Snakes and Ladders Rules: How to Play, Win and Set Up the Board

Snakes and Ladders is one of the few board games almost everyone has played and almost nobody has read the rules for. That is fine, because there are very few of them. This guide covers the standard rules, the house rules that cause arguments, a little history, and how the free Snakes and Ladders game on Indextring turns the same idea into something you can play in five minutes without a dice.

1. The short version
2. What you need and how to set up
3. How a turn works
4. What ladders and snakes do
5. Do you need an exact roll to finish?
6. Common house rules
7. Is there any strategy?
8. Where the game comes from
9. How the Indextring version is different

The short version

Everyone starts off the board. On your turn, roll one die and move your token that many squares along the numbered path. If you land at the bottom of a ladder, climb to the top. If you land on a snake's head, slide down to its tail. The first player to reach the last square, usually 100, wins. That is the whole game.

What you need and how to set up

• A board. The classic board is a 10 by 10 grid of 100 squares, numbered in a snaking pattern from 1 at the bottom left to 100 at the top. Smaller boards for young children have 30 or 50 squares.
• One six-sided die. Some sets include two, but the standard game uses one.
• One token per player. Two to four players is typical; there is no real upper limit apart from patience.

Each player places their token beside square 1, not on it. Decide who goes first by each rolling the die; highest roll starts, and play continues clockwise.

How a turn works

1. Roll the die.
2. Move your token forward exactly that many squares, following the numbers. On a board that snakes back and forth, you follow the numbers, not the straight line.
3. If you finish your move on a square with the foot of a ladder or the head of a snake, apply it immediately (see below).
4. Your turn ends. Pass the die to the left.

Two tokens can share a square. In the standard rules there is no capturing, blocking or interaction between players at all. Each player is effectively racing the dice alone.

What ladders and snakes do

Ladders only work from the bottom. Land exactly on the square where a ladder starts and you move your token straight to the square at its top. Landing on the top square of a ladder does nothing.

Snakes only work from the head. Land exactly on a snake's head and you slide down to the square at its tail. Landing on a tail does nothing.

Ladders and snakes only trigger at the end of a move. Passing over a snake's head mid-move is safe. You cannot chain them either: if a ladder's top square is also a snake's head (rare, but some novelty boards do it), most rule sets say you take the ladder and stop there.

Do you need an exact roll to finish?

This is the rule that varies most. There are three common versions:

1. Exact roll required, otherwise stay put. If you are on 97 and roll a 5, you do not move. This is the most widely printed rule and the one most published boards use.
2. Bounce back. On 97 with a 5, you move to 100 and then back two squares to 98. This makes the endgame longer and can drop you onto a snake at the top of the board.
3. Any roll wins. Overshooting counts as reaching 100. Fast, and good for young children.

Agree on one before you start. Most arguments in this game are about square 97.

Common house rules

• Roll a six to start. Popular, but not part of the original rules. It borrows from Ludo and slows the game down for whoever keeps missing.
• A six gives an extra turn. Also borrowed from Ludo. Some families add that three sixes in a row sends you back to the start.
• Landing on another player sends them back to the start. This adds interaction, but it is not standard.
• Square 99 has a snake to square 1 or 2. Traditional Indian boards often have one very long snake near the top. It is cruel and beloved.

Is there any strategy?

No, and it is worth being honest about that. With one die and no choices, Snakes and Ladders is a pure game of chance. Every decision the player could make (which token to move, when to use an item) has been removed. What that leaves is a game with a very even distribution of winners, which is exactly why it works for mixed-age groups: a five-year-old beats an adult exactly as often as the reverse.

The maths is still interesting. On the classic Milton Bradley layout, a single player needs about 39 rolls on average to reach the end, and the shortest possible game is seven rolls. The median game is shorter than the average because a few unlucky games drag on for a very long time thanks to the long snakes near the top.

Where the game comes from

The game is Indian. It was played as Moksha Patam and under other names centuries before it reached Britain, and it was a morality lesson: ladders were virtues (faith, generosity, humility) that lifted you toward liberation, and snakes were vices (anger, greed, lust) that dragged you down. The original boards had far more snakes than ladders because the point was that virtue is hard.

Victorian England imported it in the 1890s, evened out the snakes and ladders, and dropped the theology. In 1943 Milton Bradley released it in the United States as Chutes and Ladders, replacing the snakes with playground slides. The rules of all three versions are the same.

How the Indextring version is different

Snakes and Ladders on Indextring keeps the two ideas that matter, ladders take you up and snakes drag you down, and removes the waiting. Instead of a token on a board, you steer a hamster in a tower of blocks across six columns while ladders and snakes fall from above in real time. The dice are still there, but they have become a payout table: each column is worth a fixed number of blocks, from one to six, so where you catch a ladder decides how much you grow.

• Catch ladders to grow the tower. Reach 42 blocks and the hamster escapes the dungeon.
• Snakes shrink the tower. Boss snakes bite for double, and near the exit a bite can drop you back to one block.
• There is no game over. It is a race against your own best combo and time across three dungeons.
• It plays in the browser on desktop or mobile with arrow keys, swipes or on-screen buttons, no download and no account.

If you want the traditional board with dice and turns, any of the rule sets above will serve you well. If you have four minutes and a phone, try the arcade version.