Dmytro Polovynka

How to play mancala. And what exactly is mancala.

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This article tries to honestly explain what is mancala, presents the rules of how to play it and, in case you have had a bad impression after playing “Mancala”, try fixing that and improve the general impression of mancala.

Key takeaways:

What is mancala

Contrary to the popular opinion “Mancala” is not a single game, but a broad family of games, played predominantly in Africa and Asia.

Usually they are played by two people, but there are also solitaire mancalas and mancalas for more than two people. Game boards come in different shapes: most of them have two rows of pits, some of them have four, but other pit arrangements are also possible. Mancalas come in different sizes: some of them have only 6 pits, but some of them are enormously long having 160 (4x40) pits and require 320 seeds to play. Games also differ in their complexity - some of them are games for children and some of them are serious and complex strategic games with their own tournaments and champions.

All games share similar mechanics - boards consist of pits which can be filled with seeds. Unlike chess, players do not own pieces, but control their own part of the board. Thus, a player can start the move only with the seeds which are situated on his part of the board. Players move pieces as follows: they pick all the seeds from the pit on their side of the board and then put all these seeds one by one into the next pits clockwise or counterclockwise (depending on the game). This process is called “sowing” and is common to all the mancala games.

Each game have its own restrictions of which pits can be chosen, has rules of how the sowing ends, what are the capture conditions, which direction seeds move to etc. Most games start with all seeds already on board, but some of them have a first “planting” phase during which seeds are introduced onto the board. Games often, but not always, have agricultural theme - seeds are planted, sown, harvested and opponents can even be fed.

Oware rules

The most popular board in the West is the 2x6 board (two rows of six pits) with additional two larger pits on both sides of board. This board usually can be bought under the names “Kalah” or “Mancala”. And the best game to play on this board is no doubts Oware.

Oware is one of the most popular African games and many other games are its variants, that’s why you may find this game under different names. No player has any advantage and if played perfectly, this game results in a draw. Please note - these are not the rules which are usually sold with the board (and later in the article I will explain why so).

Game starts with four seeds in every smaller pits - thus 48 seeds are required for the game. Larger pits are technically not required for the game, but can conveniently be used to place captured seeds there.

Movement

Each player controls 6 pits which are closer to him.

Players move in turn. The mechanics is usual for mancala games. In order to make a move a player picks seeds from any non-empty pit on his side of a board and sows them counterclockwise along the small pits one by one starting from the next pit. Large pits do not take part in sowing. This means that sowing starts on the own side of the board, but often continues to the opponent’s side and may even circle around the board.

Capture

If the last sown seed falls into the opponent pit and this pit now contains two or three seeds (so it contained one or two seeds before this), then these seeds are captured. If any previous adjacent opponent’s pit contained two or three seeds, these are also captured, and so on. This way seeds from several pits can be captured. The pit with more seeds than three or fewer seeds than two terminates this continuous capture.

Only seeds in opponent pits are captured, seeds are never captured from own pits. Please note - continuous capture happens backwards (against the movement direction), meaning clockwise. This may only sound confusing, but actually makes total sense.

Schema below explains the capture:

.---.---.---.---.---.---.
| 2 |*3*|*2*|*2*| 4 | 2 |
.---.---.---.---.---.---.
| 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
.---.---.---.---.---.---.

A South player played five seeds from his last pit into opponent pits counterclockwise. Last seed fell into the pit with two seeds, making three in total. South captures these three seeds, and additionally four seeds from the two previous pits (two seeds in each) - all these pits are marked with stars. He does not capture the two seeds from the Northern leftmost pit, because it’s next pit, not the previous one. Neither he captures the two seeds from the rightmost pit, because the pit with four seeds interrupted the continuous capture.

Captured seeds can be put into the own larger pit, if a board has it. Many traditional boards do not have large pits and players simply put captured seeds in front of them.

Winning

To win the game a player must capture at least 25 seeds (50% of seeds + 1 seed). If both players capture 24 seeds it’s a draw. This also means that if a player has already captured 25 seeds, the game may end immediately, because it makes no sense to continue playing

Game also ends when one player has no seeds on his side of a board, and he can’t be fed - then the second player takes all the seeds on his part of the board and adds them to the captured ones. Game may also end by agreement when players see that they simply circle the seeds around and no capture will be possible. Players take all the seeds from their halves of board and add them to their captured seeds.

In any case - a player should have at least 25 seeds to win.

Special conditions

There are several special conditions.

First is about “feeding” the opponent. If opponent has no seeds on his side of board, then a player must play in such way as to give him at least one seed, so that opponent can move. If feeding is not possible, then the game ends.

Second is about a “grand slam”. “Grand slam” is a move, which would capture all the opponent seeds - for example if all the opponent’s pits contain 2 seeds and a player sows 6 seeds from his last pit into opponent pits which would result in capturing all the seeds. However, capturing all seeds would contradict the “feed the opponent” rule. Different variations handle this situation differently, but the simplest one of them is that after such move no seeds are captured.

And third - if a player sows from a pit with 12 seeds or more, he skips the pit from where the move started during sowing.

Other mancala games

Oware is a great game. Its rules are very simple, it’s popular and liked by many people, it’s simple enough to be played for fun, but it’s also strategic and can be played competitively. But there are other mancala games, some of them are serious, some of them - not so much.

If you want to try other games on the 2x6 board, I may suggest the following ones.

Huroy is game with a unique capturing style. Seeds are captured at the beginning of a move if own pit contains a single pit and the opposing pit is not empty.

Giuthi has a very special pendulum relay sowing mechanics which changes the direction during the move all the time.

Hoyito is a game for children played several rounds where each next round players have lesser pits to control.

