a player gets two of their
own pieces onto the same square. While this blockade is in place, no other
pieces—including those of the player who formed the blockade—can pass or
land on that space.
Other variants of pachisi with new features have continued to appear and win
over new generations. Sorry!, published in 1929, added in a deck of cards to
determine movement instead of dice. Trouble, introduced in 1965, featured
a plastic dome that, when depressed, would roll the die inside for you. The
enduring popularity of the pachisi in all its forms is a testament to the
strength and simple fun of its original Indian design.
— 60 —
Reading
Bell, R. C. Board and Table Games of Many Civilizations. New York:
Dover, 1979.
Mohr, Merilyn Simonds. New Games Treasury: More Than 500 Indoor
and Outdoor Favorites with Strategies, Rules, and Traditions. New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
Point, 2018.
— 61 —
Patolli: The 9
TABLE OF
Lost Game of CONTENTS
the Aztecs
I 1521, the Spanish forces of Hernán Cortés

n
laid siege to Tenochtitlán, the capital of
the Aztec empire. They sacked the city,
and eventually, the conquistadors began
stamping out any remnants of Aztec culture,
which they saw as an affront to their
Christian ideals. Among the targets of this
relentless purge was a board game known
as patolli. As a result of the conquistador-
executed persecution, we know relatively
little about patolli. But for anthropologists
and historians, patolli has been an object of
fascination as both a cultural artifact of the
pre-Columbian world and part of an ongoing
mystery about pre-Columbian contact
between Asia and the Americas.
— 62 —
9. Patolli: The Lost Game of the Aztecs
The Aztecs and Patolli

The Aztecs loved patolli. On feast days, professional players would head to
the marketplaces with cloth patolli boards, playing pieces, and dice. The
game boards bore a remarkable resemblance to the cross-shaped tracks
of the ancient Indian game pachisi. The pieces consisted of six red stones
and six blue stones. The dice were usually five dried fava or kidney beans,
each marked on one side with a white spot. If, when thrown, the spot faced
upward, it counted as 1. If the spot faced down, the throw counted as 0.
These dice are where the game gets its name, as patolli is also the Aztec word
meaning “kidney bean” or “fava bean.”
By the time a player set up, a crowd of people would have gathered around,
some hoping to observe and others to play. But before the playing, there was
also a ritual to perform. The player would first ask for a small bowl of fire.
When it arrived, they would throw some incense onto the flames. Then, a
small amount of food would be burned in the bowl as an offering to the Aztec
gods whom the player hoped would lend their support.
The prayers for divine intervention don’t stop there. During the game, players
would rub the bean dice between their hands before throwing them onto the
mat with a hearty cry of “Macuilxochitl!” Macuilxochitl was the Aztec god of
games, gambling, art, flowers, and dancing.
Anti-Patolli Efforts
After their arrival, the Spanish forces concluded that something had to be
done about patolli and the sinful activities it supposedly encouraged. They
decided that the best solution would be to wipe patolli off the face of the
earth, and they went to war against the game. They confiscated the cloth
boards, baskets, bean dice, and playing pieces and burned them. They tracked
down Aztec writings about the game and had them destroyed. And when
even that wasn’t enough to erase patolli, they began executing anyone found
playing or possessing the contraband game.
— 63 —
The eradication campaign was as effective as it was ruthless. The game was
driven off the streets, and no Aztec records of it survived. Almost everything
known about the game today comes from the Spanish chroniclers who wrote
about patolli while recording the history of the native people of the lands that
were now known as New Spain.
Records of Patolli
The earliest written record we have of patolli emerged several decades after the
fall of Tenochtitlán. Friar Bernardino de Sahagún was one of the Franciscans
who traveled to the New World to spread Christianity. He recognized that
his mission would be more effective if he could speak to the locals in their
own tongue, and he became a proficient speaker of Nahuatl, the language of
the Aztecs.
— 64 —
Sahagún would spend more than 50 years studying Aztec religion, customs,
and history. His masterwork was Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España,
more commonly known today as the Florentine Codex. In it, he documented
everything he had learned about the pre-Spanish cultures of Central America.
His recounting of Aztec culture and history proved so controversial that the
church suppressed its publication for nearly three hundred years.
In the Florentine Codex, Sahagún reports that patolli was played for stakes
and that nobles would bet gold and precious stones on the outcome of games.
With such high stakes, tempers often frayed. Sahagún also describes elders
despairing at how the game distracted citizens from their work duties, and
he claims Aztec rulers had attempted to clamp down on the game, a finding
possibly drawn out to justify the policies of the Spanish authorities that now
ruled Mexico.
Of course, Sahagún saw none of this firsthand. He instead relied on the

memories and stories of locals. Sahagún had first arrived in Mexico in 1529,
several years after the collapse of the Aztec empire, and he notes that the
playing of patolli had already ceased on “suspicion of idolatry” by the time he
began researching the Aztecs.
— 65 —
The next record of the game comes from Francisco López de Gómara, another
Spanish historian who, in 1553, wrote a history of New Spain. He recounts
how Emperor Montezuma used to watch his subjects play patolli. Gómara
also describes the bean dice and states that the game resembled tables, the
forerunner of backgammon that was popular in Europe at the time.
Around 1560, Patolli was mentioned once more when the Dominican friar
Diego Durán wrote another book about the history and culture of the Aztecs.
Like Sahagún, Durán was fluent in Nahuatl. He used that knowledge to glean
folktales, creation stories, and other information from the native people that
had never been recorded in Spanish before. This book, too, faced suppression,
but upon its publication, it revealed new information about patolli, including
how it was often played on feast days and during major celebrations as well as
the reckless gambling in which people participated.
Patolli: The Game

