Chowka bhara

Chowka Bara or Ashta Chamma is a two- or four-player board game from India.

This game is an example of a “fully observable” system that has an element of chance introduced by the roll of special dice and an element of strategy (the strategy being the pawn the player decides to move after the roll of the dice).

Assuming the size of the board is NxN (with N being odd), then each player will have N-1 pawns.

Four players each have four pawns, starting at different positions at the four crossed squares at the outermost ring.

Each player has a fixed path to move pawns, which is in an anti-clockwise direction.

The killed token returns to its starting home square and has to go round all over again.

When a player cuts an opponent's token, he gets an extra turn to play.

If a player throws either a Chamma or an Ashta three times consecutively during his turn, he is out, and cannot use any of the moves.

Cowries and their values: In Senior board (8x4=32) tokens of four distinct colours are used.

In ashta chamma played by Telugu people of Andhra Pradesh.

A player casts the shells to determine the number of square their pawns can move.

The player needs to be able to smartly choose a pawn to move, so that it optimizes their chance of winning the game.

For a 5x5 board this is simply the starting positions of each of the players and the center square.

In case a player has got multiple turns (as they may have thrown 4s and 8s), they can treat the double as one pawn and make it move to one of the values on the dice.

A player cannot move their single pawn to the same square as an opponent's double.

However, a double can "hit" a single pawn, and make it move back to its home square.

Ashta Chamma plays a pivotal role in the 2006 Indian art house film Vanaja.

In 2008, a Tollywood comedy film, Ashta Chamma, was released, which was written and directed by Mohan Krishna Indraganti.

The film deals with four quirky protagonists whose tales are interwoven in a romantic narration.