How to play Pasa
Pasa is a Dashain and Tihar game played with three long dice. One seat holds the dice and everybody else stakes against it. The rings on the three top faces are added up, and the total says whether the thrower takes the stakes, pays them, or throws again.
- Players
- 2 to 6, one of them holding the dice
- What you need
- Three long dice and a pile of chips
- How long
- Two rounds of the table, which is eight turns with the dice at four seats
What Pasa is
Pasa comes out at Dashain and Tihar, when people sit up late round a mat in the courtyard. It is remembered mostly from villages. The word itself is also plain Nepali for a die, the kind you throw at Ludo.
The kit is three long dice. Each one is a bar of square section, so it can only come to rest on one of its four long faces, and those faces carry one, two, five and six rings. Long dice like these are what chaupar is played with in India.
Nobody decides anything but how much to stake. The dice settle the rest, which is why it is quick to learn and quick to play.
The dice
A pasa is marked on its four long sides and nowhere else. Its two ends are blank, and a bar cannot come to rest standing on end, so every throw lands on a long face. Each of the four comes up a quarter of the time.
Every mark is a ring with a dot in the middle, cut in black. One is a single ring in the middle of the face, and two is a ring near each end. Five has a pair at each end and one in the middle. Six has a pair at each end and another pair in the middle.
Opposite faces add up to seven, as they do on an ordinary die. There is no three and no four on a pasa. Three of them can still make every total from 3 to 18, though some totals come up far more often than others.
Paro, tiro and bachyo
Every total is one of three kinds, and learning the game is learning which. Paro, the khane dau, is 13, 15, 17 or 18, and wins for the thrower. A total of 3, 4, 6 or 9 is tiro, the tirne dau, and the thrower pays. Anything else is bachyo, where nothing happens at all.
Three dice with four faces each can land 64 ways. Fourteen of them make a paro and fourteen make a tiro, so for the thrower the throw is even money. The other 36 are bachyo, which only means the dice are thrown again.
Most of paro is thirteen, nine of its fourteen ways, and most of tiro is nine, nine of its fourteen. Eighteen, fifteen, six and three can each be thrown only one way, with the same face on all three dice.
A turn with the dice
- The seat holding the dice is the thrower. Every other seat stakes against it, one after another, starting from the next seat round the table.
- When the stakes are down, the thrower throws all three dice at once.
- Add up the rings on the three top faces.
- Paro: the thrower takes every stake on the mat and keeps the dice, and everybody stakes again.
- Tiro: the thrower pays every seat as much as it staked, and the dice pass to the next seat.
- Bachyo: nothing moves. The same seat throws again, and the stakes stay where they are.
A turn lasts until the thrower throws a tiro, so it can be a single throw or a long run of paros. Of the throws that settle anything, half go the thrower’s way.
The written list stops at the throws. Who stakes against whom, and where the dice go after each kind, is this app’s own reading, borrowed from Kauda, the cowrie game of Tihar. Where these rules come from, further down, says which part is which.
Throws with names
Two throws have names of their own. Halhale is three twos. It is the only way to make six, and six is a tiro.
Tike terha is six, six and one, a thirteen and so a paro. Thirteen can be thrown nine ways, and three of them are tike terha. The other six thirteens are a six, a five and a two, and they have no name.
The list also says that a five and a one together are always bachyo. The totals already make that true. With a five and a one down, the third die makes 7, 8, 11 or 12, and all four are bachyo.
How much may be staked
Each seat picks its stake from a few sizes, 5, 10, 20 and 50 at the standard table. The least is 5 and the most is 50.
On a tiro the thrower pays every seat at once, so the stakes together may not come to more than the thrower holds. Each seat may put down at most what the thrower’s pile still leaves uncovered after the stakes before it. A seat the pile no longer covers sits out until the staking opens again.
At four seats with 500 chips each this hardly ever comes up. It matters once a thrower is running low, and at five or six seats, where the others can put down as much as 200 or 250 between them.
A seat with less than the table’s least, or facing less than that in cover, stakes all it may. A seat with no chips at all is out, and watches the rest of the match.
How big to stake
Paro and tiro come up equally often, so on average no stake is worth more than another. What the size changes is how far a pile can swing.
