Ludo Strategy: How to Win More Games Without Rolling Better

Ludo has a reputation as a pure luck game, and it is easy to see why. You roll a die, you move that many squares, and you cannot influence the roll. If that were the whole game the reputation would be earned.

But a roll is only half a turn. The other half is choosing which piece to move, and that choice happens up to four times per turn across a game that lasts fifty or more turns. Two players who roll identically over a whole game will not win equally often, because one of them is making better choices with the same numbers. This guide is about those choices.

The one thing that decides most games

Options. That is the whole principle, and everything below is a specific application of it.

A player with four pieces on the board has four possible moves for every roll and can pick the best one. A player with one piece on the board has exactly one legal move and must make it whether it is good or catastrophic. Over fifty turns, the player who consistently had four choices instead of one has made far better use of identical dice.

Opening play: spread out

The most common opening mistake is racing the first piece that gets out. It feels like progress, and it is the worst thing you can do with an early lead.

Why racing one piece loses

• It removes your flexibility. One piece on the board means one legal move per roll, so you are forced into bad moves constantly.
• It makes you a target. A lone piece far up the track is the most attractive capture on the board, because sending it home costs its owner more than any other piece.
• It wastes your sixes. Every six you roll while your other three pieces sit in the yard is a six you could have spent bringing one out.
• It cannot be defended. A piece alone cannot form a block, and blocks are the strongest structure in the game.

What to do instead

Spend your first three or four sixes bringing pieces out rather than moving the ones already out. Getting all four onto the track early is a slow-looking opening that pays back for the entire rest of the game, because from that point on every roll gives you a genuine decision.

The exception

If a piece is one or two squares from your home column, take it home. A piece in the home column is permanently safe and cannot be captured by anyone, so finishing it converts a vulnerable asset into a locked-in one. That is worth breaking the spread rule for.

Blocks: the rule most players have never used

Two of your own pieces on the same square form a block. No opponent piece may land on it, and in the standard rules no opponent piece may pass it either. It is the single most powerful structure in Ludo and most casual players have never built one deliberately.

Where to put one

The cost of a block is that two of your pieces are standing still. That is a real price, so do not build one in the first quarter of the game when nothing is at stake. Build them when an opponent has something to lose.

The only arithmetic the game requires

One die means the maximum move is six. So any opponent piece sitting one to six squares behind one of yours can capture it on their next turn, and anything further back cannot. That range is the danger zone, and checking it is the entire mathematical content of Ludo.

How to use it

1. Before moving, look at where the piece will land, not where it is now.
2. Count backwards six squares from that landing square.
3. If any opponent piece sits in those six squares, the move is exposed.
4. If two or more do, it is very exposed, because they have multiple numbers that work.

You cannot always avoid the danger zone, and you should not try to. Sometimes the exposed move is still the best one. The point is to know you are taking a risk rather than discovering it on your opponent's turn.

The inverse, which people forget

The same arithmetic works offensively. If you are one to six squares behind an opponent piece, you are threatening it, and they have to respond. Sitting in that position is often worth more than advancing, because it constrains their choices while costing you nothing.

Capture priority: which piece to send home

When you can capture, you frequently have a choice of targets, and the difference between the right and wrong choice is enormous.

Send home the piece that is furthest along the track. A capture costs its owner every square that piece has travelled, so taking a piece fifty squares in costs them fifty squares, while taking one that just left the yard costs them almost nothing and may even help them by freeing a congested start.

When not to capture

Capturing is optional in the standard rules, and there are real situations where you should decline:

• When the capture lands you in someone else's danger zone and the piece you take was barely out of the yard.
• When it breaks up a block you need more than you need the capture.
• When you are in a three or four-player game and the captured player is not the leader. You have spent your turn helping everyone else.
• When taking the extra roll would force you to move a piece you would rather leave still.

Safe squares

Eight squares on the track are safe, usually marked with a star, and a piece standing on one cannot be captured. The four coloured starting squares are always safe, plus four more spaced around the board.

The tactical value is bigger than it looks. A piece parked on a star is not making progress, but it also cannot be sent home, so it functions as a piece you no longer have to think about. When you have a roll with no good option, moving something onto a star is often the least bad choice available.

Which squares are safe, and every other rule this strategy depends on, is laid out in the complete Ludo rules guide including the house rules that vary from family to family.

The endgame

Ludo's ending is unusual because it is not a race to a line. It is a race to four exact numbers, and that changes how you should play the last quarter.

The exact-roll problem

A piece must reach the centre by an exact count. Need three and roll a five, and that piece cannot move at all. So a player with four pieces sitting deep in the home column, each needing a specific number, can be stuck for several turns while somebody behind them catches up.

How to plan for it

• Stagger your pieces in the home column rather than bunching them. Four pieces all needing a two is a disaster; four needing one, two, four and five is fine.
• Do not rush the last piece into the column. A piece still on the track has more numbers available to it than one that needs an exact count.
• Count what you still need before committing. If finishing a piece leaves the remaining three needing awkward numbers, move something else.

Two-player Ludo is a different game

With two players there is no third party to absorb aggression, so every capture is a direct attack and every block is aimed at one specific opponent. It is sharper, more tactical and considerably less random than the four-handed version.

Two adjustments are worth making. Capture more aggressively, because there is no risk of helping an uninvolved third player. And build blocks earlier, because with only one opponent a block constrains one hundred percent of the opposition rather than a third of it.

A checklist for every turn

1. Can I capture? If so, is the target the furthest-along piece, and does taking it leave me safe?
2. Can I finish a piece into the home column? Usually do it.
3. Can I form or hold a block in a position that matters?
4. Which of my pieces is currently in an opponent's danger zone, and can this roll move it out?
5. Where does this move land, and who is within six squares behind that square?
6. If nothing above applies, move the piece whose advance costs me the least flexibility.

Run that list for a few games and it stops being a list. If you want the full ruleset first, start with Ludo rules explained, or go straight to a match and play Ludo online free against friends or the computer.