A patolli board consisted of a diagonal cross divided up into a series of spaces
with triangular or cross-shaped markings near the ends of the arms. The
board mats were sometimes decorated with pictures of the god Macuilxochitl
for extra good fortune.
On their turn, players

threw five bean dice, and
the number of white spots
that faced upward determined
how far they could move. If a
player threw five white spots,
they would move 10 spaces
instead of five. The aim of
the game was to be the first
to move your stones around
the board.
— 66 —
Beyond these basic principles, though, the patolli rule book is unclear. There
is no record, for instance, of what happened if a player’s throw left no white
spots upturned. And though we assume that it’s a two-player game because
half of the playing pieces are red and the rest are blue, we don’t have any proof
of this written down. The direction of travel around the board is another
unknown, as is the meaning of certain markings on the board.
We don’t even know where the game begins. Maybe the pieces start on the
board like in backgammon. Maybe they need to move onto the board like
in pachisi. We don’t know where or how the game ends, either. Nor do we
know if players can capture their rivals’ pieces or double up their stones for
protection.
Anthropology and Patolli

Even with so few details surviving, the eventual publication in the 19th
century of Durán and others’ reports about the game was extremely exciting
news for anthropologists. One of the researchers who became particularly
interested in patolli was Edward Burnett Tylor. Tylor found patolli’s
similarity to the ancient Indian game of pachisi fascinating. Both games
had a distinctive cross-shaped board, and Tylor felt that there must be some
connection between the two.
Tylor theorized that somewhere along the line, the Indian game must have
somehow made its way to the Americas and morphed into the game of patolli.
This line of thinking has faced challenges, though. Archaeologist Grafton
Elliot Smith, for instance, seemed to substantiate an Indian-Mesoamerican
connection when, in the 1920s, he claimed to have identified Asian elephants
within Mayan carvings. Contemporary scholars have since concluded that
those animals were actually indigenous tapirs, however.
— 67 —
Tylor’s pachisi theory has also struggled to overcome the challenge of

geography. The most obvious route for pachisi to reach Central America
would be for the game to travel through China and to northeast Asia before
hopping across the water to Alaska, then spreading south toward Central
America. Having arrived in the lands of the Aztecs, it would theoretically
morph into patolli before spreading back to the north. There, it would spawn
games like zohn ahl, a race game played by the Kiowa people of the Great
Plains. For that to be true, we would expect to see a chain of similar games in
the regions through which these games traveled. One potential link exists in
Korea—a game called nyout.
Nyout is a pachisi-like game that records suggest existed in Korea as early as

the 3rd century CE. But beyond Korea, the trail grows much colder, and there
are not nearly enough links to cover the vast distances and disparate cultures
that separate Korea and Central America.
A close look at pachisi and patolli reveals important differences too. While
the cross-shaped boards make the two games appear similar, other details are
fairly different. Pachisi boards have central tracks on each arm and prominent
home squares in the center that connect to them. Meanwhile, patolli boards
have two tracks down the arms and may not have had home squares at all.
— 68 —
Patolli and pachisi may just be interesting cultural examples of convergent

evolution. Racing games—in which players try to get their pieces around
the board fastest—seem intuitive enough that they could have arisen
independently multiple times in different areas of the world.
With patolli’s rules destroyed in a fit of religious zealotry, we’ll likely never
be able to solve the puzzle of how these games connect—if they even connect
at all. However, we do know is that patolli is ancient, and we know that
because the Aztecs weren’t the only pre-Colombian civilization to play a
version of the game. The Mayans did, too.
The Mayans played a game that featured a board shaped into a square rather
than a cross, but it is believed to be a close variant of patolli. Evidence of its
existence dates back centuries. In the state of Campeche in southeast Mexico,
Mayan boards that date from between the 7th and 10th centuries CE have
been found etched into surfaces. Based on this evidence, patolli is at least as
old as chess.
There are dozens of other Mayan sites where evidence of patolli has been
found. A patolli board has even been found at the famed Mayan city of
Chichén Itzá, where it was carved into the stucco of a bench in what is
thought to have once been the clubhouse or barracks of young warriors.
However, despite extensive searches over the past century, no Mayan patolli
boards have ever been found in the dwellings of ordinary people. Instead, the
game only seems to have existed in the palaces and other places frequented
by the Mayan upper classes, suggesting that for the Mayans, only those who
could afford to gamble away large sums played this game.
Reading
Bell, R. C. Board and Table Games of Many Civilizations. New York:
Dover, 1979.
Culin, Steward. Games of the North American Indians. New York:
Dover, 1975.
Erasmus, Charles John. “Patolli, Pachisi, and the Limitation of Possibilities.”
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6, no. 4 (Winter 1950).
— 69 —
All in a Row: 10 TABLE OF
Men’s Morris to CONTENTS
Tic-Tac-Toe
N ine-men’s morris was one of the most

