Liubo

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Liubo or liupo (Chinese: 六博; pinyin: liù bó; literally "six sticks") is an ancient Chinese board game.

The earliest surviving remnant of liubo dates from circa 1500 BC, the Shang Dynasty in China, carved on a slab of blue stone. For a photo of this ancient game, see [1].

As with most other games handed down to us from antiquity, exactly how liubo was played may have varied from one time period to another and one player to another and one culture to another. For example, upon analyzing the ancient literature of Greek Board Games Professor Austin remarks that Plato in the 5th to 4th centuries BC originally described petteia as a battle game, but by the time knowledge of that game reached Eustathius Macrembolites in the 12th century AD, Eustathius was calling it a race game. Professor Austin supplies other similar examples as well.

Liubo is no different. Where some may refer to liubo playing pieces as "generals" and "pawns" (see The History of Xiangqi) others refer to them as "fish," "stones" and "owls" (see Cazaux, Is Chess A Hybrid Game?).

[edit] Rules

Consequently, while some regard liubo as a battle game played with dice, others regard it as a game only akin to playing a game of cards where players accumulate points or "fishes." Though there are a number of surviving literary references to and artistic impressions of the game that date from antiquity, there are no known surviving records of the rules of liubo. Some scholars have attempted to reconstruct the game, most notably Lien-sheng Yang, who discusses the game as it was possibly played on TLV mirrors.

Because we do know that liubo was played by some as a "battle game" (with sticks that were similar to dice) it has gained the distinction of having perhaps spawned the creative development of Xiàngqí (also known as Chinese Chess), another ancient Chinese battle game (played without dice). Furthermore, some may point out how the board design of liubo lends itself to a Xiàngqí-like grid of squares.

Liubo is thought to have lost its popularity by around the 6th century AD.