Board Games

Here are the classic board games to play online for free: parchís (the Spanish cousin of ludo), the Game of the Goose, dominoes, chess, checkers, card solitaire, billiards and plenty more. There are nearly six hundred games, and they open in your browser with nothing to download. You can play against the computer, on your own or, in some, against another person.

Classic Board: from the Goose to chess

Classic Board has the games from family afternoons: the Game of the Goose, parchís, ludo, dominoes, Rummikub or dice games like Yahtzee. The Goose and parchís are games of chance, so anyone can play them. Chess and Checkers are another matter: there's no luck involved, and every game is won by thinking. In chess, the game ends when one king is in checkmate; in checkers you move diagonally and jumping over an opponent's piece to capture it is mandatory. Checkers also includes variants like Chinese checkers and reversi (Othello). Tic-Tac-Toe brings together the paper classic and Connect Four, and Naval Combat is the familiar Battleship.

Cards and solitaire

Solitaire is the biggest subcategory in Board, with around 160 games: Klondike, Spider Solitaire, pyramid or mahjong solitaire variants. There's no opponent and no time limit, so they're the most relaxed in the section. In Card you'll find deck games such as Speed, Baccarat and Stop the Bus, plus a few played with a Spanish deck, like brisca, cinquillo and chinchón.

Billiards and casino

Billiards has pool (Pool Jam, Speed Pool King, Blast Billiards) and snooker; the difference is that in pool the balls are bigger and the table smaller, while in snooker you play red and colored balls in a fixed order. The casino subcategories are Blackjack, Poker, Roulette and Bingo, and they're played with virtual chips, not real money. In blackjack the goal is to get close to 21 without going over; in poker there are titles like Governor of Poker and Texas Hold'em Poker, and bingo has 75-ball versions, like Bingo 75. Shell Game is the one where you keep your eye on the cup hiding the ball.

Basic rules of the classics

Each version can vary, but these are the traditional rules. The Game of the Goose has 63 squares, and whoever reaches the last one first wins, hopping from goose to goose along the way. Parchís is played by two to four players with four pieces each, and you usually need a 5 to bring a piece out of home (in ludo it's a 6). Classic dominoes has 28 tiles, from double blank to double six, and the first player to run out of tiles wins. And tic-tac-toe, if both players play well, always ends in a draw.

Where to start

To play at a relaxed pace, a Klondike solitaire. For something family-friendly that doesn't take much thought, parchís or the Goose. If you want to learn chess or checkers, find a version where you can choose the opponent's difficulty and start with the lowest. And for a quick game, tic-tac-toe or Connect Four.