popular games of Middle Ages Europe.
This game dates back—at the very
least—to Roman times, and it is known
by many names, including ninepenny
marl and cowboy checkers. It’s also part
of a larger family of games whose origins
have been traced back as far as ancient
Egypt. They are collectively known as
men’s morris, mill, or merels games. This
lesson refers to that family as merels.
— 70 —
10. All in a Row: Men’s Morris to Tic-Tac-Toe
Tic-Tac-Toe
It’s highly likely you have played at least one merels game: tic-tac-toe, also
known as noughts and crosses or Xs and Os. Children have been playing this
game for generations, thanks in large part to its simple rules and easy-to-build
three-by-three board. But the two central gameplay mechanics of tic-tac-toe
are shared across the entire merels family of games.
The first is that you start with a blank board, and then players take turns to
add their pieces onto a vacant space. Tic-tac-toe lacks physical playing pieces,
but the Xs and Os you write onto the grid serve the same function.
The second trait of tic-tac-toe that is common to all merels games is that the
aim is to get three of your playing pieces in a line. In tic-tac-toe, you win as
soon as this happens, but in the larger merels, players must form several such
lines to win.
— 71 —
Tic-tac-toe is an example of a solved game. A solved game is one where it is

possible for both players to calculate the perfect moves, meaning the outcome
will be a foregone conclusion. In tic-tac-toe, there are only nine possible
moves to begin with, and, with every turn, there are fewer and fewer possible
moves. In total, there are around 25,000 possible games of tic-tac-toe.
That might sound like a lot, but because there are so few potential next moves
in tic-tac-toe, players with a modicum of experience can calculate a placement
strategy that will guarantee at least a draw. If both players do that, the game
will always end in a draw.
Three-Men’s Morris
Another notable member of the
family is three-men’s morris. Its board
features a grid of lines that intersect to
form nine points. Players take turns
placing or moving their three playing
pieces onto vacant spaces, and the
goal is to create a line of three, which
can be straight or diagonal. You can
only move pieces to unoccupied holes
that are connected to your current
position by a line. These movement
restrictions mean that starting a
game by playing a piece in the
center of the board gives a player a
distinct advantage. Therefore, it was
THREE-MEN’S MORRIS
customary in the medieval era for
players not to place their pieces on
the central point during the opening
phase of the game.
— 72 —
Five-Men’s and Six-Men’s Morris

Other prominent members of the family include five-men’s morris and its
close relative six-men’s morris. As the names of these two games imply, each
player starts with either five or six pieces in their hand.
These merels are both played on larger boards. Instead of the 9 points of
three-men’s morris, five- and six-men’s morris are played on boards with 16
points thanks to the addition of an outer square. The overpowered central
point seen in three-men’s morris is not present. Some boards have diagonal
lines, but they only connect two points, so it’s impossible to form a row of
three diagonally. They serve as a path for pieces to move along.
These games don’t end when a player forms a row of three, which is known
as a mill. Instead, whenever you create a mill, you get to remove one of your
opponent’s pieces from the board. Captured pieces are placed in the center of
the board, which is known as the bushel or pound. Pieces placed in the pound
stay there for the rest of the game. The first player to be reduced to just two
pieces loses the game because they can no longer form mills.
Five- and six-men’s morris became

popular games in Middle Ages and
Renaissance Europe, particularly
in England, France, and Italy. The
earliest record of five- and six-men’s
morris dates back to early 1400s
France. But from 1600 onward,
the game went into rapid decline in
Europe, though some versions of the
games lived in on in Africa and Asia.
FIVE-MEN’S AND
SIX-MEN’S MORRIS
— 73 —
Nine-Men’s Morris
The decline of five- and six-men’s morris in Europe wasn’t a sign of people
losing interest in merels. It was because Europeans were embracing a more
advanced version of the game: nine-men’s morris.
Nine-men’s morris added a third outer square to the board used for playing
five-men’s morris, bringing the total number of points on the board to 24.
The number of pieces every player starts with also increases to nine.
Most nine-men’s morris boards lack diagonal lines, but they do appear
in some versions of the game. And when they do, it changes the game
significantly because they make it possible to form mills along those diagonal
paths. That therefore opens up more opportunities to create mills. Each time
you form a mill, you remove one of your opponent’s pieces. Once a player has
less than three pieces, they lose because they can no longer form mills.
But there is one additional rule in

nine-men’s morris: When a player is
down to their last three pieces, they
can move a piece to any vacant point
when it’s their turn, rather than just
adjacent vacant points. And if both
players find themselves with just
three pieces remaining, the game
ends in a draw. That’s because with
free movement, both players could
indefinitely block each other from
forming a mill. The larger board and
increased number of playing pieces
make nine-men’s morris the most
strategic of the merels in this lesson.
NINE-MEN’S MORRIS
— 74 —
Tips on Nine-Men’s Morris

