How to Play Yut Nori: Rules, Tactics and History
Korea's New Year race game, for two to four players or two teams: throw four sticks, move your pieces round a board of 29 stations, and get all 4 of them home first. The board has shortcuts across the middle, the sticks have a name for every throw, and nobody knows for sure how old any of it is.
1The board and the long way round
The board is a square of 29 stations: twenty round the edge, and two diagonals that cross at the centre. Every piece starts off the board and comes on at the start corner, bottom right, then travels up the right-hand edge and round the square. All sides go the same way, so every station is shared.
2The sticks: Do, Gae, Geol, Yut and Mo
Instead of dice you throw four sticks, each flat on one side and rounded on the other. Count the flat sides that land face up: that's your move, and each throw has its own name.
Three flat sides up: Geol, move 3.
All four flat: Yut, move 4 and throw again.
No flat side at all isn't nothing: it's Mo, a 5, the longest move, and you throw again.
Four sticks can land 16 different ways, and a Gae is the most common:
The chance of each throw. A Gae can be made 6 ways out of 16; a Yut (all flat) and a Mo (none flat) only 1 way each.
The average throw is 2.31. A Yut or Mo earns another throw after you move, which comes up 12.5% of the time; so does a capture (section 4). In our version you move after each throw, before throwing again.
3The shortcuts
Three stations are forks, drawn with a double ring: the first corner (station 5), the second corner (station 10), and the centre. A piece that ends its move exactly on a fork may take the diagonal on its next move. A piece that only passes over one carries straight on round the edge.
Each fork saves steps, and they add up. From coming on to home:
| Way round | Steps home |
|---|---|
| The long way, round the edge | 21 |
| Cut in at the first corner, on to the far corner | 17 |
| Cut in at the second corner, through the centre | 17 |
| Cut in at the first corner, then turn at the centre | 12 |
Taking a shortcut is your choice in our version: a piece standing on a fork can always go the long way instead. At the centre it can take either diagonal.
4Moving, capturing and carrying
On your turn, throw and move one piece exactly that many stations, or bring a new piece on (a Do puts it on station 1). Pieces jump over anything in between: only the station you stop on matters.
Capturing
Stop on a station where an opponent stands and every one of their pieces there goes back off the board, to start again. You also earn another throw. A capture made with a Yut or Mo still earns just one extra throw, not two.
Carrying
Stop on a station where your own piece stands and you may carry them on together: from then on the two move as one, so every throw moves both. You can also leave them standing side by side as two separate pieces.
The catch: a carried stack is captured as one. Both pieces go back together.
5Getting home
Every route ends at the start corner, but standing on the start corner isn't home. A piece is home once it goes past it, and any extra steps don't matter. So from the start corner any throw at all takes a piece home (100%), while from the station before it a Do only reaches the corner: it needs a Gae or more, 75% of throws.
The first side to bring all 4 pieces home wins.
6Four habits that win games
Yut Nori is mostly luck, but not all luck. We tested advice with our own rules engine: a computer player that keeps all four habits below, against an identical player who skips one of them, 4,000 games for each, taking turns to go first. Each game had two sides: one-on-one, or two teams of two (a team shares one set of pieces, so to the rules it's the same game). All four habits clearly win:
- Capture whenever you can. It sends their pieces back to the start and gives you another throw.
- Pair up. When a throw can land a piece on one of your own, take it and carry them on together: every throw after that moves two.
- Use the shortcuts. Stop on a corner or the centre when you can, and cut in from there.
- Don't stop one to three stations in front of an opponent's piece. Seven throws in eight are a 1, 2 or 3 (87.5%). A piece they still have waiting to come on counts too: it lands on stations 1 to 5.
| Habit | Games won by the player who keeps it |
|---|---|
| Capture whenever you can | 69% |
| Pair up and carry | 61% |
| Use the shortcuts | 60% |
| Don't stop one to three stations in front of an opponent | 58% |
How likely is a capture?
An opponent's piece behind yours lands on it with its next throw only if it throws exactly the gap. Because a Gae is the most common throw, two stations ahead is the worst place to stop:
| Opponent is behind you by | Chance it lands on you next throw |
|---|---|
| 1 station | 25% |
| 2 stations | 37.5% |
| 3 stations | 25% |
| 4 stations | 6.3% |
| 5 stations | 6.3% |
| 6 or more | one throw can't reach you |
Two things make it worse. A Yut, a Mo or a capture gives the opponent another throw, so it can come at you twice. And an opponent standing on a fork can reach you along either path:
Does going first matter? Hardly. Between two players using the habits above, the side that threw first won 50% of games.
7Our rules, and other versions
Yut Nori is a living folk game, not a lost one. Families and villages still play it every New Year, and the details change from place to place.[1][2] Ours keeps the common core: a board of 29 stations, four sticks and four pieces a side,[1][4] the five throws from Do to Mo, another throw for a Yut or a Mo,[2][6] another for a capture,[4][6] and a piece that must go past the last station to get out.[6] Where the versions differ, and what we do:
- Back-do. Some play with one marked stick: when it is the only one to land flat side up, the piece goes one step back. One encyclopedia entry describes it as a modern addition.[2] We don't use it.
- Throwing before moving. Stewart Culin's 1895 account has the extra throw taken before moving, with the throws split between pieces.[6] We move after every throw.
