Each player gets seven pieces to drop. Players alternate placing pieces on any vacant square. Once all the pieces have been placed, the players continue by moving their pieces according to chess moves along on the board.

Players cannot remove the opponent´s pieces from the board. There are five different chess moves of the pieces.

1. One can either move a piece one step orthogonally (i.e. vertical or horizontal move)
2. Or diagonally one step
3. Or orthogonally two steps
4. Or diagonally two steps
5. Or move the piece like a knight in chess - one square orthogonally and then to an adjacent square diagonally in the direction of initial movement to one free square.

If pieces take two steps they can jump over pieces in their way.

Only condition: The square where they move to has to be vacant.

Goal of the game is to form any geometric 5-point star (X or cross) as it indicated e.g. by the rosettes on the board. There are up to 13 possibilities to form such a geometric pattern. The player wins who succeeds first.

The Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest games known in mankind. The Royal Game of Ur gets its name from two boardgames which were found in tombs by Sir Leonard Wooley, who was carrying out excavations in the ancient city of Ur in the 1920s. Rules are not known though mostly is suggested that this game was an ancient race game. I personally don´t think so.