Chaupar

The Indian deities Parvati and Shiva playing Chaupar.

Chaupar is a board game that predates or is contemporary with pachisi.

In Prayagraj and Agra, India, there are palaces that served as giant chaupar boards for the Indian Emperor Akbar I of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century. The board was made of marble and had red and white squares. The emperor sat in the center of the court and threw the shells, 16 women from his harem were the chips and they moved as he indicated.

The game is believed to have originated around the 4th century. The board is usually cloth or wool. The dice are 6 cowrie shells (a gastropod mollusk whose shiny white shell served as currency in India) and the tokens are made of wood. It is played on the floor or on top of a table.

Rules of the game

The goal of each player is to move their four pieces around the board, counterclockwise, before their opponents. The pieces start at positions 6, 7, 23 and 24 from the Charkoni and end at the base. It is decided who starts the game with a roll of the dice. Shifts are given in counterclockwise order. Players can have any number of pieces in play. You can't pass a turn, unless you can't move. There are no dice values that earn an extra turn or insurance spaces.

The captured pieces are sent to the Charkoni and must start over from there, differentiating them from the ones that entered. You can build double, triple or quadruple tiles, called "super tiles" if they are put in the same square. These are then moved as one and can only be eaten by another super token of equal or greater quantity. Three long dice are used with 1 and 6 on opposite faces and 2 and 5 (sometimes 3 and 4) on the remainder.

Fiber Chaupar board.

Each dice roll can be broken down into its constituent values and movement points can be shared by different pieces. For example, if a 1, a 2 and a 6 are rolled, the player can choose to move one piece nine squares or three pieces one, two and six squares correspondingly. It is also possible, for example, to move a piece X number of squares to another where there is one of the same player, form a double piece and move it the number of squares that remain to be moved according to the dice.

It takes an exact shot for a piece to reach the base. All black pieces must reach base before a yellow piece can. Red must do the same before Green does.