Parchisi - The Classic Two-Dice Pachisi Board Game with Blockades, Free Online

Play Parchisi Online Free

Parchisi is a free online Parcheesi-style board game: you roll two dice every turn, pawns come out of base on a 5, and two of your pawns on one square form a blockade nobody can get past. It is classic Ludo with three rule switches flipped, played on the same four-color cross board with the same goal, walk all four of your pawns around the track and home before anyone else. The board above already has the two-dice rules switched on.

Rooms work like every Foony game. Create one, share the link, and up to three friends can jump straight in from a browser tab. Prefer a solo race? Fill the empty colors with bots and pick how well they play.

Parchisi vs Classic Ludo

If you grew up in the UK or India, you probably know this board as Ludo, the one-die version of the race. If family game night used two dice and dice cups, this page is the version you remember. Three rules separate the two games, and the Parchisi preset flips all three at once.

Everything else carries over from the classic game unchanged. Landing on an enemy pawn outside a safe square still captures it and sends it back to its base. The eight safe squares still protect any pawn standing on them, and a pawn still needs an exact roll to step into the center and finish. Here is where those eight squares sit, and what a blockade looks like on the track.

Parcheesi-Style Two-Dice Rules

A Parchisi turn goes like this. Roll both dice. Pick a die, pick a pawn that can legally move that many squares, and move it. Then use the second die the same way, on the same pawn or a different one, in whichever order suits you. A die with no legal move is simply lost, and if neither die has one, your turn passes.

Roll the same number on both dice and you get to roll again after your moves, and those bonus rolls can chain. There is a limit though: a third double in a row is thrown out and ends your turn on the spot. A 6 also means less here than in classic Ludo. In the one-die game a 6 brings a pawn out of base and gives you another roll. In Parchisi it is just the biggest step on the dice, because pawns come out on 5s and extra rolls come from doubles.

All three plans are legal, and that choice is most of the game's added depth. The boxed American edition adds bonus moves on top, 20 extra squares for a capture and 10 for walking a pawn home, per the official Parcheesi rules published by Winning Moves. Foony's Parchisi leaves those bonus moves out to keep turns quick. A capture still sends the enemy pawn all the way back to its base, and that setback is your reward.

How to Play Parchisi on Foony

The room you create from this page starts with the Parchisi preset already applied. Coming from the main Ludo page instead? The Create Room dialog shows a Parchisi rule card next to the Default one, so you can start the two-dice game from there as well.

The three rules are also independent lobby toggles named Two Dice, Enter on a 5, and Blockades, and the host can flip each one on its own. Want blockades in the one-die game, or two dice without blockades? Build your own mix of house rules before hitting Start.

A match seats two to four players at the four colored corners. Share the room link for friend games, add bots to fill the empty seats, or hand one device around with pass-and-play for up to four local seats. Bots come in Easy, Medium, and Hard, the host picks one tier, and every bot in the match plays at that level. The turn clock defaults to 20 seconds and the host can lengthen, shorten, or disable it.

Parchisi Strategy

Use every early 5. With two dice showing each turn, a 5 turns up almost twice as often as the lone 6 you wait on in the classic game, so bases empty fast. Bring pawns out whenever a 5 appears early on. A pawn in base does nothing, and with four pawns on the track both of your dice usually have a useful move.

Build blockades where they hurt. The best spot for a wall is a few squares past an opponent's start square, because every pawn they bring out immediately runs into it. Just remember the price: the two pawns in your wall are standing still while everyone else races, so break the blockade once it has done its job.

Know the safe-square exception. A blockade built on a safe square still stops enemies from passing it, but they can land on it, since any color can stand on a safe square and nobody captures there. When you want to block landing too, build your wall on a plain track square.

Use your dice in the smarter order. The same two numbers can play out very differently depending on which moves first. Moving one pawn can open a capture, dodge a blockade, or create a legal move for your second die that did not exist before. When a capture is possible, check both orders before you commit.

From Pachisi to Parchís to Parcheesi

Every name on this page belongs to one family of games. The ancestor is Pachisi, played in India for centuries on a cross-shaped cloth board with cowrie shells for dice. Spain adopted it as parchís, still a standard family game there, and if you searched for parchís online, this is that game. In the United States the game became Parcheesi, a brand-name adaptation whose roots the Henry Ford Museum traces straight back to Pachisi. England later simplified the race to a single die, and that one-die version is the Ludo most of the world plays today.

Foony has both games. This page uses the two-dice family rules, and the free online Ludo page has the classic single-die game with the same rooms, bots, and cosmetics. Whichever version you grew up with, the race home is the same, and you can settle the pawns-come-out-on-a-5 argument with a rematch instead of a rulebook.