Bräde, also known generically as Swedish tables, is a Swedish tables game that evolved from verquere, a historical game of probable Dutch origin. As with all such games, it is played on the standard tables board of twenty-four points; as with most, it uses all fifteen men per side and two dice. Verquere is a game of parallel movement (unlike backgammon or trictrac), meaning that the men move in the same direction.
Names Verquere went under different names in different countries including verkeer in Dutch, Verkehren in German, revertier in French, förkeren in Swedish, forkering in Danish, forkæring in Norwegian and forkæringur in Icelandic.
In Sweden and Iceland, verquere became so dominant that the generic terms for tables games—bräde and kotra, respectively—were used metonymically for verquere. The Icelandic variant of the game vanished during the end of the 19th century, and the term kotra in modern Icelandic is used for English backgammon. The Swedish variant, on the other hand, maintained its popularity and evolved into the game that now is known as svenskt brädspel ("Swedish Tables") or bräde ("Tables").
Equipment
To play bräde or verquere, one needs a tables board, two pairs of dice, fifteen identical light pieces ("men"), and fifteen identical dark pieces. The board is usually built into a table or a folding box. On the inside of the board, along both long sides, there are twenty-four triangular fields (twelve on each side) called points. The points are alternately dark (black or red) and light (white or yellow). In the middle of each long side there is a projecting bar that divides the twelve points into two groups of six points each. Each group of six points forms a quadrant.
A game of bräde is played by two people sitting opposite each other on the long sides of the board. One player uses the white men and the other the black men. Before the game begins, each player sets up their men on the point farthest to the right on the opposite side of the board. This point is called the player's talon (hem in Swedish = "home"). The game is a race in which the goal is to move one's men as quickly as possible one full lap around the board and play them out to an imaginary point outside the board, while at the same time trying to prevent the opponent from advancing by building obstacles and hitting his men. A player can win by being the first to take out all his men, but it is also possible to win by arranging all one's men in a special pattern in the final quadrant, or by hitting so many of the opponent's men that he cannot enter them back onto the board.
The players each use their own pair of dice. To decide who begins the first game of a match, each player rolls one of his dice. This is called teka. The player who rolls lowest begins. If the players roll the same number, they teka again. In the remaining games of the match, the loser of the previous game always begins.
History and culture Verquere was probably invented in the Netherlands, and the first written reference is from the end of the 14th century. During the 17th and the 18th century, the game was widely played and very popular in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Nordic countries. It was also known in Great Britain and France, although backgammon and trictrac, respectively, were more common there.
The earliest accounts of the rules of verquere are from the beginning of the 18th century, in French, Swedish, and German publications. The French book (known today among trictrac enthusiasts as le Charpentier in honour of its first publisher) was particularly noteworthy, as it simultaneously provided, in 1698, the first modern, complete rules of trictrac as well as of backgammon (which was called in French by the now somewhat archaic name toutes tables), as well as the rules of verquere as they then stood (it having evolved to some extent since this time); it was known to have been reprinted in numerous editions and under numerous titles, at least until 1802.
It may be noted that the several race games described in le Charpentier are all described by analogy with trictrac (which isn't a race game at all), though they are complete and fluent (though variously out of date—doublets is entirely outmoded, backgammon lacks only the doubling cube, and trictrac, presented only in its twelve-hole variant, has essentially the modern rules) once one has an understanding of the latter. With trictrac being a reasonably complex game, English sources might perhaps be preferred for their familiarity, though the French prose might be seen as more modern by the contemporary reader. The first English account is in a book from 1721.
The artistic appearance of traditional Swedish boards, designed chiefly for play of verquere and bräde, differs slightly from the boards used to play backgammon or trictrac (though the item pictured in most of the figures hereinbelow is intended for trictrac—tables boards are, in large part, functionally interchangeable). The men are usually around 50 millimetres (2 inches) in diameter. The board is rectangular, with the long sides twice as long as the ends. The bar is split in two separate parts. The dark points are usually red, the light ones yellow, and the background of the board green. On backgammon boards, up to five men may be placed on a point before they must be stacked, but in verquere, no more than two men should be placed on a point before stacking the men, except when the number of men on one point is very large (e.g. in the home in the beginning of the game). Additional men are arranged in stacks of equal height on the two bottom men, with odd men placed centred on top of the two stacks. (The origin of this practice lies in the construction of Swedish boards. The points are typically short and wide; they won't fit more than two or three stacks.) On traditional Swedish boards, the centre bar is often split in half, rather than being uninterrupted.
