Telugu Variant

Ashta Chamma: the Telugu name and its own board

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, this cowrie-shell race game is called Ashta Chamma, a name that comes straight from its own scoring rules, not from a place. Here's how it's traditionally played, and where it genuinely differs from Karnataka's Chowka Bara.

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Where the name comes from

"Ashta" means eight and "Chamma" is the local word for the four-shell throw. They're not decorative names: they're the two highest-scoring throws in the game. Throw four cowrie shells: if all four land mouth-up, that's a Chamma, worth 4. If all four land mouth-down, that's an Ashta, worth 8, the luckiest possible throw. Both earn you another turn immediately. The game is named after its own dice roll, which tells you how central the cowrie-shell throw is to how the game is actually experienced at the table: most of the excitement is in the throw itself, not just the strategy afterward.

The board: often played bigger, on seven houses

Ashta Chamma uses the same family of board as Chowka Bara: a cross shape with an outer loop, an inner loop, and a centre square. But where Karnataka's Chowka Bara is commonly played on a compact 5-house board (5 cells along each arm), Ashta Chamma is very often played on a larger 7-house board. The extra two houses per arm make for a longer race: more turns, more chances to be captured near home, and longer games overall. Households that want a quicker game still use the 5-house layout, since board size in this tradition has always flexed with how much time people have to play, rather than being fixed by strict regional rule.

No token pairing

The Karnataka Chowka Bara tradition documented in our main rules page includes an advanced pairing mechanic: two tokens on one square can be toughened into a gatti pair that moves as a slow, hard-to-pass unit. Traditional Ashta Chamma, as it's commonly played and described in Andhra and Telangana households, generally skips this. It's a leaner game of race and capture, with no pairing step to learn. If you've grown up playing Ashta Chamma and never heard of "toughening" a pair, that's why: it's a Chowka Bara elaboration, not a core Ashta Chamma rule.

What's the same

Cowrie scoring: 1, 2, 3, Chamma (4), Ashta (8), with an extra throw on Chamma or Ashta.
Capture: landing exactly on an opponent sends their token back home, unless it's on a safe square.
Capture before the inner loop: you generally need to have captured at least one opponent's token before any of your own tokens may turn off the outer loop and head inward, in both traditions.
4 tokens per player, 2 to 4 players.

Playing here: the browser version on this site uses the classic cowrie scoring and capture-to-enter rule described above. Its board is the 5-house layout with the optional pairing rule available under Advanced. Switch to Basic for the leaner, no-pairing feel closer to traditional Ashta Chamma.

Also known as

Chowkabara, Chowka Bhara, Chauka Bara (Karnataka) · Ashta Chamma (Telugu) · Daayam, Dayakattam (Tamil) · Pakida, Kavidi Kali (Kerala) · Thayam, Tayam.

See how Daayam, the Tamil version, differs even more, since it uses a completely different die.