Heart of the Dice
Nuts fall on the cloth. Count them in fours, quickly.
The story behind the game
In the Mahābhārata, King Nala loses his kingdom in a game of dice. Years later, under another name, he drives the chariot of King Ṛtuparṇa. On the way, the king looks at a vibhītaka tree and says how many leaves and fruits are on two of its branches: 2,095 fruits. Nala cuts the branches down and counts them. The king is exactly right.
Ṛtuparṇa says he can do this because he knows the heart of the dice, akṣa-hṛdaya (अक्षहृदय), and is skilled with numbers. He teaches it to Nala, and Nala teaches him the heart of horses in return. With it, Nala wins his kingdom back in one throw. Then he forgives his brother. (Mahābhārata 3.70 and 3.77)
Dice made of nuts
In the Ṛgveda, more than 3,000 years ago, dice were the nuts of the vibhītaka tree (baheḍā, बहेड़ा). The scholar A. A. Macdonell (1917) thought a player took a handful, and the throw was named by what was left when the nuts were counted in fours. Later, Śaṅkara wrote of dice with four, three, two and one marks.
The four throws, Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali, have the same names as the four yugas, the ages of the world. In the Nala story, Kali even hides inside the dice.
The same Ṛgveda has a gambler's song with a warning from the god Savitṛ: "Do not play with dice; plough your field." (10.34.13)
What is old and what is new
Games of chance, dyūta-viśeṣa (द्यूतविशेष), are one of the 64 kalās. The old commentary says that without the heart of the dice, even Nala and Yudhiṣṭhira lost.
The three tests here are new games made for Kala. Nobody knows all the rules of the old dice games. In the Mahābhārata, Śakuni plays dice against Yudhiṣṭhira and wins by trickery, and after each throw the text says: "Won!" said Śakuni.
The courtyard is new too. It is inspired by a practice Sadhguru describes in a talk: when you walk into a place, look at the columns without counting them one by one ("Oh, it's 5 columns"), and notice the door and the steps the same way. Watch it from 8:55 ↗
Nothing is bet here. The skill is the quick count and the sharp eye. Your best five sittings and courtyards at each pace are kept on this device only.