Like tic-tac-toe and other merels, nine-men’s morris is a solved game.
However, mathematically removing the game of any drama or risk isn’t as fun
as just playing it, so rather than going over how to solve the game, this lesson
concludes with some tips on nine-men’s morris. Since the version of the board
without diagonals is more common, these tips focus on that iteration, but
most of the tips will apply on the diagonal version too.
During the first phase of the game, when you and your opponent are placing
your men onto the board, look for locations that will make it easier to move
your men around once every piece is on the board. As a general rule of thumb,
the corners of each square are the weakest points on the board because they
offer just two movement options.
The midpoints are better, as they offer your pieces three or even four potential
moves. It is also important not to clump your pieces in one part of the board.
If your men are crowded together, you are ultimately blocking yourself in, and
your movement options will be limited.
After you’ve placed all your men, you

need to look for opportunities to form
mills, and the most powerful strategy
is to try and get your pieces into a
position where they will be able to
form a mill with every move.
An example of an ideal arrangement

of pieces is shown at right.
In this situation, the black player has

a huge advantage over their opponent.
When it’s their turn, they can move
a piece to break the current mill and
form a new mill, which lets them
NINE-MEN’S MORRIS
capture one of their rival’s pieces. IDEAL ARRANGEMENT
— 75 —
NINE-MEN’S MORRIS SHUFFLING STRATEGY
Then, on the next turn, they could move that piece back to its previous
position to reform the original mill and capture another of their opponent’s
pieces.
There’s no rule that prevents black from shuffling that one piece back and
forth turn after turn. And unless their opponent finds a way to block them or
remove one of the pieces, the opponent is going to lose the game very quickly.
For those on the receiving end of these attacks, one counterstrategy is to create
such a situation for yourself, forcing your opponent to move to block your
plan rather than continuing to capture your pieces. But that’s very hard to
execute, so it’s best to focus on prevention, not finding a cure.
— 76 —
Merels in Modern Times

While older merels have largely fallen by the wayside, newer forms live on.
A famous example today is Connect Four. First released in 1974, it took the
principles of merels and reshaped them. The idea for Connect Four came to
its coinventor Howard Wexler after it occurred to him that strategy games
had always been played on flat boards. He asked himself: What happens if the
game is played vertically?
The result was a vertical six-by-seven board where players drop checkers
into the board in a race to be the first one to build a horizontal, vertical, or
diagonal row of four. It was a fresh twist on the core idea of merels games, and
with the help of heavy TV advertising and its attention-grabbing design, it
sold millions of copies. The game is still on sale today.
Reading
Grunfeld, Frederic. Games of the World. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
Nowakowski, Richard. Games of No Chance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Point, 2018.
— 77 —
King Me! 11TABLE OF
Alquerque and CONTENTS
Checkers
I 1283, most of what is now Spain was

n
ruled by King Alfonso X. As king, one of
his activities was sponsoring the writing
of books. In 1283, the royal scriptorium
completed work on a book that King Alfonso
X had commissioned years before. That
work was Libro de los Juegos—the Book
of Games. Although it was never intended
for a wider audience, Libro de los Juegos
now stands as the most important work
on board games created during Europe’s
Middle Ages.
— 78 —
11. King Me! Alquerque and Checkers
Revealing Alquerque
Most of the book is devoted to chess, but it discusses other games as well.
Toward the end, the book discusses several games that it describes as
“alquerque” games. It describes two alquerque games that are, in reality,
three- and nine-men’s morris by different names. The book also brings up a
game termed alquerque de doze. This is true alquerque—a war game focused
on moving and capturing your
opponent’s pieces.
On an alquerque board, players

start with their 12 playing pieces
lined up so that only the central
point of board is left unoccupied.
Then, the players roll a die, flip a
coin, play rock-paper-scissors, or
even arm-wrestle to decide who
goes first. Each turn, players can
move a piece along the lines of the
board to an adjacent vacant point.
In alquerque, you capture your

opponent’s pieces by leaping over
them in a straight line to reach a vacant point. A twist is that in alquerque,
players must capture enemy pieces if they can. That means the rules can
force players into certain moves. Additionally, in alquerque, you can perform
multiple captures each turn, and when there’s an opportunity to do that,
players must seize it.
Captured pieces stay on the board until the capturing player has completed
their move. There’s a reason for that: If pieces are removed while a capturing
player is still hopping around the board, it could open new opportunities for
capture.
Alquerque plays much like modern checkers. In fact, alquerque is the proto-
checkers, just as the old game of tables preceded backgammon.
— 79 —
Alquerque’s Arrival
Although records are patchy, it seems that around the 1280s, alquerque was
a new arrival on Europe’s board gaming scene. Evidence suggests the game
came to Europe via North Africa, to where it had probably spread from the
Middle East. The oldest physical evidence of alquerque comes from Jerusalem,
where a graffiti board was found carved into a stone paving slab that dates
back to Roman times.
But while the evidence points to alquerque emerging from somewhere in the
Middle East, variants of the game have been found as far east as India and
Indonesia. There’s even a version played by the Zuni Native Americans of New
Mexico. It’s termed kolowis awithlaknannai, which means “fighting serpents.”
The large number of variants and the wide geographical distribution of

alquerque-type games lends weight to the belief that it could be a very old game.
After all, it took centuries for chess to make its journey from India to Europe.
But—as is often the case with board games of antiquity—the sheer lack of
evidence leaves game historians to speculate about alquerque’s earliest origins.
Alquerque and Checkers

Eventually, checkers reinvented
alquerque with a larger board.
The 64-square checkerboard is
much larger than the alquerque
board, and that means the two
armies don’t start the game pressed
up against each other, limiting
movement and capture options.
There are other tweaks, too.

