The Royal Game of Ur is a race game for two players on a board of twenty squares. Each player has 7 pieces and throws four tetrahedral dice to move them along a route of 14 squares and off the board. The middle row is shared, so pieces there can be captured and sent back to the start. Five squares are marked with rosettes: landing on one gives you another throw, and the rosette in the middle is a safe haven. The first player to bear off all seven pieces wins. This guide covers the board, the dice, the route, every rule of the version played on this site and the house rules some players add.
Watch: how to play Royal Game of Ur
How to Play the Royal Game of Ur: Rules Explained Simply
Chapters
Overview
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 (or 1 against the computer) |
| Typical time | 15 to 30 minutes per game |
| Ages | About 6 and up |
| Equipment | A board of 20 squares with 5 rosettes, 7 pieces per player, 4 tetrahedral dice |
| Type | Race game with captures; luck from the dice, skill in which piece you move |
| Also called | The Game of Twenty Squares |
Where the game comes from
In the 1920s the archaeologist Leonard Woolley excavated the Royal Cemetery at the city of Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, for a joint expedition of the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Among the finds were several boards for this game, dated to about 2600 to 2400 BCE. One of the finest, inlaid with shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli, is in the British Museum in London. Boards for the game turn up across the ancient Near East and Egypt, so it was played for many centuries. Later boards keep the twenty squares but rearrange them so the middle row runs on as one long track, as on the reverse of senet boxes from the tomb of Tutankhamun.
How it was played was forgotten. The key to the rules is a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, written by a Babylonian scribe in about 177 BCE, which describes a game on the same board. Irving Finkel, a curator at the museum, worked out a set of rules from it and published them in the chapter “On the Rules for the Royal Game of Ur” in Ancient Board Games in Perspective (British Museum Press, 2007). The tablet is far later than the boards and its game differs in details. The version most people play today, with seven pieces each and four tetrahedral dice like those found with the boards at Ur, is a simplified form of Finkel’s reconstruction. That is the version on this site.
The board
The board has three rows of eight places. The middle row is complete: eight squares that both players use. Each outer row belongs to one player and has six squares, with a two-square gap between a block of four squares at one end and a block of two at the other. That makes 8 + 6 + 6 = 20 squares.
On this site the gap in your row holds your two stacks: your waiting pieces (next to the block of four) and your borne-off pieces (next to the block of two). White’s row is drawn at the top on a wide screen and on the left on a phone held upright; Black’s row is on the other side.
Five squares carry a rosette, a flower with eight petals:
- the far corner of each player’s block of four (square 4 of that player’s route),
- the far square of each player’s block of two (square 14),
- the fourth square of the middle row (square 8 for both players), which is the middle rosette.
The pieces and the dice
Each player has 7 pieces in their own color. Here White’s pieces carry five dots and Black’s a ring, so you can tell them apart by more than color. All pieces start off the board.
The dice are four tetrahedral (pyramid-shaped) dice. Two of the four tips of each die are marked, so each die lands with a marked tip pointing up half the time. Your roll is the number of marked tips facing up, from 0 to 4. Because each die is a coin toss, the totals are not equally likely:
| Roll | Ways out of 16 | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | about 6% |
| 1 | 4 | 25% |
| 2 | 6 | about 38% |
| 3 | 4 | 25% |
| 4 | 1 | about 6% |
A 2 is the most common throw, and a 0 or a 4 comes up only once in 16 throws on average. Knowing this is the base of all strategy in the game.
Objective
Be the first player to move all 7 of your pieces along your route and off the board.
Your route
Every piece runs the same route of 14 squares, numbered here from your point of view:
- Squares 1 to 4: along your own row, from the square next to your waiting stack to the rosette in the corner.
- Squares 5 to 12: along the whole middle row, which the other player also uses. Square 8 is the middle rosette.
- Squares 13 and 14: back onto your own row at the far end. Square 14 is a rosette.
- Off the board: one step past square 14, into your borne-off stack.
The two routes run side by side in your own rows, meet in the middle row and part again at the end. Pieces only move forward.
Turn order
Decide who starts (on this site the setup screen lets you choose, and in a rematch the other player starts). Players then take turns. A turn is:
- Throw the four dice.