Bohnenspiel was once popular in Europe, where seeds are captured similarly to Oware - but the pits must contain 2, 4 or 6 seeds to be captured. Game is played with 6 seeds per pit, so cannot be played with a standard set which has only 48 seeds.

For change, you may also try a lesser known game Waurie which has no capture, but seeds are continuously removed from board by using large pits. And, strangely, its winning condition is to get rid of all the seeds from own side of board.

If you’re not restricted with a 2x6 board, you may consider playing other games as well.

Congkak is a popular fun Malay game. The game utilizes relay sowing - meaning that when the last seed falls into the non-empty pit, all the seeds from the pit are lifted and the move continues. Moreover, the first move is executed simultaneously. Which means that the result of the first move is not exactly deterministic and may depend on how fast players move with their hands. Congkak is played on a 2x7 game with 7 seeds in every small pit. Congkak is probably not suited for a serious play but is definitely fun.

But if you want something more serious than Congkak, then consider the following games.

Toguz Kumalak is a game played competitively in Central Asia. The rules are not too complicated and can be taught very fast, but the game itself is very deep. Seeds are captured from opponent pits when there is an even number of seeds in that pit. Moreover, each player creates his own “tudzik” on the opponent side of board, which captures seeds passed over it. This game requires a bit larger board of 2x9 with nine seeds for each pit in the starting position (so 162 seeds in total).

Omweso is a national Ugandan game played on a 4x8 board - a relatively popular board format, which can be bought as a “Hus” or “Bao” game. Players sow seeds only on their own side of board and captures happen when a last seed falls into the non-empty inner pit and both opposite pits are also not empty. Seeds never leave the board and captured seeds are sown on own part of board. Under certain conditions players may change the move direction.

If you’re brave, you may also try the most complex mancala game “Bao la Kiswahili” which can be played on the same board as Omweso. It has two stages, players can play into both directions, there are several pits with special powers and the game allows players to make both tactical and strategic decisions. There is a simpler version of a game “Bao la Kujifunza” and both variations, as well as some other games, are described on the following page:

Learn how to play Bao la Kiswahili step-by-step. An evolutionary approach.

I’ve mentioned only a handful of mancala games, but I hope you at least got some understanding of how variable mancala games are.

The Mancala?

But isn’t there a game called “Mancala”, which we can buy in the shop and which is “The Mancala”?

Sadly - indeed there is a game, which is marketed as “Mancala” and this brings lots of confusion. There are videos and articles about how to play “The Mancala” without ever mentioning that this is a modern mislabeling and that there are many other mancala games. This game is often sold as Kalah, which at least does not confuse people that much, but otherwise suffers from the same gameplay problem described below.

Sadly this game is not good despite all the praise you might hear about it. Players, who put some though into it come to the conclusion that the first player has such a great advantage, that it makes no sense to actually play it.

And it’s not the chess-like first player advantage, where white win more often than black on average. It’s also not about “with a perfect play first player wins”, because no one is expected to play perfectly. This game has really a devastating first player advantage, given a player remembers the first move. Second player should be about three times a better player to win (this was roughly deduced by using computer players with different depths). If players are roughly the same level, then winning with a score of 32 to 16 is not unusual.

For those interested - a player should first move from the 3rd pit (this gives him an additional move) and then from the 6th pit - black has no ability to counter this.

.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.
|   | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |   |
| 0 .---.---.---.---.---.---. 2 |
|   | 4 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 |   |
.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.

Above is a schematic position after the first move. Second player (North) may now play with his second pit to gain an additional move, but then he should play with 5 seeds in his first pit, otherwise South will capture them. Situation on board becomes very favorable to the first player (South). He will wait until North would fill his first and second pit, so that he can gain additional moves and now he decides to move with one of the 5s.

And players who figure out that “The Mancala” has a broken balance will simply turn away from mancalas, because by hearing the word “mancala” they will not think of a great variety of mancala games. Instead, they will simply remember the single poor game they played once and will say “No, thanks, that’s a bad game”. I’m not imagining since I often see this online. And this is unfortunate, because there are lots of good mancala games. Some of them were described above, including Oware, which is popular, very balanced and pretty simple game and can be played with the same equipment as “The Mancala”, namely the 2x6 board with two large pits and 48 seeds.

I won’t go into the possible reasons, why the person who marketed “Mancala” chose such a confuzing name and why he did not take Oware as a basis of his rules. Probably he did not think much of mancalas and did not care about player balance.

What I will do, however - is to suggest you playing the Oware game instead of the “The Mancala” (or Kalah) rules which often come with the commercially available board.

Kalah possible improvements

But if you insist on playing Kalah, I may suggest the following improvements.

First, you may start with 6 seeds in a pit. This makes the game less prone to the first player advantage. But this also requires more seeds than are usually available in the set.

Second, you may try using the “rule of a pie” - the second player decides if he wants to switch sides after the first player’s first move. This might not fix the game and probably will move the advantage to the second player instead.

When the two above suggestions are used together, then this might actually result in a good game.

And third - you may play Congkak instead. It is very similar to Kalah except for having the relay sowing and that the first move is executed simultaneously. Congkak is usually played on a 2x7 game with 7 seeds in every small pit, but can be adapted to the 2x6 board with 6 seeds each. It’s not a very serious game, though.

Conclusion

There are many mancala games available. There are games for children and there are serious games.

If you want a serious game, play Oware, Omweso, Bao or Toguz Kumalak. If you like mancala mechanics, you won’t be disappointed. Among those - Oware is in a sweet spot of board availability, rules simplicity and game depth.

You may still buy the commercially available “Mancala” or “Kalah” game - you may use the board to play Oware and other games. If you buy the commercial set, I advise choosing one with smaller stones. For some reason sets often have large stones (“seeds”) and it’s not easy to fit more than seven or eight of them into a pit. If you already have such set, consider buying some alternative stones.