Welcome! We are excited to have you here to share our love of The Royal Game of Ur!

The Royal Game of Ur is one of the longest-lived games in history, with evidence of it being enjoyed by people that lived over the course of many thousands of years. This affords the game a huge wealth of history to explore and discover, and in fact, you can experience this history yourself by playing the game! You would think that a game that has lasted millenia would be fun, and it is fun!

The game is made for two players with a board, 5 or 7 pieces per player, and 4 two-sided dice. The exact rules that were played thousands of years ago is hard to deduce (and likely changed over time!). However, academics have used ancient artifacts and the writing on old cuneiform tablets to discover several likely options. However, the rules for the game that have become the most popular in this millenia are the ones presented in the 2017 YouTube video Tom Scott vs. Irving Finkel.

The video that cemented Irving Finkel as an icon of this game also inspired Padraig X. Lamont to start a hobby project. And so, over one Christmas, many slices of Christmas ham, and many hot chocolates, a fledgling version of this website was born! That fledgling hobby project has since grown up, and we are now proud to boast an average of 500 games played every day on RoyalUr.net. However, in an even bigger accomplishment, we are also proud to have grown a rich Discord community of over 700 people that are enthusiastic about the Royal Game of Ur. This community welcomes both serious and casual players, as well as academics! And that is why we are so excited to have you join us here, to share in the game we all love.