The pieces—which are called
men—can only move diagonally.
— 80 —
This restriction means that all the men must start the game on either the
light or dark squares of the chessboard. It doesn’t truly matter which, but
in international tournaments, the dark squares are the norm. Just like in
alquerque, in checkers, your men complete captures by leaping over your
opponent’s pieces. But unlike alquerque, the standard playing pieces can only
move and capture forward.
The other big idea that checkers brings to the mix is promotions. Because
men can only move forward, when a man reaches the opponent’s end of the
board, it gets promoted to a king and is crowned by having a second piece
placed on top of it. Kings can move and capture backward as well as forward.
Beyond that, the rules of checkers are identical to alquerque: There are 12
playing pieces per side, you leap over pieces to capture, you can capture
several pieces in a single move, and you must capture if you can.
Checkers Arises
It’s hard not to see the direct connection between alquerque and checkers.
The enlarged board and the promotions offer a lot more scope for strategy,
but in almost every other respect, checkers is alquerque with a facelift. How
and when this transformation into checkers occurred is a mystery, though.
There are scattered references to checkers from relatively early in the historical
record. For instance, in 1355, the French monk Guillaume de Deguileville
wrote The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man. In this moral monograph, de
Deguileville describes a minstrel who boasts about how he can play any
musical instrument as well as both chess and checkers.
However, it was not until the early 16th century that references to checkers
became commonplace. And when those references started, they came in a
flood, as if checkers was an overnight sensation. One plausible explanation
for the sudden rush of references to checkers is that it took until this time for
people to settle on a name for the game.
— 81 —
VARIATIONS
Checkers wasn’t really a fixed entity but a collection
of games with various rules that shared a common
theme. That’s still the case today: There are dozens of
checkers variants still played around the world.
Categories of Checkers
British board game historian David Parlett divides up the many versions of
checkers into four broad categories. The first he calls short checkers, but we
know it as American checkers or English draughts. This is the style of the
game favored in America and the UK. It’s played on a standard eight-by-eight
chess board, and the men can only move and capture forward. The kings can
move and capture backward, but they can only move one space diagonally at
a time.
Parlett’s second category is long checkers. These are also played on standard
chess boards, but in these versions, the king can move any distance diagonally.
As in American checkers, the standard men must move forward, but in long
checkers, they are also able to capture backward. This style is popular in
Russia, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, and Brazil.
Parlett’s third category is Polish checkers. Like long checkers, it also allows
captures to be made backward and for the king to move any distance
diagonally. However, the game uses a larger 10-by-10 checkerboard and
has 20 men per side rather than 12. This version is popular across the Low
Countries and Eastern Europe as well as the French-speaking world.
Parlett calls his fourth category straight checkers. This is the variant played
in Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and most of the Middle East. It’s also known as
Turkish draughts or dama. Dama differs from other checkers games in several
fundamental ways.
— 82 —
The most obvious change is that while it is played on an eight-by-eight board,

it’s an uncheckered board. Additionally, in dama, each player starts with 16
men, and they start the game lined up in two rows facing each other. There
are no pieces on the backmost rows. Instead of moving diagonally, the men in
this version move one space forward or one space to the left or right.
Men can’t move or capture backward, and they can’t capture diagonally
either. To capture, you still jump over pieces. But in dama, if you are making
multiple captures, you can do 90° turns between them. Once men get to their
opponent’s back row, they are promoted to kings as usual, and the kings in
dama move like the rooks in chess—any number of spaces horizontally or
vertically, provided the path is clear. They can also capture pieces backward as
well as forward and sideways.
Another important difference in dama is that when making multiple captures,

the captured pieces are removed the moment they are jumped over, not at the
end of the turn, opening up additional capture possibilities during the move.
These varieties are just the tip of the checkers iceberg. There are many other
variations out there, including Malaysian and Canadian versions played on
12-by-12 boards.
International Checkers
After World War II, expert players who wanted to compete internationally
decided it was time to agree on a common set of rules for tournaments.
This led, in 1947, to the formation of the World Draughts Federation—
an organization founded with support from the checkers associations of
Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. They settled on using the
Polish checkers variant, which is why that version of the game is now more
commonly known as international checkers.
— 83 —
Modern international checkers—the version used in the major world

tournaments—uses a 10-by-10 checkerboard. The player with white pieces
always starts, and each side begins the game with 20 men, sometimes called
pawns. They start the game on the dark squares of their four home rows.
The men can only move diagonally forward, but they can capture backward.
Multiple captures can go in any direction. During multiple captures, the men
stay on the board until the end of the turn, and players can’t jump over the
same piece twice.
You must capture if you can, and if there’s a choice of captures, players must
pick the one that will capture the most opposing men. Only if the number of
captures is equal between multiple possible moves does the player get a choice.
When men reach the far end of the board, they are crowned with another
piece and become kings. These are called queens in some countries. Kings can
move around the board any number of squares diagonally, just like a chess
bishop.
When they capture, kings can land on any vacant square after the piece they
captured, so long there is a clear path. They can continue capturing after
landing. Just like men, kings must make the move that leads to as many
captures as possible. With so many movement options, this can lead to some
complicated and deadly combinations.
Tips for American Checkers

