Senet

How to play Senet

Senet was played in Egypt for some three thousand years, but no Egyptian text says exactly how. These are the rules most often used to play it today.

The rules

• The board. Thirty squares in three rows of ten. The path runs the way an ox ploughs a field: squares 1–10 to the right, 11–20 back to the left, and 21–30 to the right again.
• The pieces. Each player has five. At the start they fill squares 1–10, white on the odd numbers and black on the even.
• The sticks. Four sticks, white on one side and black on the other, are thrown together. Count the white sides up: one gives 1, two give 2, three give 3, four give 4. All four black gives 6.
• The start. The players throw in turn until someone throws a 1. That player takes black, moves the black piece from square 10 to 11, and throws again. From then on any piece may be moved.
• A turn. Throw, and move one piece that many squares forward. After a 1, 4 or 6 you throw again; after a 2 or a 3 the turn goes to your opponent.
• Attacking. Two of your own pieces never share a square. Land on a square held by an opponent's piece and you attack it: it swaps places and goes to the square your piece came from. Two pieces of the same colour side by side protect each other and cannot be attacked. Three in a row form a blockade: the opponent can neither attack them nor move past them, though your own pieces may.
• Going back. If no piece can use the throw forward, you must move a piece that many squares backward, onto an empty square. If neither is possible, the turn passes.
• Special squares. Square 27, marked with an X, is a trap: a piece that lands there goes back to square 1, or to the first free square after it. On squares 26, 28, 29 and 30 no piece can be attacked.
• Bearing off. Once all your pieces are in the third row, you may take them off the board with throws that bring them exactly to square 30. If one of them is sent back, it must return to the third row before any more can come off.
• Winning. The first to take all five pieces off wins. Over a series of games, the winner scores the loser's pieces still on the board: one point for each in the third row, two for each in the second and three for each in the first.

In this version

• Against the machine you throw for the start too, and whoever throws the first 1 becomes black. That is why you do not choose your colour in advance.
• A piece already standing on square 30 when all your pieces are in the third row comes off with any throw.
• A piece moves backward only when no piece can go forward, and never onto an occupied square. A blockade does not stop a piece going backward.
• The machine picks its moves by simple weighing: forward, in pairs, on the safe squares, away from the trap and off the board.

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