How to play Quoridor
Quoridor is a two- or four-player strategy board game with one simple goal: get your pawn to the opposite side of the board before anyone else. The twist is the walls. Every turn you choose between running forward and building a wall that sends your opponent the long way round. You can learn the rules in five minutes and play your first game in WallRush Pro right now, free, in your browser.
The board and the goal
Classic Quoridor is played on a 9×9 grid. Each player starts with a pawn in the middle of their own edge and must reach any square on the far edge. There is no capturing and no dice: the only things that matter are distance and walls.
In WallRush Pro the classic 1v1 duel uses exactly this 9×9 board with 10 walls per player. We also offer a 9×13 Race mode and an 11×11 four-player mode, described further down.
What you can do on your turn
On each turn you must do exactly one of these two things:
- Move your pawn one square up, down, left or right (never diagonally, unless you are jumping — see below).
- Place one wall. A wall is two squares long and sits in the groove between squares, horizontally or vertically.
Wall rules
Walls cannot be jumped and cannot overlap or cross another wall. Once placed, a wall stays for the rest of the game, and when you run out of walls you can only move.
The most important rule: you may never place a wall that cuts a player off from their goal completely. At least one path must always remain. WallRush Pro checks this for you and simply refuses an illegal wall.
Jumping over a pawn
When two pawns stand face to face, the player to move may jump straight over the other pawn. If a wall or the board edge is directly behind that pawn, you may instead step diagonally to either side of it, as long as no wall is in the way.
Jumps are a key tactic: a well-timed jump can win you two squares in a single turn.
How to win
The first pawn to reach the opposite edge wins. Because nobody can be fully trapped, every game has a winner, and most games are decided by who spends their walls more wisely.
WallRush Pro timing and ranked points
Online games give each player 5 minutes in total and 30 seconds per move. The first two missed turns are skipped; a third missed turn in a row counts as a resignation.
Only public rooms are ranked. A win earns 25 points, or 40 against a higher-ranked player. A loss costs 10 points, or 20 against a lower-ranked player. Games with friends and against the AI are unranked, so they are the best place to practise.