Liubo

Liubo or liupo (Chinese: 六博; pinyin: liù bó) is an ancient Chinese board game. It has been called the game of "six sticks."

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 Chinese web site 古代『六博』棋盤在滬首次露面 北方網風雅藝軒. You may also read Robert Lin's Chinese Chess, 1991.

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 Game Boards 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 in the 12th century CE, 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?)!!

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." To make matters worse, though we do have a number of surviving literary references to and artistic impressions of the game that date from antiquity, the rules of liubo still have yet to be successfully reconstructed. No rules were ever written down! One noteworthy literary reference of liubo is found in the 3rd century BC poem Chao hun by Sung Yu. See reference below.

Because we do know that liubo was played by some as a "battle game" (with dice) it has gained the distinction of having perhaps spawned the creative development of Xiàngqí, 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, but so does a "game" design suggested by an image in Nefertari's tomb, another possible contender for the same distinction. See Xiàngqí or Origins of chess for more information.

Whether either liubo or Nefertari's "game" led to anything at all, of course, we may never know for certain.

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

It is commonly thought that liubo was the basis to the design found on TLV mirrors.

External links

• Liubo by Jean-Louis Cazaux
• Ceramic model of liubo players

References

• Lien-sheng Yang, "An Additional Note on the Ancient Game Liu-po". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1/2. (June 1952), pp. 124–139.