Daldøsa

How to play Daldøsa

Not from the book. Daldøs is a Danish game known from around 1800; on Jæren it has lived on without a break as daldøsa. The rules follow Østergaard and Gaston's «Daldøs — the rules» (Board Games Studies 4, 2001) and Michaelsen's account, as summarised in the sources; the gaps are filled below.

From the sources

• A boat-shaped board with three rows of holes: sixteen in each outer row and seventeen in the middle, the extra one at the prow. Each player has sixteen pieces, standing in their own outer row, crosswise to it: undalled.
• Two four-sided dice with the faces A, II, III and IIII. The A is the dal and counts one.
• Both throw to begin; the higher sum starts.
• A piece cannot move until it has been dalled. An A dals a piece: it is turned along the row and moved one hole. With no A thrown and no piece dalled, the throw is lost.
• Each die may move a different piece, or the two may be added and move one piece. Both dice must be used when they can be; if only one can, it must; if neither can, the throw is lost.
• The route: down your own row to the stern, into the middle row and up to the prow, into the enemy's row and down it to the stern, then into the middle row again — round and round, never back into your own row.
• An enemy piece is taken when your piece ends on its hole. Enemies are jumped freely; your own pieces are never jumped. When the dice are added, only the hole the piece ends on takes.
• A double dal gives an extra throw.
• Whoever takes every enemy piece has won.

My choices

• An A may also move a piece that is already dalled one hole; the sources treat it as a one in the opening throw and in sums.
• A piece in your own row can be dalled only when the hole ahead of it is not your own: in practice the one nearest the stern, as some sources have it.
• A piece in its home row, undalled, is taken like any other when an enemy lands on it.
• The machine weighs each turn's two moves together: a piece taken first, then how open each of its own pieces stands to the next throw.

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