Most people in the English-speaking world play American checkers on an
eight-by-eight board. A few tips can help you get ahead in that version.
The first tip is that promotion is the key to victory. Getting a king before your
opponent will give you a big advantage, and the winner of the game is usually
the player who crowns the most kings. Be ready to sacrifice your men if it will
help clear a path for you to create a king. You can force your opponent’s move
by offering up a piece for capture, so if you play well, you can control the
entire game.
— 84 —
Resist the temptation to move your men to the edges of the board so that
they can’t be captured. It might protect them, but because of the compulsory
capture rule, your opponent can force them into the open at will, and your
movement and capture options will be limited. It’s better to control the center
of the board than the edges.
If you want to protect your men,

a better strategy is to arrange them
into an arrowhead or flying-geese
formation. This position makes it
hard for your opponent to capture
the piece at the tip of the formation
because the other men are behind it.
If you have more pieces on the

board than your opponent, then
it is often worth starting tit-for-tat
captures. While you will lose pieces,
every loss will hurt your rival more.
Finally, if you can, don’t move the checkers that start the game on your back
row. By keeping them there, you block your opponent from promoting their
men into kings. This tactic ensures that the only way for your opponent to
break through is to start sacrificing their men to force your back-row pieces to
capture.
Reading
Golladay, Sonja Musser. “Alfonso X’s Book of Games: A Translation.”
http://jnsilva.ludicum.org/HJT2012/BookofGames.pdf.
Grunfeld, Frederic. Games of the World. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
Pike, Robert. Play Winning Checkers. Charleston, SC: BookSurge, 2009.
— 85 —
Morality Play: 12 TABLE OF
Snakes, Ladders, CONTENTS
and Geese
S int Dnyaneshwar’s followers credit him, a

a
notable 13th-century Hindu figure, as the
inventor of this lesson’s subject: snakes and
ladders. Other theories abound regarding
its origins, too. Some think it was created in
the 10th century by Jain monks. Others cite
written references that date all the way back
to the 2nd century BCE. But regardless of
which theory you buy into, it is unquestionable
that snakes and ladders is a game rooted in
religion. It is a playable sermon. Its design
helps teach children the difference between
right and wrong—and shows the path to
enlightenment. In India, the game goes by
many different names, but the two most
common are moksha patam, which means
“attainment of salvation,” and gyan chaupar,
which translates as “knowledge game.”
— 86 —
12. Morality Play: Snakes, Ladders, and Geese
Basics of the Game

The most familiar version of the game is played on a board that is divided into
a grid of squares. Each of the squares is numbered. Players enter the board at
square 1, which is at the bottom left. Then they move toward the end of the
row before doubling back and proceeding in a zigzag pattern to the top.
To enter the board with their one playing piece, players must roll a 6 on the
game’s single die. When they get that 6, they then roll again to determine
their first move. There is no cap on the number of players, and rival pieces
can share the same spaces.
— 87 —
After entering the board, the game consists of rolling the die and moving that
number of spaces forward. If a player rolls a 6, they get another throw. Some
versions of the game use two dice, and in these versions, players get another
roll if they throw a double.
Most squares on the board have no impact at all on the game. The only ones
that do are those where ladders and snakes connect to other squares. Players
who land at the foot of a ladder climb up to the square at the top of that
ladder. And players who land on a snake’s head get eaten and are deposited at
the tip of the reptile’s tail.
The Goal and Versions of

Snakes and Ladders
The goal of the game is to metaphorically reach salvation or nirvana,
known as moksha. Nirvana is a concept shared across the Indian religions of
Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism. It represents liberation from
worldly suffering and escape from the endless cycle of death and rebirth.
Moksha is represented by certain squares on the board, but it isn’t necessarily
the final square of the track. In some versions, there are multiple places you
can end the game.
Across the Indian subcontinent, the game varies considerably by geographical

region and the specific religious beliefs of the communities it was made in.
There are Hindu versions, Jain versions, and Sufi Muslim versions, for instance.
The positions of the ladders and snakes changes often, as do their number and
meanings. For instance, ladders can represent virtues, such as hard work and
kindness, while snakes might represent various forms of sin and wrongdoing.
The size of the board also varies place to place. Nine-by-nine boards are quite
common, but there are larger versions with 124 squares, or even huge ones
with 360. Some also have illustrations of elaborate pavilions that represent
— 88 —
the heavens that players are aspiring to reach. Sometimes the serpents become
scorpions, or the ladders become long, flexible poles. The name given to the
final square varies, too, but it always represents spiritual liberation.
The game offers its players no influence at all over what happens, which
is significant. Not only does it make the game simple enough that young
children can play, but it also reflects a common Indian belief that much of life
is predetermined and controlled by fate.
The Game’s Spread

The game circulated around India for centuries but never spread far beyond
the Indian subcontinent. Possibly, like the ancient Egyptian game senet, the
religious overtones made its appeal particular to the culture in which it arose.
However, that changed in the 18th and 19th centuries, when British colonists
began taking notice of the game.
One of the first colonists to take an interest was Richard Johnson. He worked
for the East India Company, and from 1780 to 1782 he was stationed in
Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. While posted
in Lucknow, he commissioned a paper replica of a 72-square moksha patam
board. His board included 10 ladders, 8 snakes, and 2 scorpions.
British interest in the Indian game picked up sharply in the 19th century
after direct rule was imposed on the nation. And the Britons who went to live
and work in India returned to their homeland with copies of the games they
encountered there. By the late 19th century, commercial replicas were on sale
in Britain. They were published under various names, but the one that truly
stuck was snakes and ladders.
These early British versions varied considerably. One of the first published
versions turned the squares into a spiral track. Others replaced the snakes with
monkeys. In some versions, the snakes and ladders became rivers and bridges,
or plain arrows that pointed up or down.
— 89 —
The religious aspect of the game endured in some of these early British
versions, but only in the form of Christian virtues and vices. Other
manufacturers thought the morality spoiled the game, and so they scrubbed
it clean of religion, reducing the game to nothing more than a simple game of
luck for young children.
By the dawn of the 20th century, most of the snakes and ladders games on
sale in Britain offered no moral lessons at all. The only hint of its roots came
in the form of sets that included illustrations alluding to India. However,
these would soon disappear too. Yet even shorn of its moral message, snakes
and ladders became immensely popular, working its way into the board game
collections of almost every British home.
In 1943, the American game publisher Milton Bradley eliminated yet