The match goes to the biggest pile at the table. Against several other seats, the biggest of their piles usually ends above where everybody started, so a seat that plays safe keeps its own pile and still loses to whoever got lucky.
The computer’s best players stake big, and drop to the smallest stake only when their lead is too large for the turns left to take back. Over 6,000 matches at four seats against the easiest computer players, where a quarter is a fair share, staking the least every time won 25.0% of them and the strongest level won 32.2%.
The end of a match
The dice go round the table a set number of times, twice at the standard table, starting from whichever seat throws first. Every seat holds them as often as every other, and the match ends when they come back to that seat after the last round.
A match also ends early when one seat holds every chip. The biggest pile at the end wins, and a shared top pile is a draw.
The chips belong to this table and nothing else. They are not your coins. An online table with a stake settles that stake separately, the way every table here does.
Where these rules come from
Very little about Pasa is written down. The one account this app has found is a list of the throws from 2020: the dice and their faces, which totals are paro, tiro and bachyo, the two named throws, and a cut taken on a fifteen. Every total on this page comes from that list.
With a single source it matters whether the list agrees with itself, and it does. Every total from 3 to 18 falls in exactly one of the three kinds, and paro and tiro come to fourteen throws each.
What the list does not say is who stakes against whom. This app plays that part the way Kauda is played at Tihar: one seat throws and everybody else stakes against it, a paro keeps the dice with the thrower and a tiro passes them on. It reads khane and tirne, eating and paying, as the thrower’s side of the throw. If your courtyard plays it another way, this is the part most likely to differ.
The list also has the bot. When a fifteen is thrown, the owner of the dice takes a cut. The app leaves it out, because a table here has no owner of the dice, and the list does not say how big the cut is. Fifteen is three fives, one throw in 64.
At this table
When it is your turn to stake, the stake buttons wake up and show exactly what you may put down. The last of them is the most you may, and the thrower’s pile can bring it down.
When the dice are yours, tap them on the mat or press Throw. A chalk outline round the dice shows whose they are, and each stake stands in front of the seat that put it down.
Once the dice come to rest, the status line reads the throw before any chips move: the three faces, their total and which kind it is. The mat prints the paro and tiro totals in its two near corners, so a throw can be read off the cloth as well.
Here you can play the computer at four levels, friends online, or up to six people round one phone. Nothing at the mat is hidden, so the phone simply goes round, and the status line names whoever is to stake or throw.
Options
Every table here plays the rules above. These are the choices a courtyard makes before the first throw.
| Setting | Standard | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Players | 4 | Two to six seats. At five or six a single tiro can cost the thrower 200 or 250, so the table advises a thousand chips each. |
| Rounds of the table | 2 | How many times the dice go round the table. In each round every seat holds them once. |
| Chips each | 500 | The pile each seat starts with. A thousand suits five or six seats, where one tiro can cost a thrower 200 or 250. |
| Most a stake can be | 50 | The most a seat may stake against one throw. The thrower’s pile can bring it lower. |
| Least a stake can be | 5 | The least a seat may stake. Never nought, because a seat that could stake nothing would sit out once it was ahead. |
| Difficulty | Medium | How well the computer’s seats read the match. The dice treat everybody the same. |
The words
- Pasa (पासा)
- A long die, and the game played with three of them. In everyday Nepali a pasa is any die, the one in Ludo included.
- Paro (परो)
- A throw the thrower wins on: 13, 15, 17 or 18.
- Khane dau (खाने दाउ)
- The eating throw, another name for the paro totals. The thrower eats the stakes.
- Tiro (तिरो)
- A throw the thrower pays on: 3, 4, 6 or 9. Every seat is paid and the dice pass on.
- Tirne dau (तिर्ने दाउ)
- The paying throw, another name for the tiro totals.
- Bachyo (बच्यो)
- Spared. Any of the other eight totals, where nobody wins or loses and the same seat throws again.
- Halhale (हल्हले)
- Three twos, which is six and the only way to make it. A tiro.
- Tike terha (टिके तेह्र)
- Six, six and one, a thirteen. A paro.
- Bot (बोट)
- The cut the owner of the dice takes when a fifteen is thrown. This table has no owner of the dice and leaves it out. It has nothing to do with the computer players, which the app also calls bots.
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.