Aggravation (game)

Aggravation is the name of one of the many Pachisi variants. Its distinctive features are that the track is usually asterisk-shaped, to accommodate six players, that it is normally drilled to accept colored glass marbles as playing pieces, and that it incorporates "shortcuts." There are no "safe" holes where a player's marbles cannot be captured (or "aggravated," in the game's parlance). Each player rolls a single die to determine the number of spaces to move, with a roll of either 1 or 6 needed to enter the track.

Each of the inside corners near the center of the board is a "shortcut," as is a hole in the center of the board: if a player lands a marble on one of the corner shortcuts, he or she has the option, on the next roll, of jumping from shortcut to shortcut, counting each jump as a single space; however, to do so, the player must be able to complete the move without leaving the shortcuts. If a player on a corner shortcut rolls a 1, he or she has the additional option of jumping to the center shortcut; from there, the marble can move directly to any corner shortcut on a roll of 1, but cannot move at all on any other roll.