Difficulty: Challenger (Level 2)
Chess is a game loved by many. It is very complex, and millions of people spend their lives trying to learn its strategies.
The game has a very long history that goes back thousands of years to ancient India. Over time, different versions of the game have come up in many parts of the world.
One such counterpart is Liubo. Meaning “six sticks”, this Chinese board game was popular during the Western Han dynasty (202BC–AD9).
Recently, the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology announced the discovery of a 2,000-year-old “chessboard”. It was unearthed during a 2023 excavation, according to Chinese newspaper Global Times.
The exact rules of Liubo were lost during the Tang dynasty (618–907). But it is believed to be a game played by two people. Each player had six pieces that they moved around the board.
Historians consider it an ancestor of Chinese chess, also called Xiangqi.
