Daldøsa

How to play Daldøsa

Daldøs is a Danish game known from around 1800. On Jæren in south-west Norway it has lived on without a break as daldøsa.

The rules

• The board is shaped like a boat, with three rows of holes: sixteen in each outer row and seventeen in the middle, the extra one at the prow. Each player has sixteen pieces standing crosswise in their own outer row: undalled.
• There are two four-sided dice with the faces A, II, III and IIII. The A is the dal and counts one.
• Both players throw to begin; the higher sum starts, and equal sums throw again.
• A piece cannot move until it has been dalled. An A dals a piece: turn it along the row and move it one hole. Only a piece whose next hole is not taken by your own can be dalled, so at first that is the one nearest the stern. An A may also move a dalled piece one hole.
• Each die may move a different piece, or the same piece one after the other; or add the two and move one dalled piece the sum. Use both dice when you can; if only one can be used, use that one. If nothing can move, the throw is lost.
• The route: down your own row to the stern, into the middle row and up to the prow, into the enemy's row and down it to the stern, then into the middle row again. Round and round, never back into your own row.
• A piece takes an enemy piece by ending its move on that hole, even an undalled piece in its home row. You may jump enemy pieces, but never your own, and you never land on your own. When the dice are added, only the hole you end on takes.
• Two As, a double dal, give an extra throw.
• Whoever takes every enemy piece wins.

In this version

• The machine weighs both moves of its turn together: taking a piece comes first, then how exposed each of its own pieces stands to the next throw.

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