another trace of the game’s roots when it published its own version: Chutes
and Ladders. Fearing that the snakes would frighten children, the company
replaced with the reptiles with playground chutes.
But Milton Bradley did keep the moral messages. In its version, the vices are
replaced by infractions like eating a whole box of cookies, and the good deeds
include reading a book. The game became a fixture in popular culture.
The Game of the Goose

Snakes and ladders’ metamorphosis wasn’t inevitable, nor was its luck-based
play novel in Europe. For more than a century, a European board game had
also been teaching children morality through play in much the same way as
moksha patam. Its name was the game of the goose.
This game is thought to have originated in Florence, Italy. That is mainly

because of Francesco I de’ Medici. He was the grand duke of Tuscany from
1574 to 1587, and he sent a copy of the game to King Philip II of Spain.
— 90 —
THE GAME OF THE GOOSE

— 91 —
At the time, the European board game scene was dominated by chess,
checkers, nine-men’s morris, and tables. Next to those games, the game of
the goose would have seemed very strange. Its board was a spiral circuit of 63
spaces turning inward toward the home space in the middle of the board. It
looked much like a snail’s shell.
In other board games that were popular at the time, strategy was more
important than—or at least equal to—luck. But like moksha patam, the game
of the goose is based on pure chance. The players throw the two dice, then
move their pieces forward by the number rolled. Most of the spaces a piece
can land on are blank, but some have instructions that cause the player’s piece
to move in a certain way. The most common of these special spaces are the
13 that contain a picture of a goose. Players landing on a goose move forward
again by the number they had thrown.
Players must land on the final square with an exact throw. If you roll too
high, you move to the final space, then move backward until your move is
used up. There are several other squares designed to liven up the game. For
instance, take the bridge space: Players who land here advance forward, but
they also have to pay a stake into the prize pool. Other squares help bolster
the pot as well, as this is a gambling game.
The game boomed throughout the 17th century as people got hooked on
its high-stakes race around the board. New versions of the game starring
monkeys appeared, too. But in the 18th century, gamblers began migrating to
more mentally challenging gambling games like backgammon and whist.
Other Takes on the

Game of the Goose
Facing irrelevance among gamblers, the game of the goose found a new niche
as a childish amusement. With children its new target audience, the game
began to head in an educational direction. An early example of this trend is
— 92 —
The New Game of Human Life. It was published in London by John Wallis
in 1790. In this reimagining of the game of the goose, players move from
infancy to old age, with each square representing a year of life.
In its wake came a rush of other morally minded takes of the game of the
goose. The most influential of these was The Mansion of Happiness. Created
by the Englishman George Fox in 1800, The Mansion of Happiness brought
a heavy dose of fire and brimstone to playtime.
The goal is to reach the Mansion of Happiness, a stand-in for heaven, but
the path to salvation is full of vices to avoid. Space after space lists the sins
that can ruin a person’s path to heaven, and each comes backed with harsh
punishments. But the goose squares that advance players toward the end are
still present. The birds are now virtues like piety, humility, industry, and
gratitude.
The Mansion of Happiness found fans in Britain, and it also crossed the
Atlantic. In 1843, W. & S. B. Ives of Salem, Massachusetts, published a
version of the game, likely thinking the game would connect with New
England Puritans.
The Checkered Game of Life

This edition of The Mansion of Happiness arrived at a crucial moment in
the development of America’s board game industry. New chromolithographic
printing presses were coming onto the market, paving the way for mass
production of colorful game boards. And after years of nation-building, the
new American middle classes were finding they had money to burn and
leisure time to fill.
This would change the destiny of one man: Milton Bradley of Springfield,
Massachusetts. In 1860, Milton Bradley was a man with personal and
financial problems. His worried friends decided to do whatever they could
to lift his spirits. One day, a friend visited Bradley with a game under his
— 93 —
arm and suggested they play it together. That game was The Mansion of
Happiness, and for Bradley, it was a revelation. Inspired, he set to work on his
own version of a game that would teach children right and wrong.
He named his creation The Checkered Game of Life. Instead of the spiral
track of the goose games, his board of 64 squares resembled that of snakes and
ladders. It also had its equivalents of snakes and ladders. Bradley’s equivalents
of ladders included: school, which sends players to college; bravery, which
advances players to honor; industry, which leads to wealth; and perseverance,
which brings the player to success.
The snakes included crime, which sends players to prison; gambling, which
ends in ruin; idleness, causing disgrace; and intemperance, which hurls players
back to poverty. But Bradley’s game breaks decisively with the fatalistic
worldview offered by snakes and ladders and The Mansion of Happiness.
In his game, each spin of a teetotum gives players a choice. Spinning a 1 lets
players move one space up or down, a 2 offers the chance to move one space
left or right, and a 3 lets players move one space diagonally in any direction.
Spins of 4, 5, or 6 repeat the pattern, but you have the choice of moving either
one or two spaces. Players of this American game can make good or bad
choices, exercising free will.
It was the first truly

