How to play Langur Burja
Langur Burja is the cloth and dice game of Dashain and Tihar. Six symbols are painted on the cloth, you lay chips on whichever ones you fancy, and three dice are thrown. Every symbol that comes up pays the seats that backed it, and every symbol that does not takes what was on it.
- Players
- 2 to 6
- What you need
- A painted cloth, three dice and a pile of chips
- How long
- Five rounds, and a round is over in one throw
What the game is
Six symbols are painted on a cloth: spade, heart, diamond, club, burja and langur. Each of the three dice carries those same six faces, one to a side, drawn exactly as they are on the cloth. Learn the six once and you have learned the dice as well.
Burja is a flag on a pole and langur is a monkey's face. Those two give the game its name. The other four are the card suits, so most people already know four of the six before they sit down.
Nothing at this cloth is hidden. Every chip is out where it can be counted, every pile is in front of its owner, and the dice land in the middle. The one thing you do not know is what the dice will do, and nobody else knows that either.
The cloth, the dice and the chips
Everybody starts with the same pile, 100 chips at a standard table. Those chips belong to the match. They are not your account coins, and nothing that happens at this cloth touches your balance.
Chips come in three sizes, 5, 10 and 25, and a stake is built out of them one chip at a time rather than typed in. Pick a size, then tap a symbol to lay that size on it. The size stays picked, so tapping the same symbol again puts another chip of it on top.
A chip size bigger than what you have left to stake is greyed out, so the 25 going dead means you have under 25 left to put down, either because of the round's ceiling or because of your own pile. Laying a chip does not take it out of your pile. The counter still reads 100 while 50 of it sits on the cloth, which is why the line under the status keeps the two apart: chips left, and how much is on the cloth.
How a round goes
- The cloth is swept and everybody starts the round with nothing on it.
- The dealer stakes first, then each seat in turn round the table. One at a time, not everybody at once, so the last seat to stake can see every chip already down.
- When you have finished, press Done. That is final for the round, so a change of mind has to happen before you press it.
- When the last seat has pressed Done, the dealer throws all three dice together.
- The chips move and the round card goes up: what each seat staked, what the round did to its pile, and what it has left. Then the next round starts with the dice one seat along.
The dealer of round 1 is the first seat, and in a game against bots the first seat is you. So your opening act in a match is to stake at an empty cloth, and then, once everybody else has staked, to throw. The dice move one seat along after every round, which at three seats over five rounds means you deal rounds 1 and 4.
Putting your chips down
Two numbers fence in what you can do. The cloth takes at least 5 from you before Done will work, and until you get there the button reads Stake 5 more instead. At the other end you may not have more than 50 on the cloth in a round, and that 50 is counted across every symbol together rather than on each one.
Between the two, the decision is how far above the floor to go and how wide to spread. All 50 can go on the langur, or 25 on the burja and 25 on the spade, or 5 on each of the six. A standard table sets no limit on how many symbols you may back, although the lobby can hold you to one, two, three, four or five.
Taking a stake back is all or nothing. Clear lifts your whole stack off one symbol, and there is no way to lift a single chip off a stack of three. On the symbol buttons it is a right click, and on a phone you tap your own stack on the cloth instead. Clearing hands back the symbol as well as the chips, so at a table limited to three symbols you can lift one stack and back something else with it.
Clearing can drop you back under the floor, and then the button goes back to reading Stake 5 more until you re-stake. One case is excused the floor entirely: a seat with nothing left to lay presses Done with a bare cloth in front of it and the round goes on without it.
The throw
The dealer throws all three dice together. Each die lands on one of the six symbols, and each symbol is 1 in 6 on each die, every throw, whatever came up in the round before.
Three dice across six faces means at most three symbols can pay in a round. Back four or more and you have guaranteed yourself a dead stake. Back one and you are on a symbol that stays away on 125 throws out of 216.
One throw can pay you on more than one stack. Each symbol you have backed is settled on its own, so a cloth with your chips on both heart and club pays you twice when the dice come down heart, heart, club.
What a winning symbol pays
The standard rule is that a symbol pays as many times your stake as there are dice showing it, and your stake comes back on top of that. A 10 chip on a symbol that shows on one die is 20 back, a gain of 10. On two dice it is 30 back, a gain of 20.
The app prints the gain rather than the total. Your seat line reads +20 and the Paid row on the round card is the same figure, so read it as what the round did to your pile, not as what was swept back to you.
A symbol on none of the three dice pays nothing whatsoever, and the whole stack on it is gone. There is no half measure and no consolation. Either a symbol came up or it did not.
A table can play the other way. The second choice under A symbol pays is Once, however many show it, and on that rule the same 10 chip on two hearts comes back as 20 rather than 30. It sounds like the gentler rule and it is the worse one to be playing.
