Pachisi

How to play pachisi

The rules

• Two or three players play alone; four play two against two, red and black against yellow and green, partners sitting opposite. Each player has four pieces and an arm of the cross.
• Every piece starts in the centre, the char-koni. It runs down the middle row of its own arm, round the board with the sun along the outer rows, and back up the middle row into the centre. The first to bring all four home wins.
• The dice are six cowrie shells. Count how many land with the opening up:

• Everyone throws once to see who begins; the highest starts, and a tie is thrown again.
• Each throw moves one piece its whole score. A 10 or a 25 gives another throw, and each throw may move a different piece.
• When none of your pieces is out on the board, a piece may leave the centre on any throw. While one is out, a new piece comes out only on a 10 or a 25.
• Land on an opponent's piece and it goes back to the centre to start again, and you get an extra throw.
• The squares marked with a cross are castles: one at the outer end of each middle row, and one four squares from the end of each outer row. No piece can be taken on a castle, and any number may stand there.
• Two or more pieces on one square make a blockade. An opponent cannot pass it with fewer pieces, and takes it only by landing on it with as many or more. A blockade on a castle cannot be taken.
• Pieces on the same square may move together on one throw, each the whole score, and together they may pass a blockade no bigger than their group.
• On the way home a piece lies on its side, so it can be told from the ones still to start. It enters the centre only on an exact throw; since no throw gives 1, a piece one square from the centre comes in on a 2.
• Partners win or lose together. You never take your partner's pieces, and your partner's pieces count in a blockade. A player who has finished stops throwing, so the other side then has two throws a round against the remaining player's one.

In this version

• The shells land with the opening up half of the time. A throw cannot be undone.
• When its partner lags behind, the machine helps by holding pieces back as blockades and by taking the opponents' pieces.

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