Royal Game of Ur

How to play the Royal Game of Ur

The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player race game: each player has 7 pieces and tries to move all of them along the track and off the board first. This page uses the rules reconstructed by Irving Finkel of the British Museum, the version most people play today.

1. The board has 20 squares in three rows. The row on your side is your own lane, the opposite row is your opponent's, and the middle row is shared. Your pieces enter on the square next to your hand pile, run along your lane to the rosette at its end, travel the whole middle row the other way, then turn back onto your lane for the last two squares and leave the board next to your home pile. The dotted line on the board shows your route, and after each roll a dotted circle shows where a piece will land.
2. Roll four pyramid dice. Each die shows a 1 (white dot on top) or a 0, so a roll is 0 to 4. Move one piece that many squares: enter a new piece from your hand, advance a piece on the board, or move a piece off the end of the track. A piece needs the exact number to leave the board.
3. Captures: in the shared middle row, landing on an enemy piece sends it back to its owner's hand. You cannot land on your own piece, and the piece on the central rosette is safe.
4. Rosettes: landing on a flower square gives you another roll. There are five: two on each private lane and one in the middle of the shared row.
5. If you roll 0 or have no legal move, your turn ends. The first player to bring all 7 pieces home wins.

The dice

Each tetrahedral die has two marked corners out of four, so it shows 1 half the time. With four dice the total is usually 2, and 0 or 4 are rare:

Strategy tips

• Take the central rosette. A piece there cannot be captured, rolls again when it arrives, and blocks the square for the opponent. Try to park a piece on it and keep it there while your other pieces pass.
• Watch the distance. In the shared row, a piece 2 squares ahead of an enemy is captured with a roll of 2 – the most common roll (38%). Being 1 or 3 ahead is hit 25% of the time, and 4 ahead only 6%.
• Use your safe lane. Your first four squares and the last two cannot be attacked, so keep pieces waiting there until a good roll lets them run through the danger zone.
• Enter with a 4. Entering a piece with a 4 lands it straight on your first rosette, so you roll again. The last rosette works the same way just before the exit.
• Capture when you can. Sending an enemy piece back to the hand costs it the whole trip, and every square it had gained is lost.

History

The game is named after the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Several boards were found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, dating from about 2600–2400 BC, which makes it one of the oldest board games whose equipment survives. The finest board, inlaid with shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli, is in the British Museum, and the board on this page is drawn after it. Boards for the same game, also called the Game of Twenty Squares, have been found across the Middle East and in Egypt, and it was played for well over two thousand years.

The rules used here come from a cuneiform tablet written in Babylon around 177 BC, which curator Irving Finkel of the British Museum deciphered in the 1980s and combined with the ancient boards into the playable rules above. How the game was played in 2600 BC is not known for certain, and other reconstructions exist.

FAQ

• Is the Royal Game of Ur solved? Players and programmers have analysed the Finkel rules in depth, and the RoyalUr.net project reports having calculated the best move for every position. Even with a perfect strategy the dice keep every game uncertain, which is part of the fun.
• Which is older, Senet or the Royal Game of Ur? Senet, from Egypt, is older: possible Senet boards date back to around 3100 BC, several centuries before the boards found at Ur. The rules of Senet are much less certain than those of Ur.
• How long does a game take? About 5 minutes against the computer on this page. A game usually runs around 70–80 rolls per player.
• Is it a game of luck or skill? Both. The dice decide a lot, but choosing which piece to move – holding the central rosette, keeping pieces out of reach and timing captures – makes a clear difference over many games.

How to play on this page

• Pick an opponent: the computer on Easy, Normal or Hard, or “2 players” to take turns on one device. You play white and move first in the first game; after that the first move alternates.
• Press Roll (or tap the dice, or press Space on a keyboard). Pieces that can move glow yellow, and a dotted circle marks where each would land – red when the move captures. Tap a glowing piece or its target to move. Your pieces in hand sit in the tray next to the entry square; pieces that leave the board go to the tray next to the exit.
• Hint shows the computer's best move with a blue ring. Your wins and losses are saved on this device for each level, and a game in progress continues when you come back.