How to Play Royal Game of Ur

By Jaques of London · Est. 1795 · Updated 2026-08-17

The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player race and strategy board game played on a distinctive asymmetric board of twenty squares. Each player controls seven pieces and tries to move them all along a fixed track and off the board before their opponent does. Simple to learn but with genuine tactical depth, it rewards bold risk-taking as much as careful calculation.

It is typically played on a kitchen table or as a travel game, and its short playing time makes it ideal for a quick competitive session between two players of any age. The combination of dice luck and positional decisions keeps games close and exciting right to the end.

A little history

The game is named after the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia, now southern Iraq. Two well-preserved boards and sets of pieces were excavated from the Royal Cemetery at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and are now held at the British Museum. They date to approximately 2600 to 2400 BCE, making this one of the oldest known board games in the world. A cuneiform tablet from Babylon, dated to around 177 BCE and translated by Irving Finkel of the British Museum, records a set of rules for the game, though it is unclear how closely those rules match those played during the earlier Sumerian period. The game spread widely across the ancient Near East and beyond; its precise origins before the Ur finds are unclear.

Setting up

1. Place the board between both players so that each player's five-square starting column is directly in front of them.
2. Each player takes seven pieces in their own colour and places them all off the board in their personal reserve area.
3. Each player takes two of the four tetrahedral dice. Alternatively, all four dice are shared and rolled together by the active player.
4. Decide who goes first by each player rolling the dice; the higher roll goes first. Re-roll on a tie.

How to play

1. On your turn, roll all four binary tetrahedral dice. Each die shows either a marked corner (count as 1) or an unmarked corner (count as 0). Sum the marked corners to get a result of 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4.
2. If you roll 0, your turn ends immediately and play passes to your opponent.
3. Choose one of your pieces to move. You may move a piece from your reserve onto the board, or advance a piece already on the board. You must move the exact number shown; you cannot split the roll or skip a piece.
4. Each player's route runs: five squares along their own starting column (squares 1-5), then four squares along the central shared row (squares 6-9 in standard notation), then six squares along their own finishing column (squares 10-15), and finally off the board.
5. If you land on a rosette square (there are three: one in each starting column and one in the middle of the shared row), you take an additional roll immediately and may move again.
6. The central shared row is contested territory. If you land on a square in the shared row that is already occupied by one of your opponent's pieces, that opponent piece is knocked off the board and returned to their reserve; they must re-enter it from the start.
7. You cannot knock your opponent's piece off the shared rosette square. A piece resting on the shared rosette is safe and cannot be captured.
8. You cannot land on a square already occupied by one of your own pieces.
9. To bear a piece off the board, you must roll the exact number needed to move it from its current square to one step beyond the final square of your track. If the roll is too high, you cannot move that piece this turn.
10. If you have no legal move with any piece, your turn is lost and play passes to your opponent.

Winning and scoring

The first player to move all seven of their pieces along the full track and off the board wins. There is no points scoring in the standard game; the win is outright and immediate the moment the seventh piece exits the board.

The fine points

The most common dispute concerns the shared rosette. The rule is unambiguous: a piece sitting on the shared central rosette cannot be captured by either player. If your piece is there and your opponent would otherwise land on it, their piece cannot complete that move and they must choose a different piece to move or lose their turn if no other legal move exists. This is not optional.

A second frequent question concerns bearing off. You must roll exactly the right number to exit. You cannot use an excess roll, nor may you 'waste' spare points to exit early. If every one of your remaining pieces requires a number higher than your roll, your turn passes even if you have pieces on the board. The re-roll granted by landing on a rosette is a full new roll of all four dice and is not carried over if unused.

How to win more often

• Prioritise getting pieces into the contested shared row early. Pieces stuck in your starting column contribute nothing and are vulnerable to falling behind tempo.
• Use the shared rosette as a shield. Parking a piece there blocks your opponent from safely occupying that square and buys you a free re-roll, making it one of the highest-value squares on the board.
• When you have a choice of which piece to move, prefer moves that threaten opponent pieces over moves that simply advance your own. Sending an opponent piece back to their reserve costs them significant time.
• Avoid clustering too many of your own pieces in the shared row at once. A string of your pieces in adjacent squares limits your own move options, and a lucky opponent roll can leapfrog past all of them.
• In the endgame, focus rolls on pieces closest to exiting rather than pushing new pieces in from reserve. Bearing off the last two or three pieces efficiently often decides close games.

Variations

Finkel Rules (British Museum Reconstruction)

Irving Finkel's reconstruction based on the Babylonian cuneiform tablet introduces a scoring system where each square on the track has a symbolic value, and certain squares trigger additional fortune or hazard effects. This version is more complex and suits players who have already mastered the standard race game. The cuneiform rules also suggest that wagers on the outcome were traditional.

Five-Piece Game

A shorter variant in which each player starts with five pieces instead of seven. The board, route, and all other rules remain identical. This cuts playing time noticeably and is a good introduction for younger children or for players who want a faster session.

Blocking Variant

In this variant, pieces in your own starting column are also considered 'safe' from capture but can still be blocked. An opponent piece that would land on an occupied square in your home column cannot move there; instead that move is simply illegal. This creates more deliberate blocking play and slows the early game down considerably.

Two-Board Game

Traditionally the game may have been played as a series of rounds rather than a single race. In this variant, players agree on a set number of rounds (typically five or seven) and score one point per round won. The player with the most points at the end of the series wins overall. This format rewards consistency and reduces the impact of a single lucky roll sequence.

Royal Game of Ur: frequently asked questions