Mancala

How to play Mancala

The board has two rows of six pits, one row for each player, and a large store at each end. Each pit starts with four seeds. South owns the bottom row and the store on the right; North owns the top row and the store on the left. South sows first.

On your turn, pick one of your own pits that holds seeds. Every seed in it is lifted and sown one at a time into the following slots, anticlockwise: along your row towards your store, into your store, and on round your opponent's row. Your opponent's store is skipped — you never feed it. Whatever is in your store at the end of the game is your score.

The two rules that make the game

Land in your own store and you go again. If the last seed you sow drops into your store, you take another turn straight away, and that can chain: a well-chosen pit can set up several sowings in a row. From the opening position, sowing your third pit puts its last seed exactly in your store, which is why it is the most common first move.

Land in an empty pit on your own side and you capture. If the last seed you sow lands in one of your own pits that was empty, and the pit directly opposite holds seeds, you take both — that last seed and everything opposite — into your store. It has to be your own side and it has to be the last seed: landing in an empty pit on your opponent's side does nothing, and so does landing in a pit that already had seeds. A pit you lifted from counts as empty, so a sowing big enough to go all the way round and finish where it started captures too.

How the game ends

The game ends the moment either row is completely empty. The player with seeds still on their side moves them all into their own store, and the bigger store wins. With four seeds a pit there are 48 seeds in all, so 25 wins outright; a 24–24 finish is a draw.

That ending shapes the play. Emptying your own side early hands your opponent everything left on theirs, so running out of seeds is rarely the good idea it looks. Keeping seeds back in the pits nearest your store gives you extra turns later; leaving a full pit opposite one of your empty ones is an invitation to be captured.

Playing the computer

Against the computer you choose a side and a level. Easy plays any legal turn at random. Medium looks two whole turns ahead — its own and your reply — and Hard looks five. A whole turn includes every extra turn in it, so the computer reads a chain of sowings as the single move it is. At Medium and Hard it always takes a capture that wins the game outright when one is there.

Two players can share one device instead: the board takes turns between South and North, and the scoreboard keeps a running tally of wins across games until you change a setting.

Kalah, and where you might have played it

Mancala is a whole family of sowing games, among the oldest board games still played. This page uses one ruleset from that family, Kalah: six pits a side, stores that count as part of the ring, extra turns from the store, and capture from the opposite pit. It is the version many people first met as Bantumi on the Nokia 3310. You can also start each pit with six seeds for a longer game. It runs entirely in your browser, with nothing uploaded and no account.