Senet
Senet is a board game from ancient Egypt that represents the journey of the soul through the afterlife, with certain squares affecting movement and strategy. The earliest representation of senet is dated to c. 2620 BCE from the Mastaba of Hesy-Re, while similar boards and hieroglyphic signs are found even earlier, including in the Levant in the Early Bronze
How to Play Senet
Objective
The goal of Senet is to move all your pieces off the board before your opponent. The game is also symbolic, representing the journey of the soul through the afterlife, with certain squares affecting movement and strategy.
Setup
- The board consists of 30 squares arranged in three rows of ten.
- Each player has five pieces.
- Board pieces move around the board left to right in the first row, right to left in the second and left to right in the third and final row.
- Set up the pieces alternatively. starting with a white piece in square 1.
- Piece movement is determined by throwing four two-sided dice sticks.
- One flat side up is 1.
- two is 2, three is 3,
- four is 4 and
- all four rounded sides up is six.
Playing The Game
Moving Pieces
- Players take turns rolling to see who can roll a one first.
- The first to roll a one takes control of the darker pieces for the remainder of the game and moves the piece on Square 10 forward one square then that player rolls again.
- Then the other player take his turn and and then alternatively.
- On your turn you move a piece exactly the number rolled.
- If you rolled a 1, 4 or 6 then you get to go again.
- If you rolled a 2 or a 3 then after moving your piece your turn ends.
- If you move to the same square an opponent's piece is, their piece is under attack. Move their piece back to your piece's starting position and you take its spot.
- Two pieces of the same color may not occupy the same square but two pieces of the same color that occupy consecutive squares next to each other protect each other from being attacked.
- If you have three of your pieces in consecutive squares then you form a block and your opponent may not attack or pass pieces over your block.
- If you are unable to move a piece forward then you must move a piece in reverse still swapping locations of an opponent's piece you land on.
- If you are unable to move either direction then you do nothing and your turn ends.
- When a piece would move to a square beyond 30 it is called bearing off and the piece is removed from the board.
- You may not bear off from the board while you still have pieces in the first row.
- If you bear off a piece with a roll larger than the number of squares needed then you transfer the remainder of the rooll to moving another piece
Special Squares
- Square 27 is water and it is a trap any piece that lands on this Square must return to square 15 if Square 15 is already on occupied then the piece returns to the closest square to the start of the board that is available.
- Squares 26 28 and 29 are safe and pieces there may not be attacked
Winning The Game
- The first player to bear off all their pieces wins.
- If you want you can play for points over multiple rounds.
- The player who wins the round scores one point for each of their opponent's pieces in the third row and three points for every piece in the first or second row.
More
There is a very good and short video on YouTube explaining how to play Senet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLAfm1bx3U
Rolling Probabilities
Here is the probability table for the stick flipping, showing the number of white sides and their probabilities:
Number of WhitesFavorable OutcomesProbabilityMoviment
It's easy to see that the most frequent draw will be "2" in more than 1/3 of the rolls.
"1" and "3" will make half of the draws, one in every four draws each.
"4" and "6" will be less frequent at about an avergae of one time every 16 draws.
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