Parques

Parques is a Colombian adaptation of the game Pachisi. It is a very popular game in this country, more popular than card games. It is played with 4 pieces and 2 dice. It is for 2 up to 4 players. It can be played with money.

Rules
The game's goal is to take all your pieces to the end before your opponent(s). There can be a maximum of four players and four pieces. To move your pieces, you first have to throw the dice by clicking anywhere.

Dice and moving pieces
The player has two dice. He throws them and the move the values with the pieces. The player can choose to move a piece advancing it with the value of the two dice or he can distribute the values. The movements are only forward. The player moves his pieces until he gets them to the End Squares. These are seven squares and the eight is located in the center, it is the End Square and the player can get a piece out of the game when he moves a piece there. An opponent can never enter another player's End Squares.

For instance:

The player throws 6-3
 * He can move 9 squares forward with one piece, or
 * He can move 6 squares with one piece and 3 squares with another

If the player has all his pieces in the end, he may not be able to move the indicated value. So he just moves what he can and loses the remainder. For example:

The player throws 5-4 If he cannot move 4, he moves 5 and loses the 4.

Jail and home
There is a special square for each player called Jail. That is where he puts his pieces at the beginning. He must get them out to be able to play. To free them, he must get a "pair", that is 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5 or 6-6. With 1-1 or 6-6 he can free his 4 pieces out. With the rest of the pairs, he can only free 2 pieces.

If the player has only 1 piece in jail he must move the remainder of the pair with another piece. If the piece in jail is the only piece he moves the remainder with the same piece. For example:

The player throws 4-4
 * He frees the piece in jail and moves 4 with another piece
 * If the piece in jail is the only one in game, he moves 4 squares after the home square.

When he frees them, he moves them to a special square called Home.

Turns
Each player has only one try with the dice. He can get more tries though:


 * When he is in jail with all his pieces. He can throw three times.
 * When he gets a pair like 2-2, he wins another try.
 * When he cannot move, he passes the turn to the next player

If he gets three pairs on a turn he can get a piece out of the game.

When the throws are over, he passes the turn to the player on his right.

Taking (eating) pieces to jail
The player sends the opponent's pieces to jail when he drops his piece onto the square he is on. The player eats all the pieces placed on the square. He must always see if he can "eat" (send to jail) other pieces. If he does not eat when he can, another player can say this and the player goes to jail with the piece that did not eat.

There are safe places where the player cannot eat pieces, these are the squares labeled HOME and SAFE

If the player has a piece positioned at the opponent's HOME square, the player is at risk to be sent to jail if the opponent frees a piece from jail. So, the player must be watching if there is a piece in jail when he is going to stand on a HOME square.

If you can eat two or more pieces on different squares, you must eat the one that is nearer your home.

First piece
If you are the first one in getting a piece to the end, you are congratuled by it. This is called first piece. Extra prizes

When you get 3 doubles in the same turn (the game only counts the doubles that were not used to get out of jail), the game automatically moves your last piece to the end. Extra fun

As other board games, you can play with real money. For instance, when you are sent to jail, you have to pay some money to the one who sent you there. If you get the first piece you get paid by the all the players. You also get paid when you win. Prices must be set at the beginning of the game. This is only a suggestion to increase excitement.

External link
I, Davichito 19:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC), pasted the partial contents of my website at http://go.to/parques. There is a PC version there.