Korea · Race Game · 2–4 Players
How to Play Yut Nori (윷놀이)
Yut Nori is Korea's most beloved traditional board game — a race game played on a cross-shaped board where four wooden sticks replace dice. Throw them into the air, read the pattern, and race your horses home before your opponent. Simple to learn, endlessly social, and played at every Lunar New Year table across Korea.
The Board
The board is a cross-shaped diamond with 29 nodes — 20 on the outer ring and 9 inner nodes that form three diagonal shortcuts through the centre.
The four corner nodes are labelled with cardinal directions — 남 (South / Start), 동 (East), 북 (North), and 서 (West). Pieces travel clockwise around the outer ring, starting and finishing at 남. The centre node is marked 中.
The three corner shortcuts (동, 북, 서) are marked with a star (★). Landing exactly on one of these nodes opens a faster diagonal path through the centre instead of continuing around the outer ring.
The Sticks (윷)
Four flat-sided wooden sticks are thrown. Each stick has a flat (light) side and a round (dark) side. The number of flat sides facing up after the throw determines the move value:
| Flat sides up | Korean name | Animal | Move | Extra throw? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 도 (Do) | Pig | 1 | No |
| 2 | 개 (Gae) | Dog | 2 | No |
| 3 | 걸 (Geol) | Sheep | 3 | No |
| 4 | 윷 (Yut) | Cow | 4 | Yes! |
| 0 (all round) | 모 (Mo) | Horse | 5 | Yes! |
Throwing Yut or Mo earns an immediate extra throw — you keep throwing until you land a Do, Gae, or Geol, accumulating a queue of moves to use.
Taking a Turn
- Throw the sticks. Click "윷 던지기" to throw. Your move value (and any extras) are added to your move queue.
- Choose a piece to move. Click any of your pieces — on the board or still waiting off it. Off-board pieces enter at the 남 (Start) node.
- At a shortcut corner, choose your path: if your piece lands exactly on 동, 북, or 서, you can either continue on the outer ring or cut through the centre. The shortcut is faster but puts you in a predictable position.
- Spend all queued moves, one at a time — each move can go to a different piece.
Capture (잡기)
If your piece lands on a node occupied by one or more enemy pieces, all enemy pieces on that node are captured and sent back off the board — they must re-enter from the start.
Capturing earns you an immediate extra throw, on top of any Yut/Mo extras you may have.
Stacking (말업기)
If your piece lands on a node already occupied by your own pieces, they stack together. Stacked pieces move as a single unit — they cannot be split up. A stack is captured as a group (sending all stacked pieces home at once), so stacking is powerful but risky.
Winning
The first team to move all 4 horses (말) off the finish — past the start node after completing the full circuit — wins. Stacked pieces all finish together when the stack completes the circuit.
Strategy Tips
- Take shortcuts when safe. The centre path cuts 4–6 nodes off the route, but it brings your pieces to predictable positions that opponents can target.
- Use Yut/Mo to build a move queue, then plan. If you throw Yut then Mo, you have moves of 4 and 5 queued — choose the best piece for each one before committing.
- Stacking is a double-edged sword. Two pieces moving as one is efficient, but a single capture sends both home. Stack on the back half of the board where enemies are less likely to chase.
- Chase captures aggressively. Each capture gives a free throw — a chain of captures can snowball an entire turn and leave the opponent starting from scratch.
- Keep at least one piece off the board. An off-board piece is safe from capture and is always ready to enter when you throw a useful value.
Cultural History
Yut Nori (윷놀이) is one of Korea's oldest recorded games, with origins traced to the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC – 668 AD). The earliest written descriptions appear in texts from the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), and the game has been continuously played ever since — making it one of the longest-lived board games still in popular use anywhere in the world.
The game is inseparable from Korean holidays. Families gather to play Yut Nori during Seollal (설날), the Lunar New Year, and Chuseok (추석), the autumn harvest festival. It is played outdoors on village greens, inside homes, and increasingly at school events and cultural festivals worldwide wherever the Korean diaspora gathers.
The five throw results — Do (pig), Gae (dog), Geol (sheep), Yut (cow), Mo (horse) — are named after livestock, reflecting the game's deep agrarian roots. In some regions, the throw results were historically used as a form of divination: the pattern of the sticks at the start of Seollal was believed to foretell the year's harvest. A throw of Mo (five — the horse, the fastest animal) was considered an auspicious sign.
The cross-shaped board itself carries cosmological meaning. The four cardinal directions correspond to natural forces, and the centre node (中) represents the harmonising point where all paths converge. The shortcuts through the centre reflect the idea of fortunate, heaven-blessed pathways — cutting through chaos to reach home by grace rather than by grinding effort alone.
Unlike many traditional games that exist only as museum artefacts, Yut Nori is vigorously alive. Hobbyist leagues, national television coverage of celebrity matches, and the game's inclusion in Korean cultural education curricula all ensure that each new generation learns to throw the sticks.
Play Yut Nori Free Online
No download. No account. Play in your browser right now.