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LudoPlay online, free

Race your four pawns around the board and home. Throw a six to come out, land on others to send them back. For two to four, with friends or bots.

Play against bots

Join a table of 4. Bots take the empty seats within five seconds.

Bots
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With friends

Open a private table and send the invite.

Play with friends

Beginner

A real game, with a coach at your side.

Learn by playing

No sign-up. A game takes about 25 minutes.

How to play

  1. The board. A track of 52 squares runs round a cross-shaped board. Each player has a yard in one corner with four pawns in it, a start square just outside the yard, and a home column of five squares that leads to home in the middle. With two players, you sit in opposite corners.
  2. Throw. On your turn, throw the die. The seed decides who throws first. You need a 6 to bring a pawn out of your yard onto your start square.
  3. Move. Move one pawn exactly the number you threw, clockwise round the track and then up your own home column. If no pawn can move, your turn passes.
  4. Throw again. A 6 gives you another throw, and so do a capture and a pawn reaching home. But three 6s in a row end your turn at once, and the third 6 is not used.
  5. Capture. End your move on a square with pawns of another colour, and you send every one of them back to its yard. Your own pawns may share a square and never block anyone.
  6. Safe squares. The four start squares and the four squares marked with a lantern are safe: pawns of any colour can share them, and no one is captured there.
  7. Home and the end. A pawn must reach home with an exact throw. The first player with all four pawns home comes first; the others play on for the next places. When one player is left with pawns out, the game ends. Places score 3, 2, 1 and 0 points.

At the online table

  • The board is turned so that your yard is at the bottom left. Tap the die to throw it.
  • Pawns that can move get a brass ring and their number. Under the board, a big button for each move says where the pawn lands. Tap a button to move; or tap near a pawn on the board to see where it lands, and tap it again to move it.
  • Point at a yard, a home column or a safe square, or hold a finger on it, to read what it is.
  • On a keyboard: T throws the die, 1 to 4 move that pawn, and Tab reaches the move buttons. M turns the sound off.
  • Each throw and each move has a 20-second timer. If it runs out, the table plays for you.
  • An empty seat is taken by a bot, always marked as a bot. When no human is still playing, the table ends the game at once and ranks the others by how far their pawns came.

Why it is fair

A secret seed decides who throws first and every throw of the die. You see its fingerprint when the game starts and the seed itself when it ends, so you can check every throw. Verify a game.

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