How to Play Daldøs: Rules, Tactics and History

1The board and the way round

The board is three rows of holes. The middle row has one hole more than the two outer rows: 12 + 13 + 12, 37 in all. One end is the prow and the other the stern, like a boat. Your pegs start in your row, nearest you; your opponent's fill the far row.

Your opponent does the same from the other side: along their row, back down the middle the same way you go, and round into your row. So the middle row is shared, and each of you raids the other's home row. A peg that has left its own row never goes back to it.

2The dice and the dal

Our dice have four faces, marked 1 to 4. The 1 is called the dal. You throw both at once, so there are 16 ways they can land:

The gold throws hold a dal: 7 of the 16, or 43.75% of the time. A double dal comes up 6.25% of the time.

In our version no throw earns another throw: you throw once, play it, and it's your opponent's turn.

3Waking your pegs

Every peg starts asleep, lying across its row, and a sleeping peg can't move at all. A dal wakes it: the peg turns to point the way it is going and moves one hole. Then it's free to move with any throw.

So at the start, a throw with no dal does nothing. 9 of the 16 opening throws (56.25%) give you no move at all, and the turn passes.

When a dal does come, the other die goes with it. Both dice can go on the same peg as one move of the sum, and the dal wakes the peg as it goes. A move can pass over your own pegs, so the waking peg doesn't have to be the one at the end of the row:

Counting every opening throw, 5 of your 12 pegs can get out on the first move (a dal and a 4 is a move of 5). The rest have to wait until there's room in front of them.

4Moving: both dice, one peg or two

Once some of your pegs are awake, every throw must be used in full if it can be. You choose how:

• Split it: one die on one peg, the other die on another.
• Sum it: both dice on one peg, as a single move of their total.

You may jump over any peg on the way, yours or your opponent's; only the hole you land on matters, and you may not land on one of your own. When both dice go on one peg it's one move, so only the last hole counts.

If there's no way to use both dice, use one. If neither die can be used, the throw is lost.

A surprise from "both dice": if your opponent has no other peg to spend the second die on, their peg has to take the whole sum, from 2 to 8. So a lone peg can never land on the hole right in front of it.

5Capturing, and raiding their row

Land exactly on one of your opponent's pegs, awake or asleep, and it's captured: off the board, and it never comes back. There are no safe holes anywhere.

That makes your opponent's home row the place to raid. Their sleeping pegs are lined up there, waiting for a dal, and they can't run:

The same goes the other way: once your opponent's pegs come round the prow, your own sleeping pegs are in danger.

The game ends when one side has no pegs left. There is no finish line to race to.

6Two habits that win games

Daldøs is a game of luck, but not only luck. We tested advice with our own rules engine: a computer player that keeps the habits below, against an identical player who skips one of them, 4,000 games for each, taking turns to go first.

1. Capture whenever you can. Every peg you take is one less that can come after yours.
2. Keep your pegs out of reach. After your move, leave as few pegs as you can where an opponent's peg could land on them next throw: up to 8 holes in front of an awake peg, or up to 5 in front of a sleeping one (it needs a dal to wake, and the other die moves it on).

How likely is a capture?

An awake peg behind yours can hit it with one die or with the sum of both. Counting all 16 throws, four holes in front of it is the worst place to stand:

Up to four holes away, a single die can do it, as long as the other die has somewhere else to go. Further away, it takes the sum, which is much rarer. A peg that is still asleep needs a dal first, so it reaches at most 5 holes.

Does going first matter? A little. Between two players using the habits above, the side that threw first won 51% of games.

7Our rules, and other versions

Every published rule set is a reconstruction. Both of the ones we found are based on an account of the game published in 1927 by Hans Billeskov Jansen.[2][5] Ours follow the Norwegian board, 12 + 13 + 12 holes with 12 pegs a side,[1][3] and the common core of the published rules: a dal wakes a peg and moves it one hole, pegs go round the middle row and the opponent's row and never return home, the dice can go on one peg or two, and a peg landed on is taken for good, awake or asleep.[2][5] Where we differ:

