In Britain, Ludo is the board game in the cupboard of every family. In Germany, Czechia and Slovakia its place is taken by a close relative, Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, known in Czech as Člověče, nezlob se and in Slovak as Človeče, nehnevaj sa. Both games have the same roots. They began in India, came to Europe through England, and the Central European version was shaped by a businessman in Munich.
Pachisi, the cross-shaped game
The ancestor of both is the Indian game pachisi. It is played on a cross-shaped board, usually embroidered on cloth. Each of the four arms has three columns of eight squares, and there is a large square space in the middle. Instead of a die, players throw cowrie shells, and the number that land mouth up decides how far a piece moves. The name comes from the Hindi word paccīs, twenty-five, the highest score that could be thrown.
Cross-and-circle games are very old in India. Wikipedia mentions a board identical to pachisi in the Ellora caves and reliefs of cross-shaped boards from the 2nd to 1st century BC. A firm date for pachisi itself is missing, though, and the historian Irving Finkel points out that some old texts often linked to it actually describe a different game.
The best-known story about pachisi comes from the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar in the 16th century. The French traveller Louis Rousselet wrote in the 19th century that Akbar played on a courtyard laid out as a board, with people dressed in the players’ colours as the pieces. Traces of such courts are said to remain at Agra and Allahabad.
Ludo in England
According to the Czech Wikipedia, the English brought the game to Europe at the end of the 19th century. In England, Alfred Collier began selling it under the name Ludo, Latin for “I play”. The game carried patent number 14636 and was also sold as Royal Ludo. Wikipedia gives 1896 as the year it went on sale, while other sources link Collier’s patent to 1891. Instead of shells, Ludo uses a die.
Ludo caught on in Britain and grew local forms. In the Royal Navy, for example, sailors play Uckers, which is based on Ludo.
Josef Friedrich Schmidt and Munich
The decisive step was taken by Josef Friedrich Schmidt, a native of Amberg in Bavaria. In the winter of 1907 to 1908, in his workshop in Munich, he simplified English Ludo and left out its tactical variations. He called the game Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, roughly “Don’t get annoyed, mate”. The name describes what happens most often: someone captures your piece and you have to start again.
Sources disagree on exactly when the first copies were sold. The German Wikipedia gives both 1910 and 1911, and series production began in 1914. The breakthrough came with the First World War. According to German sources, Schmidt sent 3,000 games to military hospitals so that wounded soldiers would have something to pass the time. The soldiers took to it and talked about it at home. By 1920, a million copies are said to have been sold at 35 pfennigs each.
The company Schmidt founded still publishes the game as Schmidt Spiele. According to the German Wikipedia, more than 90 million copies had been sold by 2011, and around 100,000 more are sold every year. Other makers copied it under names such as Mensch, wir werfen raus or Verliere nicht den Kopf. In 1953 a licensed version appeared in East Germany.
In Czechoslovakia
The Czech Wikipedia says that games similar to pachisi were already sold in bookshops in Bohemia and Moravia in 1882. Člověče, nezlob se only became a real success on the Czechoslovak market in the 1930s and 1940s. Between the wars it was a popular present and was sold in three sizes.
A gentler version from that time, Človíčku, neztrať hlavičku, had no capturing at all. The game also appeared on film: in the 1939 Czech comedy Příklady táhnou, directed by Miroslav Cikán, it is played by Stella Májová and Vladimír Salač.
In 1997 a Czech businessman, Přemysl Chmelař, tried to register the name Člověče, nezlob se as a trademark. The Industrial Property Office turned the application down after three years, and the courts upheld the decision. The name has stayed free for everyone.
Relatives around the world
Many games have grown from the same root. Spain plays Parchís, North America Parcheesi, and India and its neighbours still play both pachisi and Ludo. They all share a cross- or circle-shaped board, pieces that race around it to a home area and the chance to send an opponent back. They differ in details, such as whether two pieces may form a block or whether there are safe squares.
In the Central European version, which is also the one on HoyHop, there are neither safe squares nor blocks. Any piece can be jumped over, and an opponent can be captured on any square of the track. That is what makes the game so unpredictable, and suitable for children who do not know any strategy yet.
Why the game has lasted
The game needs a die, a board and four colours of pieces. A five-year-old can learn the rules and still beat the adults. The die evens out the differences between players, which is why it is so popular in families with children of different ages.
If you would like to play, Ludo on HoyHop works against the computer and with friends using a room code. The exact rules are in Ludo rules in detail and advice for better play in Ludo tips and strategy.