- The centre. In the Academy of Korean Studies' description, a piece that stops on the centre heads straight for home, and one that passes through it carries on to the far corner.[4] Ours carries on the same way when it passes through, but a piece that stops on the centre may take either diagonal.
- The corners. In the descriptions we found, a piece that stops on a corner takes the shortcut; Culin says "may" only for the second corner.[6] Ours lets you choose at both.
- Carrying. Most of our sources make it a choice, as we do;[1][6] one describes your two pieces as tied together as soon as they meet.[2]
- Capturing on the start corner. One rule set gives no extra throw for capturing a piece that stands on the start corner.[2] Every capture earns a throw in ours.
- How many pieces. Culin recorded games played with one to four pieces each, by agreement.[6] We always play four.
- Teams. Each player, or each team, plays four pieces;[4] in Culin's account partners sit opposite each other and may move each other's pieces.[6] In ours a team shares one set of four, and the partners take turns throwing for it.
- The sticks. Real yut sticks aren't fair coins. A 1996 study threw twelve shop-bought sets: the chance of a stick landing flat side up ranged from 0.444 to 0.631, and for most sets it was between 0.5 and 0.6.[7] Our sticks land flat side up exactly half the time, which is why the odds in section 2 are exact.
- Other forms. Some play with tiny sticks shaken in a small cup and tipped out; some play with no board at all, calling out where their pieces are.[1][3]
8A short history
Yut Nori (윷놀이) is Korea's New Year game, played from New Year's Day to the first full moon.[1][2][3][4] In 2022 Korea named it National Intangible Heritage, as a game that belongs to everyone, with no single holder.[3]
Nobody knows where it came from. The old records don't settle it, and scholars have no agreed answer.[1][2] No word that clearly means "yut" has been found in texts from the Three Kingdoms or Goryeo periods.[3]
There are several theories. Chinese histories say that Baekje played a stick game called jeopo (樗蒲), and yut was long taken to be that game; one encyclopedia entry points out that the sticks and boards differ, so they are different games,[1] while another takes the likeness as a sign that yut is older than the Three Kingdoms.[4] The historian Shin Chae-ho linked the throws to the ancient kingdom of Buyeo, whose officials took animal titles: Do the pig, Gae the dog, Yut the ox and Mo the horse, with Geol left open.[1] One entry calls that the strongest hypothesis;[2] another dismisses reading the board as a map of Buyeo.[4] Choe Nam-seon argued from spellings in Japan's 8th-century poetry collection, the Man'yōshū, that the game was already old by then.[1][4]
Whatever their origin, the five throws are usually read as animals: pig, dog, sheep or goat, ox and horse. Researchers broadly agree on all but Geol.[1] The board has been read as the sky: the scholar Kim Mun-pyo (1568–1608) saw the pole star at its centre and the 28 lunar mansions around it,[1][4] and a more recent theory sees the Big Dipper turning through the year, linked to rock carvings shaped like the board.[1] Every station has its own name, which is how people in parts of North Gyeongsang play with no board at all.[1][2]
The name changed over time. Goryeo poets wrote of it as jeopohui; early Joseon writers called it sahui (柶戲), as in the Gyeongdo japji of 1800, and later cheoksa.[1][3] The Joseon scholar Yi Ik, among others, took it for a custom handed down from Goryeo.[4]
It was more than a game. Villages split into two sides to foretell the harvest: in Jangyeon, in Hwanghae, a win for the mountain side meant good field crops and a win for the plain side meant good rice.[1][5] People told their own fortune for the year with three throws, read against 64 verses that the Gyeongdo japji records.[1][5] And an old saying warned that playing past the first full moon would kill the rice.[1]
Stewart Culin's Korean Games of 1895 recorded the board as it is still drawn: 29 marks, twenty in a circle and nine in a cross, played with four sticks.[6]
What we know, and what we don't: the game is centuries old, but how old, and where it began, are still argued over. What isn't in doubt is that it is still played, every New Year.[2][3]
Sources
- Jang Jang-sik (장장식), "윷놀이" (Yut Nori), Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Arts: Folk Games, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, National Folk Museum of Korea. folkency.nfm.go.kr
- Park Jang-young (박장영), "윷놀이" (Yut Nori), Encyclopedia of Korean Seasonal Customs: First Month, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, National Folk Museum of Korea, 2004. folkency.nfm.go.kr
- Korea Heritage Service, "윷놀이" (Yut Nori), National Intangible Heritage, designated 11 November 2022. heritage.go.kr
- Choi Sang-su (최상수), "윷놀이" (Yut Nori), Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, Academy of Korean Studies, 1995, revised 2025 (the author's view, not the Academy's official position). encykorea.aks.ac.kr
- Jeon Kyung-wook (전경욱), "윷점" (Yut divination), Encyclopedia of Korean Seasonal Customs, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, National Folk Museum of Korea. folkency.nfm.go.kr
- Stewart Culin, Korean Games, with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan, University of Pennsylvania, 1895, "Nyout-nol-ki", pp. 66–73. archive.org
- Park Jin-kyung (박진경) and Park Hong-seon (박홍선), "윷의 확률 추정에 대하여" (On estimating the probability of yut), Korean Journal of Applied Statistics 9(2), 1996, pp. 83–94. koreascience.or.kr