1. Pretwa is played on a circular board comprised of 3 concentric circles with 6 lines radiating from a centre point. Lines indicate permitted moves.

2. Each player selects 9 BEADs the colour of their choice.

3. BEADs are placed on the 9 intersections on 3 adjacent lines radiating from the centre. This will leave only the centre play space empty.

4. Players decide who begins the game by rolling a die.

1. In turns, each player moves a BEAD 1 space along the lines indicating permitted moves to an empty intersection.

2. Players capture BEADs by jumping over an opponent’s BEAD and landing on an empty point beyond, following the lines.

3. If available, a capture must be made.

4. Captures must be chained together if, upon jumping over an opponent’s BEAD and capturing it, the player is adjacent to an opponent’s BEAD with an empty space beyond it.

5. Captured BEADs are removed from the board.

1. To win the game, a player needs to reduce the opponent to just 3 BEADs.

2. If no more moves can be made, the player with more pieces on the board wins.

1. Pretwa belongs to a category of games called Indian war games, which also includes the games Lau kata kati, Dash-guti, Egara-guti, Gol-skuish. All Indian war games have one important thing in common, and that is that all the pieces are laid out on a grid patterned board, with only one vacant point in the center.

2. Possibly, games of the Alquerque family could be quite old, since boards have been found cut into the roofing slabs of the temple at Kurna in Egypt.

3. However, nowadays egyptologists think that these images are relatively recent, belonging to the Islamic period. The above examples have all the curious property that occurs far and wide in games of this family, namely that there is only one vacant spot in the centre where the first move must take place. One wonders whether this might have a symbolic meaning and that these games, as so often in religious history, have had a ritual or symbolic significance.

4. In ancient India, boards and gaming pieces were used as a means for consulting God. It has been argued that games cannot formally be distinguished from the temple or the magic circle. Game diagrams were built into roofing slabs, and the floor of temples, in ancient India. In the game, the devotee and the deity met.