Liubo

Liubo was a ancient Chinese board game. liu meant six, bo sticks.

Each of the two players had six pieces (called qi), one king and five pawns. Goal of the game was to kill the opponent's king. A die (called zhuo) was used to determine the moves.

The game was played in the Zhanguo era (4th century BC) and became popular during the Han Dynasties (206 BC - 220 AD).

During the Xi Han Dynasty (206 BC - 8 AD), Liubo was often confused with weiqi, damaging weiqi's image by assuming that weiqi was a dice game, too.

Liubo had inspired Xiangqi (Chinese Chess).

Links

• http://history.chess.free.fr/liubo.htm
• http://www.yutopian.com/chinesechess/stories/liubo.html