Games

Mancala

The sowing game of Africa and Asia: pick up the seeds of one of your pits and sow them one by one into the pits that follow, and capture by where the last seed falls. Kalah with its stores and extra turns, and oware, where twos and threes are taken and the opponent must be fed. Play the computer at five levels, play a friend, or watch the computer play itself.

By Mykhailo Makarov

Actual application image

What happens

Kalah: each side owns the six pits in front of it and the store on its right. Pick up all the seeds of one of your pits and sow them one by one into the pits that follow, counterclockwise – into your own store, never into your opponent’s. If the last seed falls into your store, you move again; if it falls into an empty pit of yours and the pit across holds seeds, you take both. When one side’s pits are empty the game ends, and each side adds the seeds left in its pits to its store. Oware: the stores only keep what is taken, and when twelve seeds or more go round, the pit they came from is skipped. If the last seed makes two or three in an opponent’s pit, those seeds are taken, and so are twos and threes in the pits just before it on that side – but a move that would take every seed the opponent has takes nothing. A side with no seeds must be fed if any move can reach it. Oware ends when a side has taken more than half the seeds, when nobody can feed the other, or when the game goes round in circles; the seeds left go to the side they lie on. The computer searches with alpha-beta and a transposition table, counting an extra turn as a move of the same side.

Try this

Click one of your pits to sow its seeds; point at a pit to see where they will fall. Turn the table with the right mouse button, zoom with the wheel.

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