Bräde

Lore & Background

The rules of bräde, as published by the Swedish Tables Association at the Vasa Museum, differ from the French rules of révertier in seven key respects, including forcing entry against an invulnerable point, forcing a prime, jan and forced jan as formal high-value wins, pattern victories called 'nice games', a monk bonus, and an endgame exception to die-priority rules. The game is a race where the goal is to move one's men one full lap around the board and bear them off, while building obstacles and hitting opponent's men.

Reader's Guide

Bräde represents a significant evolution of the historical tables game verquere, which was widely played in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Nordic countries during the 17th and 18th centuries. While verquere vanished in Iceland, it persisted in Sweden, where the generic term bräde came to denote this specific variant. The game's rules, as codified by the Swedish Tables Association, introduce several innovations over the earlier révertier, such as forcing entry against invulnerable points, pattern victories called 'nice games' (simple crown, double crown, staircase, tower), and a monk bonus for winning while the opponent has men on the bar. These rules reflect a deliberate effort to prevent stalemates and add strategic depth. The slower, provincial bearing-off method also distinguishes bräde from backgammon and trictrac. The game's cultural significance is evident in its continued play and formal organization, with the Swedish Tables Association meeting at the Vasa Museum. Bräde thus stands as a living example of how a historical game can adapt and thrive within a specific national tradition, preserving elements of its Dutch and German origins while developing unique features.

Did You Know?

• Bräde is generally considered a variant of the broader tables family, not evolved from verquere.
• In Sweden, the generic term for tables games—bräde—was used metonymically for the game.
• The earliest known rules for verquere appear in the 17th century, e.g., in Charles Cotton's 'The Compleat Gamester' (1674).
• Bearing-off rules in bräde are similar to other tables games, with no authoritative source confirming a unique slower method.

Origins & Linguistic Legacy

Bräde traces its roots to verquere, a tables game most likely born in the Netherlands, with the earliest written mention appearing at the close of the fourteenth century. As the game spread across Europe, it acquired a constellation of local names: verkeer in Dutch, Verkehren in German, revertier in French, förkeren in Swedish, and forkering, forkæring, and forkæringur in the Scandinavian and Icelandic languages. In Sweden and Iceland, verquere grew so dominant that the generic words for tables games—bräde and kotra—became metonymic shortcuts for the game itself. The Icelandic variant, however, faded out by the late nineteenth century, and today kotra in modern Icelandic simply means English backgammon. The Swedish line, by contrast, survived and evolved into what is now called svenskt brädspel, or Swedish Tables, preserving a living thread from a medieval Dutch past.

Gameplay & Strategy

Unlike backgammon or trictrac, bräde is a game of parallel movement: both players' men travel in the same direction around the board. The objective is a race—each player must move all fifteen men a full lap around the twenty-four-point board and bear them off to an imaginary point beyond it, all while attempting to block the opponent's progress and knock their men onto the bar. Victory can be achieved three ways: being the first to remove every man, arranging all one's pieces in a special pattern within the final quadrant, or hitting so many of the opponent's men that they cannot re-enter the board. Players sit opposite each other on the long sides, each using their own pair of dice. The initial setup places all men on the farthest right point of the opposite side, known as the talon or hem. To determine who opens a match, each player rolls a single die in a process called teka, with the lower roll going first; ties trigger a re-roll. In subsequent games of a match, the previous loser always takes the opening move.

Historical Documentation & Cultural Spread

Verquere enjoyed broad popularity across the Netherlands, Germany, and the Nordic countries during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though in Great Britain and France it remained overshadowed by backgammon and trictrac respectively. The earliest rule descriptions date to the early eighteenth century, appearing in French, Swedish, and German publications. Among these, the French volume known as le Charpentier—named for its first publisher—stands out as particularly significant. Published in 1698, it simultaneously laid out the first modern, complete rules for trictrac, backgammon (then called toutes tables), and verquere, and it was reprinted under numerous titles at least through 1802. Notably, the race games within le Charpentier are all described by analogy with trictrac, which is not itself a race game, making the text both complete and somewhat circuitous for the modern reader. The first English-language account of the rules appeared in a 1721 book, further cementing the game's pan-European footprint.

Equipment & Physical Board Design

Traditional Swedish boards built for verquere and bräde carry a distinctive aesthetic that sets them apart from boards designed for backgammon or trictrac. The board is rectangular, with long sides twice the length of the ends, and features a split centre bar rather than a single continuous one. The twenty-four triangular points are typically coloured red (dark) and yellow (light) against a green background, and the men—usually around fifty millimetres in diameter—follow a unique stacking convention. Because the points on Swedish boards are short and wide, no more than two men are placed on a point before additional pieces are stacked in equal-height columns on the two bottom men, with any odd piece centred atop the pair. This practice stems directly from the board's physical construction. The split bar and the limited stacking capacity reflect a design philosophy optimised for the parallel-movement gameplay of bräde, distinguishing the Swedish tradition from the more permissive stacking rules of backgammon, where up to five men may occupy a single point before stacking begins.