The evolution of the rules When compared to the French rules published by Charpentier (which term the game révertier as usual in French), the rules of bräde, as published by the Swedish Tables Association at the Vasa Museum, differ in seven key respects.
Forcing entry against an invulnerable point: In révertier, if a player has too many men on the bar and too few legal entry points, they may simply be stuck waiting. In bräde, if there are more men on the bar than normally available entry points, the player may enter on an opponent's "invulnerable" point, even one occupied by two or more opposing men, and send all those opposing men to the bar. This is the main anti-stalemate rule. Forcing a prime: Révertier allows a full six- or seven-point block in the return game. Bräde still allows such a block, but the opponent may force one of the blocked points, landing on or passing through it and sending all men on that point to the bar. The blocker's head is exempt. Jan and forced jan as formal high-value wins: Révertier already has definitive blockage as a double win. Bräde doubles its value yet again and adds forced jan, worth 6 points, when the winning terminal blockage results from one of the modern forcing rules. This is presented as the great coup of the game. "Nice games" – pattern victories: Révertier is basically won by bearing off or permanently blocking the opponent (the German sources add to this the tower). Swedish Tables adds four nice-game formations, each worth 2 points: simple crown, double crown, staircase, and tower. These are winning arrangements of all 15 men in the final quadrant. Monk bonus: If a player wins by bearing off or by a nice game while the opponent still has men on the bar, bräde adds +1 point. Those stranded men are called monks. A slower, stricter bearing-off rule: Révertier uses the same bearing-off method as in backgammon and in trictrac. Bräde uses the slower, so-called provincial bearing-off method as formerly practiced regionally in trictrac: during bearing off, one must play the maximum possible pips inside the board before bearing off. This delays exit and gives the opponent more counterplay. Endgame exception to die-priority rules: Normally, bräde keeps the obligation to play both dice if possible, otherwise the higher die. But if a roll can immediately win by bearing off, jan, or a nice game, the player may ignore the usual priority rule to take the win. The game ends at once.
Rules The rules given here are largely from the latest official rules, published by the Swedish Tables Association, which meets at the Vasa Museum. Some account has been taken of the last known edition of the anonymous French rules to révertier. (Certain technical terms have been left in their original languages, French and Swedish, in brackets.)
Movement of the men The players take turns rolling the dice and moving their men forward on the points anticlockwise around the board. The men are first moved from the talon and onward to the left along the opposite side of the board, then across to the player's own side of the board and onward to the right. In what follows, the quadrants are numbered from one to four along the men' path of travel. Note that White's first quadrant is Black's third quadrant, and so on. The men may not be moved out of the player's fourth quadrant until the end of the game, when the bearing-off phase has begun.
A man must always be moved forward exactly as many points as the number of pips on the die used for that move. A player may choose to move one or two men. For example, if the player has rolled 6–4, he may either move one man ten points forward, called tout d'une, or move one man four points forward and another man six points forward (if this is from the talon, it's called tout à bas). Taking the full throw with one man is always considered two moves, one for each die. The man may therefore not be moved directly to its final destination point, but must land along the way: in the example with 6–4, either on the fourth or the sixth point.
If both dice show the same number of pips, the player has rolled doubles or an "all". Each die in an all is counted twice, meaning that the player must make a total of four moves for the number of pips shown on each die. For example, with 5–5, called "all-fives", the player moves for four fives, not two, and may choose to move one, two, three, or four men. If the player moves only one man, it must land three times along the way before finally landing on the twentieth point from its origin.
If a player can move for both dice, he is obliged to do so, but in some cases this is not possible. The player must then use as many of the dice pips as possible. If he can move for only one die, he must move for that die and surrender the other. Giving up a die is called a fåta or an impotence (impuissance, dame impuissante, etc.). Sometimes a special situation arises in which the player can move for either die, but not for both. He must then use the higher and pass up the lower. Similarly, if a player cannot move four times on an "all", he must move as many times as possible.
A player who cannot move at all leaves the entire throw impotent and skips his turn until the next roll.
Blots, made points, builders A single man on a point is called a blot (blotta, demi-case), while two or more men form a made point (band, case). If the band consists of at least three men, it is called, in Swedish or French, an överband or surcase; in English, the term builder is applied to the extra men, not to the point. When a player moves a man so that a point is made, he is said to make a point. If the men in a made point are moved apart so that they once again become blots, this is called breaking a point. By tradition, an even number of men in a band is always arranged in two equal stacks. Odd men are placed in the middle on top of the two stacks.