peer2peergames

Senet

A race for two from ancient Egypt, played there for well over a thousand years until it fell out of use in Roman times. Each of you has five pieces, and the first to bring all five along a track of thirty houses and off the end wins. Four throwing sticks say how far a piece goes, and a piece that lands on one of yours swaps places with it.

Play Senet Leaderboard

The board and the track

  1. Thirty houses in three rows of ten, numbered along an S: 1 to 10 along the top row, 11 to 20 back along the middle, 21 to 30 along the bottom. Both sides run the same track, from house 1 to house 30 and off the end.
  2. Six houses are marked: 15, and the last five, 26 to 30. Each has its own sign and its own rule, below.
  3. The game starts with all ten pieces on houses 1 to 10, the two sides alternating, light on the even houses. Light throws first.

The sticks

  1. There are four sticks, each light on one face and dark on the other. The throw is how many land light face up; the roll is what that is worth in houses.
  2. One, two, three or four light faces are worth that many. No light face at all is worth 5.
  3. After a 1, a 4 or a 5 you throw again, whatever you did with the throw, even when it allowed no move. After a 2 or a 3 the sticks pass to your opponent.
  4. The game throws the sticks for you, and both of you can see them.

Moving

  1. Move one piece forward along the track by exactly the roll. You choose which piece.
  2. A piece may not land on a house that holds one of your own pieces.
  3. A piece may jump over other pieces, yours or your opponent's, except a blockade.
  4. If any piece can move, you must move one. If only one can, it still waits for you to play it.

Swapping

  1. If your piece lands on a house that holds one of your opponent's pieces, the two swap: yours takes the house and theirs goes to the house yours left.
  2. Two or more pieces of one side standing next to each other along the track are protected, in the rules most modern sets print: none of them can be swapped.
  3. A piece on a safe house cannot be swapped either. The safe houses are 15, 26, 28, 29 and 30.

Blockades

  1. Three or more pieces of one side next to each other along the track are a blockade. Your opponent's pieces cannot pass it, forward or backward.

Moving back

  1. If no piece can move forward, you must move one backward by the roll instead, if any piece can, under the same rules: it may swap, it may not land on your own, and it may not pass a blockade.
  2. A piece on house 26 or beyond never moves backward.

The last row

  1. Every piece must stop on house 26 before it goes further, so a roll that would carry a piece past 26 cannot be played with that piece.
  2. From 26: a 5 bears the piece off, and a 2, 3 or 4 takes it to 28, 29 or 30. A 1 takes it to 27, the water.
  3. No piece stays on 27. A piece that reaches it goes back to house 15, or to the first empty house below 15 if 15 is taken.
  4. From 28 only a 3 bears a piece off, from 29 only a 2, and from 30 only a 1. Nothing else moves a piece on those three houses.

Losing a turn

  1. If no piece can move by the roll, forward or back, the throw is lost.
  2. A lost throw of 1, 4 or 5 still gives you another throw. The game does all of this for you and says so, with the roll that was lost.

How a game ends

  1. The first to bear all five pieces off wins. There are no draws to play for.
  2. A game also ends if somebody resigns, or if a move deadline passes without a move.

Reading a move

  1. A move is written as the roll, then the house the piece left and the house it reached: 2: 10-12. A piece borne off goes off, 5: 26-off.
  2. An x after a move means it swapped, a < that it moved back, and a + that the same side throws again. A roll followed by a dash is a throw that allowed no move.

Nobody knows how Senet was played: the boards and pieces survive, but the rules do not. The rules here are after Timothy Kendall's reconstruction of 1978, as modern sets play it, and other reconstructions exist, among them R. C. Bell's and one published with an open-source program. Where accounts of Kendall's rules differ, this site follows the one that is complete. One difference is worth knowing: Wikipedia's account sends a piece that is landed on back to the first empty house behind it, where this site swaps the two pieces, and it lets a piece on 30 leave when the first row is empty, which this site does not.

Senet terms

a house
one of the thirty places on the board, numbered 1 to 30 along the track
the roll
what a throw of the four sticks is worth in houses: the number of light faces, or 5 when there is none
a swap
what happens when a piece lands on an opponent's: the two exchange houses
protected
a piece next to another of its own side, which cannot be swapped
a blockade
three or more pieces of one side in a row, which the other side cannot pass
bear off
to move a piece off the end of the track; all five borne off wins

Playing it here

  • Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
  • At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
  • Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
  • Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.