All three the same
When all three dice land on the same symbol, that symbol pays double what it otherwise would. A 10 chip on it is 70 back instead of 40. This is the throw everybody round the cloth shouts at, and it comes up 6 times in 216.
The double is on by default and can be switched off, which takes that same triple back to 40. With it on, a triple is also the largest thing a round can do for you: at a standard table, 50 on one symbol that shows on all three dice returns 350, a gain of 300.
Why a pile drifts down
Every stake at this cloth is a little worse than even, and that is the game rather than a fault in it. At a standard table a chip staked comes back as 0.935 of itself on average, which is 6.48 percent gone. There is no banker and no house here, so what goes does not go to anybody. It simply leaves the table.
Spreading does not change that figure. Put 5 on each of the six symbols and it looks like covering everything. It is not. Three different faces, 120 throws in 216, bring back exactly what you laid. A pair, 90 throws in 216, costs you 5. A triple, 6 throws in 216, gains you 5. Averaged out that is the same 6.48 percent as anything else.
So spreading buys the shape of the result and nothing else: small swings often instead of big swings rarely. Which of those you want depends on where the match stands. A seat that is ahead wants small, and a seat that is behind with one round left wants everything on one symbol, because the match goes to the biggest pile and nothing else is counted.
Winning the match
A match is five rounds by default and can be set to three or ten. The seat with the most chips at the end takes it. Rounds won are not counted and nothing is added up: what is left of your pile is the score.
If two seats finish level at the top, the match is a draw. It goes to nobody rather than to whoever happens to sit first, and the header reads Level at the end.
Nobody is knocked out along the way. A seat that has lost everything keeps its place, presses Done with a bare cloth and plays the rounds out. It cannot climb back, though. With nothing to lay there is nothing that can pay it, so it sits at nought to the end.
The settings
Langur Burja is a game of house rules more than most, and the game's own page carries all of them. Set them before you start, because a table keeps the rules it was made with.
| Setting | Standard | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Players | 3 | Seats at the cloth, from 2 to 6. Several seats can back the same symbol, and each one's chips sit in their own stack on that panel. |
| Rounds | 5 | Throws in the match: 3, 5 or 10. The dice move one seat along after each round, so they only go round evenly when the round count divides by the number of seats. |
| Chips each | 100 | The pile every seat starts with: 100, 200 or 500. These chips belong to the table and are not your account coins. |
| Most per round | 50 | The most one seat may have on the cloth in a round, counted across every symbol together: 25, 50 or 100. |
| Least per round | 5 | The least you must have on the cloth before Done will work: 5 or 10. Sitting a round out is not offered, because a pile that is off the cloth cannot shrink and waiting would be the strongest move for whoever is ahead. |
| Symbols at once | As many as you like | How many different symbols one seat may back in a round. At the limit you can still stack more on the symbols you already back, and clearing one frees the slot for another. |
| A symbol pays | Once for every die showing it | The standard rule pays your stake back plus your stake times the number of dice showing the symbol. The other choice, Once, however many show it, pays the stake back plus the stake once, and returns 0.847 per chip against 0.935. |
| All three dice the same | Pays double | Doubles what a symbol pays when it shows on all three dice. A 10 chip on a triple comes back as 70 with this on and 40 with it off. |
| Difficulty | Medium | The dice are blind, so this is not foresight. An easy bot chases whatever has been coming up, which is worth nothing, and puts about half the ceiling down every round whatever the standing. A perfect bot treats every throw as new, stakes the floor while it is ahead, and when it is behind puts its whole stake on one symbol. |
The words
- Langur Burja (लंगुर बुर्जा)
- The game, named after two of its six symbols. It comes out at Dashain and Tihar, usually on a cloth spread on the ground with everybody crouched round it.
- Burja (बुर्जा)
- The flag symbol, drawn as a flag on a pole. One of the two the game is named after.
- Langur (लंगुर)
- The monkey's face, and the other half of the name.
- Hukum (हुकुम)
- Spade. The other three suits are paan for heart, itta for diamond and chidi for club, and the app names all six in whichever language you are reading.
- Dau (दाउ)
- A chip, and the stake laid with it. Where the English here says chips or stake, Nepali says dau.
- Kapada (कपडा)
- The cloth. The six symbols are painted on it and the chips are laid on it, and the status line says on the cloth for the chips you have out.
- Pasa (पासा)
- Dice. Three of them, thrown together, and the button that throws them reads Throw.
- Bhayo (भयो)
- Done. The button that ends your staking for the round, and pressing it is final.
Every rule on this page is the one the app plays by. Change any of them on the game's own page before you start.