American board game—a
game built on an outlook
of a young nation that
was defining itself. And it
struck a nerve. In its first
year on sale, The Checkered
Game of Life sold more
than 40,000 copies and
turned the Milton Bradley
Company into the largest
board game manufacturer
in the United States. TEETOTUM
— 94 —
A New Era
The success of The Checkered Game of Life marked the dawn of a new era
in board gaming. For thousands of years, board games had been collective
works, folk creations handed down through generations and passed around
through word of mouth. But now, in the new industrialized age, the idea of
games with fuzzy rule sets and unknown authorship became archaic.
Now, creators of new board games could copyright their creations and keep
the proceeds from the sales—sales that were exploding in scale as the new
factories of capitalism brought more wealth, more leisure time, and more
new boxed products to buy. But this new age didn’t erase the games that had
already stood the test of time. Ancient classics like backgammon, chess, shogi,
go, mancala, pachisi, and snakes and ladders are still very much with us.
Reading
Donovan, Tristan. It’s All a Game: The History of Board Games from
Monopoly to Settlers of Catan. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Roy, Ashim. “Games & Sports in Ancient India.” International Education
and Research Journal 3, no. 5 (May 2017).
Seville, Adrian. The Cultural Legacy of the Royal Game of the Goose: 400
Years of Printed Board Games. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 2019.
— 95 —
Notes
Notes
Notes
Notes
Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2022
9: ©Traumrune/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0; 11: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Rogers Fund, 1930. www.metmuseum.org; 18: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pfeiffer
Fund, 1971. www.metmuseum.org; 19: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arthur A.
Houghton Jr., 1970. www.metmuseum.org; 21: Getty Images; 41: Cécile Furet/Wikimedia
Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0; 46: Getty Images; 49: Internet Archive Book Images; 50: Ibex73/
Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0; 56: Micha L. Rieser/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0;
59: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. J. C. Burnett, 1957. www.metmuseum.org;
64: Internet Archive Book Images; 65: Internet Archive Book Images; 71: Lars Plougmann/
Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0; 87: Leonard J Matthews/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0; 91: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Purchase, Jefferson R. Burdick
Bequest, 2016. www.metmuseum.org
Printed in the United States of America
This book is in copyright. All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
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Hobby & Leisure Leisure

Great Board Games of

EDITORIAL & DESIGN SERVICES

About Tristan Donovan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

1. Bearing Off: The Story of Backgammon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

The Story of CONTENTS

B  ckgammon is one of the oldest board

The Backgammon Board

Rolling a double is particularly fortuitous in backgammon because it is treated

The End Game

The ultimate victory is a backgammon, or three-point victory. To win a

The Doubling Cube

As an example of the doubling cube in action, if a player is off to a good

Game of the CONTENTS

T  e ancient Egyptians frequently played a

A Senet Board and Pieces’

Presumably, the task is to get all of one’s pieces—or as many as possible—to

Senet’s Other Rules and Purpose

Senet among Everyday Egyptians

A t its zenith, the Gupta dynasty ruled

Chaturanga was played on an uncheckered

It eventually split into

Speeding Up the Game

Somewhere during this several-hundred-year period of chess experimentation,

The development of all-powerful queens on the chess board seemed timely,

Cousins: Shogi CONTENTS

T  is lesson focuses on two Eastern

The Goal of Xiangqi

As is the case in xiangqi, shogi’s pieces are represented by Japanese characters

Next onto the battlefield is the honorable horse, sometimes known as a

I  much of the world, chess is treated as

Keeping your stones connected to each other is an important part of go. As

There are multiple ways to calculate the

Tips for Beginners

Africa’s Mancala CONTENTS

T  e word mancala is a catch-all term for

Awari and Bao

Mancala’s Routes and Survival

Past: The Royal CONTENTS

T  e Royal Game of Ur dates to the

Ur’s Rise, Fall, and Rediscovery

But centuries later, European archaeologists began descending on the Middle

British archaeologist Sir

Figuring Out the Rules

In 1879, a team of European archaeologists set up camp in the ruins of

Playing the Royal Game of Ur

The Game’s Lineage

Suddenly, the Royal Game of Ur was no longer a game abandoned in ancient

India’s Iconic CONTENTS

H  iling from India, pachisi has ancient

A throw of 2, 3, or 4 on the shells is simple enough: You get to move one of

One important tip to remember is that pachisi is a team game. There is no

The Pachisi Family

Both chaupur and pachisi enjoyed many centuries of popularity in India.

In the United States, another reimagining of the Indian game, Parcheesi,

Lost Game of CONTENTS

I  1521, the Spanish forces of Hernán Cortés

The Aztecs and Patolli

Of course, Sahagún saw none of this firsthand. He instead relied on the

Patolli: The Game

On their turn, players

Anthropology and Patolli

B ckgammon is one of the oldest board

T e ancient Egyptians frequently played a

A t its zenith, the Gupta dynasty ruled

T is lesson focuses on two Eastern

I much of the world, chess is treated as

T e word mancala is a catch-all term for

T e Royal Game of Ur dates to the

H iling from India, pachisi has ancient

I 1521, the Spanish forces of Hernán Cortés

N ine-men’s morris was one of the most

I 1283, most of what is now Spain was

S int Dnyaneshwar’s followers credit him, a