Board and tile games
Every board and tile game on the site, free to play in your browser.
Checkers is played on the dark squares, and you capture by jumping over the other player's pieces. Chess is won by checkmating the king, from the standard start or in Chess960. In Reversi you trap discs to turn them your colour, and in Tic-tac-toe you race to get your marks in a row. Backgammon is a race around the board with two dice, where a lone checker can be hit and sent back. Ludo is a race to bring your four tokens home, and only a six brings a token out of the yard. Dominoes is played with a double-six set in three ways: Draw, Block and All Fives. Mahjong is played alone, matching pairs of free tiles until the board is clear. All but Mahjong can also be played online against other people.
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Backgammon
Race your checkers around the board and bear them off first.
Play Backgammon Browse 4 variants
About these games
Checkers, Chess, Reversi and Tic-tac-toe have no dice and nothing hidden, so a game turns on your moves alone. Backgammon and Ludo turn on the roll of the dice, but each roll still leaves you choices: which checker or token to move, and whom to hit. Dominoes asks you to keep track of the numbers other players pass on and plan which tiles to keep. Mahjong has no dice and no opponents, and the order in which you clear pairs decides whether the board can be finished.
For a first game, Tic-tac-toe, Ludo and the Draw game of Dominoes have the simplest rules. Against the computer, Ludo can be played with two, three or four players in all, Dominoes with one to three computer opponents, Checkers, Reversi and Tic-tac-toe at Easy, Normal or Hard, Chess at five levels from Beginner to Expert, and Backgammon as a single game or a match. In Mahjong, the Turtle is the classic layout to start on.
All eight are free in your browser without an account. Signed in, you can open an online table for Ludo or Dominoes for two to four players, send friends its code and let bots take the seats nobody fills, or a table for two at Checkers, Chess, Reversi, Tic-tac-toe or Backgammon. Mahjong is played alone, and signing in adds a daily Turtle board.