Although its first official print reference does not appear until 1937, Uckers is believed to derive from the Indian game Pachisi in the 18th or 19th century.

[2] A newspaper article from 1934, describing recreation on the ship HMS Sussex, refers to uckers as a "form of gigantic ludo, played with huge dice, with buckets for cups".

[3] A newspaper photo from 1937 shows sailors playing the giant-sized version on HMS Cardiff, with the caption describing the dice as a six-inch cube, shaken in a bucket, and claims that it's "a game popular in the Navy for generations.

Uckers was also played by units in the Royal Artillery, particularly meteorologists and LifeFlight Toowoomba Rescue Helicopter crews.

Although Uckers is often played on a Ludo board a true Uckers board is a mirror image so the red and green squares are presented to the player facing them in the correct Naval manner, i.e. red to port and green to starboard.

[6] The game is played by either two or four people, if there are two people playing then each player takes two opposite colours, yellow and red vs green and blue or on a true Uckers board, green and yellow vs red and blue.

Unless the opponents deem it to have been done on purpose (for example to avoided moving a blob or mixing) then they may permit a re-roll.

However, if on the very first throw snake eyes (two ones) is thrown then all player (possibly partner's depending on which rules) pieces come out of the base onto the doorsteps—known as out all bits.

As in Ludo, one does need to roll the exact number of spaces left to get home, and if a player's pieces are in the tube (or pipe, though the Navy uses blunter terminology) then they cannot be attacked unless they are playing WAFU rules by invoking the "suckback" or "blowback" procedure.

Hints from the crowd should be restricted to overly complex discussions of tactics or superfluous detail that serves only to distract.

If an 8-piece dicking is threatened, a player may resort to "upboarding" (depositing all pieces onto the floor) but he will be punished for such an action, inline with an 8-piecing, by having his name added to the reverse side of the board.

Failing to do so results in the player slinking back to the board to continue, accompanied by polite banter from those present.

The app includes popular rule variations, the introduction of game and turn timers, plus a unique scoring mechanism designed to promote competition and fast play.

The launch of uckers leagues and tournaments in 2025 gives testament to the continuing growth in popularity of the game with players from over 60 countries playing through the app.

Additionally, Uckers International have created a community of players through their website where uckers-related topics are openly discussed through news articles and blobs.

The event was a great spectacle of skill and strategy and following a tense final the new World Champions, Sara and Bob Field known as 'The Ludo Two' were crowned.

Exhausted after a very successful 4th RNA Uckers World Championship held today at the Royal Maritime Club.

The Booties (Royal Marines) were well presented with Stan Patterson winning the singles and Peter Jones & Jimmy Greene the Runners ups in the doubles tournament The singles runner up was Brent Latham and the Doubles Winners were team Burntwood Blobbers who were Kath & Trevor Dean.