Patolli - Rules, History & Strategy Guide

Patolli is among the oldest games of the Americas: versions of its cross-shaped mat appear in Teotihuacan and Maya contexts centuries before the Aztecs made it their signature gambling game. The friar Bernardino de Sahagún described matches in detail, from the five marked beans used as dice to the mats painted with a cross of fifty-two squares, a number that mirrored the fifty-two-year Mesoamerican calendar round. The game belonged to Macuilxochitl, the god of games and music, and players invoked him with every toss.

The stakes were the point: chroniclers record wagers of cloaks, precious stones, feathers, fields, and in extreme cases personal freedom. That gambling culture is also why the game nearly vanished, as Spanish authorities burned mats and banned play, leaving the exact rules to be reconstructed by historians from Sahagún’s descriptions and surviving imagery.

Patolli is a race with a wager attached: six markers around a 52-square cross, with jade treasures changing hands on captures and penalty squares. Win the race, or take everything your opponent staked.

1. Toss five marked beans: marks up score 1 to 4, all five marks score 10, all blank scores 20.
2. Enter a new marker on your start square with a toss of exactly 1 (your first marker may enter on any toss).
3. Move one marker the full toss value clockwise around the cross; your own markers block each other.
4. Land exactly on an enemy marker to capture it and take one treasure; land on a penalty square and pay one treasure.
5. Bring all six markers around the circuit, or take your opponent’s last treasure, to win.

• Play the treasures, not just the race: a capture is a two-treasure swing, and bankrupting your opponent ends the game on the spot.
• Respect the shared center squares where both circuits cross: pass through them, do not park on them.
• The arm-end squares grant an extra toss and make the safest stopping points; route your markers to land there exactly.
• Enter markers steadily. Tosses of 1 feel small, but a full reserve late in the game turns big tosses into dead tosses.
• When your opponent is down to one or two treasures, switch from racing to hunting: threaten captures on every toss.

Reconstructions differ on entry rules, the exact effect of the marked squares, and whether the big tosses score 10 and 20 or grant extra turns; the cross board, bean dice, and treasure wagering are constant. Related cross-and-circle games run through the whole region and beyond, from the Maya bul to Indian pachisi, which shares the entering, racing, and capturing skeleton on a different board.