Tables (board Game) - Turkey

Turkey

Tavla, a tables game in Turkey, is very similar to backgammon. The major difference is in tavla the doubling cube is not used. Also in tavla both gammons and backgammons are counted as two points called mars and the players are not allowed to hit and run in their home boards as in backgammon. Matches are usually played to five points.

There are many variants of tavla in Turkey where the course of play changes drastically. The usual tavla is also known as erkek tavlası meaning boys or mens tavla. The other variant kız tavlası (meaning girls tavla) is a game which depends only on the dice and doesn't involve any strategy. There is another variant called asker tavlası (meaning soldiers tavla) where the pieces are thrown to the board randomly and the opponents try to flip their pieces over the opponents pieces to beat them. The player without any pieces left loses the game. This variant doesn't involve dice at all and the play depends more on the hand eye coordination then tactical decision making. Üniversite tavlası (university tavla) is a variant of the game played with two or more tavlas and four or more players where the players form groups. The dice is only thrown by a two opposing players and the rest must play the same dice. If a team members gets beaten and cannot enter his team mates cannot play for that round. Although the dices are the same the game on every board differs interestingly, where the case of one team member winning and the other one losing is very common. This variant is considered much harder because the player must take more than one play into account while only capable of making decisions in his board.

Hapis (Turkish for "prison") is another tables game played in Turkey. It is very similar to Mahbusa played in the Middle East.