Chaturaji

Chaturaji, a name meaning four kings, is a four-player chess-like game. It was first described in detail around the year 1030 by the scholar Al-Biruni in his book India. In its original form it was a game of chance, because the piece to be moved was decided by rolling two dice rather than by the free choice of the player. A diceless variant of the game was still being played in India at the close of the nineteenth century, which shows that the game outlived its dice-driven first form and continued in a version that left the choice of move to the players.