TricTrac: The Rules

Index

TricTrac is a boardgame for two players. Each player will move pieces around the board by turn. TricTrac is originally a french game. However this  game is played by the dutch rules, which differ on some points with the french rules. The dutch rules are much easier, and one game will take about 20 minutes. There's also no score system (at least not known by me), which makes this game easy and fun to play.

TricTrac is played on a board which generally resembles a backgammon board, consisting 24 narrow triangles. Each triangle represents a spot where pieces can be placed.

The game's equipment consists of 15 pieces for each player and two normal dices.

The object of the game is to get your 15 pieces from your beginning position to the end of the board. The other player has the same object, but the opposite direction.

The white pieces follow the direction of the white arrow, and the dark pieces follow the opposite direction.

When all pieces of a player have reached the other side, the player wins. 

At the beginning of the game, all pieces are outside the board, and the board is completely empty.

To decide which player starts, each player rolls the dices once, and the player who rolls the most eyes starts.

The player who starts, rolls the dices. First, each player's pieces have to enter the board. The number of eyes of the dices is the number of places a piece can be moved forwards. For example, when a player rolls 4 and 5, he can place one piece on the fourth arrow and one on the fifth. It should be looking like this:

Two of the white pieces are now on the board, and still 13 remaining on the side of the board. Now the first player has moved, the other player can roll the dices, and places his pieces the similar way on the right-top of the board.

Before a piece on the board can be moved, all pieces of a player must have entered the board.

Whenever a player is on turn and rolls the dices, there are several rules:

- A player always has to move the number of eyes of the lowest dice first. So when you throw 4 and 5, always move 4 first.

- There are several special combinations you can roll:

• Two the same number of eyes: for example 3 and 3. When you roll this, you can move 2 x 3, 2 x 4, in this order, and you can roll again. For all double rolls applies: when you roll n eyes, you can move 2 x n and 2 x (7 - n), and roll again.
• 1 and 2. This special roll is called 'TricTrac' and means you can move 2 x 1, 2 x 2, 2 x 5 and 2 x 6, in this order, and roll again.

Whenever a player rolls the dices, but can't move any piece, his turn is skipped and the other player is on turn.

When all pieces of a player are on the board, and the player is on turn, he can move pieces across the board. On each arrow, a maximum of 5 pieces can be parked on top of each other. 

The white player rolls 3 and 4. The 3 was the last piece to get on the board. With 4, a piece on the board can be moved forwards.

So whenever the player decides to move, for example, the fifth from left forwards, the piece can be moved 4 places forwards. Only the upper pieces of a stack can be moved.

A piece can only be moved to an open position. This is a place where are less than 5 own pieces, less than 2 opponent pieces, or no pieces at all. 

When a white piece is on the bottom-left  of the board, it can move on to the upper-left of the board. Several rules are applying for moving pieces around the board:

A player is only allowed to move pieces into the opponent home field when all his pieces have entered the board and out of his own home field. Pieces placed in the opponent home field, can't be moved anymore. They can only bear off , or get hit (see next chapters).

When a player has to move but he can't move any piece, the turn is forfeited, and the other player is on turn. When a player can move a piece, he's compelled to move, he can't skip his turn.

On a certain time, pieces of each player will cross each other. A player on turn can hit pieces of the other player off the board. The piece will be removed from the board, and the other player must re-enter the board before he can move any other piece.

A place with a single piece is called a blot. When a piece is moved on an opponent blot, the blot gets hit.

The black player throws 2 and 3.

Black can hit the opponent's piece, so it will be removed from the board. The player has to re-enter the board with this piece before he can move on.

Hitting is not required, but it can be useful or not useful, depending of the current state of the game.

When all pieces of a player are in the opponent home field (for the white player in field 4 and for the black player in field 1), the player can start bearing off his pieces. Pieces in the opponent home field cannot move, it can only bear off, or get hit. When a piece is beared off, it is out of the game. 

The first player to bear off al his pieces wins the game.

TricTrac is a game that highly depends on luck, because of the dices. Even the 'best' TricTrac player can lose of a beginner, if he's unlucky. However, there are some strategies in the game that increases the chance that you win. You can make the other player in the end to bear off difficultly. Most of the tricks you'll have to learn yourself (they aren't that complicated), however some things are useful to know.

Defense

When you build a defense in front of your home field, the opponent can difficultly get into you home field, or only in the last positions. This is very harmful with bearing off later.

The black player has 3 stacks of 2 pieces in front of his home field, so even when the white player rolls 6, he can't get further than the fourth triangle from the right.

Hitting

When a piece of a player gets hit, he loses time, because his piece is moved back to the beginning. Sometimes this loss of time is very useful. For example, when both players have a defense, and player 1 rolls all high numbers, and player 2 gets hit all the time by player 1, player 1 has on a certain time no place to move, so he has to remove his pieces from the defense. This is a very useful way to break up someone's defense.

Bearing off

Because the dice with the lowest number must always be moved first, it is smart to get into the opponent home field as far as possible. You can't move pieces in the opponent home field, so when you have a lot of pieces on the 4th,5th and 6th position from the right, you'll have to roll 4,5,6 and something equal or higher. The chance that you roll this is relatively small. Much better is to have all pieces spread over all positions in the opponent home field, With less pieces on position 4,5 and 6.

If you need any help or have questions about the rules, mail me. 

You can also visit the forum.