Tapa

Setup

Each player begins with all fifteen checkers stacked on the opponent's 1-point, and the two sides move in opposite directions around the board towards their own home, where they bear off.

From that single stack, the game opens out as each player tries to advance while pinning the opponent in place.

Pinning, not hitting

Land on a point holding a single enemy checker and you trap it: your checker sits on top, and the pinned checker cannot move until you choose to vacate the point. Two or more of your own checkers make an ordinary block, as usual.

Nothing is ever sent off the board — there is no bar and no re-entry. The art is in trapping as many enemy checkers as you can while keeping your own moving, which makes for a slow, gripping game of leverage quite unlike the standard race.

Strategy

Tapa is a game of leverage, not speed. Because landing on a lone enemy checker traps it beneath yours until you choose to move off, the whole contest is about trapping more of the opponent's checkers than they trap of yours — and picking the right moment to release a pin.

Pin aggressively early, especially the opponent's leading checkers, to slow their progress home. But don't over-commit: a checker sitting on top of a pin is itself tied to that point, so weigh the value of each trap against the mobility it costs you. Keep your own checkers off exposed single points where they can be pinned in return.

Nothing is ever sent off the board, so there is no bar and no re-entry — the game is a slow squeeze that opens into a race once the pins release. Manage that transition well, with your checkers free and the opponent's still tangled, and the win follows.

The endgame

Tapa's endgame is where the pinning game finally becomes a race. As checkers advance and pins are released — because a pinning checker must eventually move on towards its own home — the trapped pieces spring free and the two sides sprint for the bear-off.

The player who managed the middlegame well arrives at this moment with their own checkers advanced and the opponent's still tangled behind them. Two things decide it: how long you kept the opponent pinned, and how cleanly your own checkers avoided being trapped in return. Time your final releases so that you break a pin only when your own position is ready to profit, and bring your checkers home evenly for an efficient bear-off. A well-played Tapa often looks slow for most of the game and then finishes in a rush.