The Basics

• Using a game board with a cross design that contains 68 squares around its perimeter, players take turns rolling two dice and moving their game pieces. The goal of the game is to take each of your pieces from your home circle or "nest" around the perimeter of the game board counterclockwise, back up the center line of squares beside your home circle and into the middle of the board. Each player chooses to be a designated color and places the four game pieces of that color on their starting circle or "nest." Your turn consists of throwing two dice. But to leave the home circle, you must throw a five on one of the dice, both dice, or the dice must total five. If you do not, you can move one of your pieces that already left the home circle. If you have no pieces to move and do not throw a five to leave the nest, then you lose your turn.
  
  

The Turns

• When you roll, you can use the numbers thrown on the dice separately and move two pieces or total them and move one piece. If you roll a five, you must move a piece from the home circle if you have any pieces remaining there. If you throw the same number on both dice, doubles, then you receive a bonus turn and roll again. Rolling the same number on both dice when you have no game pieces left on the home circle gives you the bonus of counting the numbers on the bottom of the dice for your turn as well. Twelve colored squares on the board designate safe squares. On traditional American versions of the game, these are blue. Safe squares keep you from being captured and sent back to your home circle when an opposing player lands on the same square as you. Two game pieces of the same color on the same square form a blockade that can also keep you from being sent back to your home circle. An opposing player usually cannot land on or pass an opposing player's blockade. Another rule concerning blockades states you cannot use a double to move a blockade from one square to another. Blockades can be passed by opposing players only if they have no other recourse for moving based on the numbers thrown in their turn.
  
  

The Win

• On the game board, once you have counted your way around the entire perimeter and just before you reach your starting square again, you find a row of squares going up between the two perimeter lines of squares and into the center of the board. This denotes the home stretch of the game. Once you reach this area, your game piece remains safe. You must reach the center of the game board by an exact count to go into it. You win the game by moving all of your pieces into the center of the game board on an exact count before your opponent moves all of his there. Variations of the rules exist and should not be confused with the more complicated traditional game of Pachisi. But some of the Pachisi rules, such as playing the game in teams so the eight total game pieces of both players must be in the center to win, find their way into some modern variations. Another variation states that after one of your pieces arrives in the center of the board, you earn an extra 10-space move that you designate to any remaining piece you have on the board.