- Move one piece exactly the number thrown, if you can.
- If the piece landed on a rosette, throw again and move again. This can repeat.
Movement rules
Entering a piece
A waiting piece enters your row on the square that matches the roll: a 1 puts it on square 1, a 4 on the corner rosette. Entering is a normal move and uses your whole roll.
Moving a piece
Move one piece forward exactly the number of squares thrown. You can’t split a roll between pieces, and you can’t skip using it when a legal move exists: if any piece can move, you must move one.
Your own pieces block you
You can’t land on a square where your own piece already stands. Pieces never stack. Jumping over pieces, yours or your opponent’s, is always allowed.
Captures
If your piece lands on a square in the middle row where an opponent’s piece stands, that piece is captured: it goes back to its owner’s waiting stack and must start its route again. Captures can only happen in the shared middle row, because nobody else can reach the squares of your own row.
The middle rosette is safe
A piece on the middle rosette (square 8) can’t be captured. While it stands there the other player can’t land on that square at all, so a piece on the middle rosette also blocks a 3 from square 5, a 2 from square 6 and so on for the other side.
Rosettes give another throw
When a piece lands on any rosette, you throw again at once, and you may move any piece with the new throw. This can chain: a 4 can enter a piece on your corner rosette, and if the next throw is a 4 as well, that piece can go on to the middle rosette and earn a third throw.
Bearing off
A piece leaves the board when it moves exactly one square past square 14. From square 14 that takes a 1, from square 13 a 2, from square 12 a 3 and from square 11 a 4. A larger number can’t be used by that piece. Bearing off does not give an extra throw.
Rolling 0, or having no legal move
A roll of 0 means no move, and your turn passes. You also pass when no piece can use the number thrown: every target square holds one of your pieces, would overshoot the end, or is the middle rosette with an opponent’s piece on it. The game on this site shows a short note and passes the turn for you.
Winning
The first player to bear off all 7 pieces wins at once. There are no draws: pieces only move forward, so one player always finishes first.
Variants and house rules
This site plays Irving Finkel’s rules as they are commonly played, exactly as described above. Players often change a few details, and you will see these on other boards and apps. None of them are used here.
- Extra throw for a capture. A house rule that makes the game more aggressive.
- Bearing off with a higher number. Some players allow a piece close to the end to leave with any number large enough. Here you need the exact number.
- Five pieces each. A shorter game with the same rules.
- Other routes. Before the tablet was read, scholars and game makers suggested longer routes, for example with pieces travelling up and back down the middle row. The tablet-based route used here is the one most players know.
Common mistakes and disputes
“I’ll capture from my own row.” You can’t: captures only happen in the middle row. A piece on your square 3 and an opponent’s piece on their square 3 are on different squares.
“I’ll take the middle rosette back.” Not while the opponent’s piece is on it. That square is protected, and the move is simply not available.
“I’ll skip this roll.” If any piece can move, you must move one, even when every option is bad.
“Close enough to bear off.” You need the exact number to leave the board.
“The rosette on my row is shared.” Only the middle rosette is shared. The corner rosette (square 4) and the end rosette (square 14) on your row are yours alone.
Glossary
- Route: the 14 squares every piece of a player passes, then off the board.
- Shared row: the middle row, squares 5 to 12 of both routes, where captures happen.
- Rosette: a square marked with an eight-petalled flower; landing on one gives another throw.
- Middle rosette: the rosette in the shared row (square 8), where a piece can’t be captured.
- Enter: bring a waiting piece onto the first squares of your route.
- Capture: land on an opponent’s piece in the shared row and send it back to the start.
- Bear off: move a piece off the board at the end of its route with an exact roll.
- Binary dice: dice with two results each, here the four tetrahedral dice.
Play it now
Open the Royal Game of Ur to try these rules with a friend on one device or against the computer on Easy, Medium or Hard. The game only offers legal moves and highlights where a piece will land, so it is a good way to check the rules as you learn them. When you know how the pieces move, the beginner tutorial for the Royal Game of Ur explains rosette control, when to capture and how to keep your pieces safe. For another race game with dice and hitting, read the backgammon rules.