• Jumping your own pegs. Both published rule sets say you may jump your opponent's pegs but not your own.[2][5] Ours lets you pass over any peg.
• The double dal. In both, two dals at once earn an extra throw.[2][5] Ours has no extra throws.
• Who starts. In both, each player throws and the higher throw goes first.[2][5] In ours you throw first against the computer, and online whoever set up the table does.
• Waking in order. One rule set has the pegs woken one by one from one end of the row to the other.[2] Ours lets a dal wake any peg that has room to move.
• Both dice on one peg. In one rule set a peg moved by both dice uses them one after the other, as in backgammon;[2] in the other, as in ours, the two are added into one move.[5]
• Safety in the enemy's row. One rule set lets a peg in the opponent's home row take as many pegs as the dice allow, and makes it safe there except in front of an awake peg or the next peg to be woken.[2] In ours no hole is safe, and a move takes one peg, where it lands.
• Draws. One rule set allows a draw if both players agree.[5] Ours plays on until one side has no pegs left.
• The Danish board. The Danish sets have 16 + 17 + 16 holes and 16 pegs a side;[2][3] the Norwegian, 12 + 13 + 12 and 12 a side.[1][3] We play the Norwegian size.

8A short history

Daldøs is Danish; the Norwegian name is daldøsa. The two are one game, played on boards of two sizes.[3] It is a folk game, and younger than it looks: the earliest traces go back to about 1800.[5]

In Denmark it turns up on the coast and the islands. An old blacksmith in Thisted, in Thy in north-west Jutland, remembered that his grandfather liked a game before bed; the grandparents married in Thisted in 1814, so the game was played there early in the nineteenth century.[3] A dialect dictionary of 1886 records it on the island of Fanø,[3] and on Bornholm only a saying was left by 1856, "to play daldøs", meaning to lose what you own by speculating; the game itself seems to have been forgotten there already.[3][4] Every Danish trace of it comes from near the sea.[3]

Two Danish sets survive. The one at Thisted Museum was cut by a shepherd, Lars Kaldahl, from driftwood he found on the North Sea beaches, probably in the 1850s or early 1860s; the other, from a schoolteacher on the island of Mors, is now in the National Museum of Denmark.[3] Its first appearance in print was in a novel: J. P. Jacobsen's Fru Marie Grubbe of 1876 has two of its characters play daldøs in 1661, but it is a historical novel, and Jacobsen, who grew up in Thisted, had probably seen the game as a boy in Thy.[3][4] In the 1920s the lawyer Hans Billeskov Jansen went looking for the game in Thy, found the set and perhaps the last person who still knew how to play, and published what he learned in 1927.[3]

In Norway it is known only in Jæren, in Rogaland, and there only on coastal farms along the North Sea.[1] The boards there are usually shaped like a boat, and the dice mark the dal with a cross where the Danish ones have an A.[1][3] On a daldøs die, opposite faces add up to 4 or 6, not 5.[2][3]

Where the game came from is not known. It belongs to a family of race-and-capture games played on three rows, known otherwise from North Africa and western Asia, and its closest relative is the Sámi game sáhkku.[3][4] Peter Michaelsen thinks it came by sea: quite possibly in the Viking Age, but perhaps as late as about 1800.[3] Thierry Depaulis finds it most likely that Vikings who served or traded in the Byzantine world, the Varangians, met the game there and brought it home.[4]

The game nearly vanished. In Denmark it was possibly not played at all between 1927 and the 1970s, when copies of the Thisted set were made and sold, and a few people still play.[3] In Jæren it was never lost: it was very popular during the Second World War, when some players imagined the pegs as Norwegians against Germans, and an article in 1968 brought it back into fashion.[1]

What we know, and what we don't: daldøs was played in Denmark and Norway from at least about 1800, by people living near the sea. How much older it is, and where it came from, are still open questions.[3][4]

Sources

1. Alf Næsheim, "Daldøsa, an old dice game with an obscure origin", Board Games Studies 4, 2001, pp. 9–14. ludicum.org (PDF)
2. Erik Østergaard and Anne Gaston, "Daldøs – the rules", Board Games Studies 4, 2001, pp. 15–17. ludicum.org (PDF)
3. Peter Michaelsen, "Daldøs: an almost forgotten dice board game", Board Games Studies 4, 2001, pp. 19–31. ludicum.org (PDF)
4. Thierry Depaulis, "An Arab game in the North Pole?", Board Games Studies 4, 2001, pp. 77–82. ludicum.org (PDF)
5. Peter Michaelsen, "Daldøs og Sakku – to gamle nordiske spil med fjerne slægtninge" (Daldøs and sáhkku, two old Nordic games with distant relatives), Ord & Sag 19, 1999, pp. 15–28, reprinting Svend Sørensen's 1973 rules for Thisted Museum (pp. 17–18). tidsskrift.dk (PDF)

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