Snakes and ladders is a classic children's board game played between 2 or more players on a playing board with numbered grid squares. On certain squares on the grid are drawn a number of "ladders" connecting two squares together, and a number of "snakes" also connecting squares together.


A Snakes and Ladders board

There is no standard arrangement of the snakes and the ladders - they vary from board to board. The number of grid squares on the board also vary from version to version and may affect the duration of the game play.

The Western form of this game was invented in late Victorian England circa 1890's, and apparently adapted from the ancient Indian game "dasapada", dating back to the 2nd century B.C. It should be noted that some game historians dispute this claim.

The term "Dasapada" is a Sanskrit term and actually refers to a 10x10 square gaming board and in chess is related to a variant of the standard chess game. However, it is difficult to ascertain with any certainty, what connection (if any) that modern "Snakes and Ladders" has to Dasapadan chess. Apart from the board dimensions, the rest is most probably popular Victorian English advertising designed to give the moral game of Snakes and Ladders a greater Empire heritage and mass appeal.


Playing
Each player starts with a token in the starting square (usually the "1" grid square in the bottom left corner) and takes turn to roll a single dice to move the token by the number of squares indicated by the die roll. If, on completion of this move, they land on the lower-numbered end of the squares with a "ladder", they can move their token up to the higher-numbered square (known as "climbing the ladder"). If they land on the higher-numbered square of a pair with a "snake", they must move their token down to the lower-numbered square (known as "sliding down the snake").

In most versions, if the player rolls a 6 with their die, he or she may roll again, otherwise the play passes to the next player in turn. The winner is the player whose token reaches the last square first.

Snakes and ladders' simplicity and the see-sawing nature of the contest make it popular with younger children, but the lack of any skill component in the game generally makes it less appealing for older players.

Mathematically, any version of Snakes and ladders can be represented exactly as a Markov Chain, since from any square the odds of moving to any other square are fixed and independent of any previous game history.


Computer Snakes and Ladders
Computer scientists working out of W.A.Y. Grander enterprises have programmed a computer version of the game, updated for the 21st century with graphics and sound effects. Since the game traditionally hasn't involved the hassle of decision making, and due to the vast computational powers of the modern PC, this new online version can be played at a variety of game speeds: from the pace of a standard game, in which the player must click the dice button in order to move; to the "Quantum Fly" speed setting, in which a summary of play and the final board positions are instantly presented to the players. The online version plays two to four players.

The original version of this online hit can be found at W.A.Y. Grander enterprises.