Көне қытайлық Любо ойыны

An ancient Chinese board game for two players

Liubo (; Old Chinese *kruk pˤak “six sticks”) was an ancient Chinese board game for two players. The rules have largely been lost, but it is believed that each player had six game pieces that were moved around the points of a square game board that had a distinctive, symmetrical pattern. Moves were determined by the throw of six sticks, which performed the same function as dice in other race games. The game was invented no later than the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, and was popular during the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). However, after the Han dynasty it rapidly declined in popularity, possibly due to the rise in popularity of the game of Go, and it became totally forgotten. Knowledge of the game has increased in recent years with archeological discoveries of Liubo game boards and game equipment in ancient tombs, as well as discoveries of Han dynasty picture stones and picture bricks depicting Liubo players.

A variant of Liubo in which dice were used to make the moves was called Chupu (樗蒲) or Wumu (五木). In Korea the traditional game of jeopo 저포 is still played, on a board that is not similar to a Liubo board.

Some scholars associate Liubo to other board games, and in particular some Chinese scholars believe that Xiangqi (Chinese chess) was based on Liubo. Some historians believe that Xiangqi is not related to Persian chess, but was based on Liubo, whereas others have suggested that Liubo was transmitted from China to India during the Eastern Jin (317–420), where it developed into Chaturanga, which was the ancestor to both Persian chess and Chinese chess. Although many Persian game historians reject the claim that Xiangqi or other chess variants derive from Liubo, Jean Louis Cazaux argues that Liubo could have been transformed from a race game to a battle game, and it could then have become Chinese chess.

The pattern found on the surface of Liubo boards is also found on the most common type of Han dynasty bronze mirror, known from their distinctive markings as TLV mirrors. There is some debate over whether the Liubo pattern on these mirrors was simply decorative, or whether it had a ritual significance, or whether perhaps the mirrors doubled as portable Liubo game boards. Zhou Zheng has pointed out that one TLV mirror dating to the reign of Wang Mang (9–23) has an inscription that includes the words "Carved with a Liubo board pattern to dispel misfortune" (刻具博局去[祛]不羊[祥]), which suggests that the main purpose of the Liubo pattern on mirrors was ritual, and that the pattern had a special significance beyond game playing.

The Liubo pattern is also sometimes found on the reverse of Wu Zhu coins. Such coins were not used as currency but were probably lucky charms.

In 1897 a Han dynasty stone sundial was discovered in Inner Mongolia which had been overcarved with a Liubo board pattern. The only other complete Han dynasty sundial, in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, also has a Liubo pattern carved on it. It may be that the sundials were repurposed as Liubo boards by carving the Liubo pattern over the original sundial markings, or it may be that the Liubo markings were added for some unknown ritual purpose.

In 1993, a wooden board with turtle divination diagrams and prognostications on one side and a Liubo diagram and forty five prognostications on five topics on the other side was excavated from a late Western Han tomb at Yinwan in Donghai County, Jiangsu. The Liubo diagram is too small to have been used for playing Liubo, and is covered with the sixty terms of the sexagenary cycle which are written all along the lines of the Liubo diagram, in a similar way that the turtle diagram on the other side of the board is filled with the sixty terms. The prognostications under the Liubo diagram are headed with one of nine terms that correspond to the words of an enigmatic, mnemonic rhyme about Liubo written by Xu Bochang (許博昌) during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (141–87 BCE); Lillian Tseng (Zeng Lanying) argues that these are the names for particular points on the board (the two lines of the "V" mark, the two lines of the "L" mark, the two lines of the "T" mark, the circle or line between the corner and the central square, the outside edge of the central square, and the inside of the central square). Li Xueqin has suggested that the board was used for divination by matching the day to be divined to the corresponding sexagenary term on the Liubo diagram, and then reading off the corresponding prognostication according to the position of the sexagenary term on the Liubo diagram. However, Lillian Tseng points out that the divination could also be done the other way round, by looking for the desired prognostication (for example an auspicious marriage day), and then all the days on the Liubo board that were written on the position corresponding to the term heading the prognostication would match the desired prognostication. It has been theorized that the placement of the sixty sexagenary terms on the points of the Liubo divination diagram indicate the possible positions for placing pieces when playing Liubo, and that the sequence of the terms across the divination diagram reflects the path to be followed around the board when playing the game (starting at the north east corner and ending at the north side of the central square).