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📖 Rules of Mancala

Two players, two rows of six pits (yours is the bottom row), and seeds. On your turn you pick up all the seeds of one of your pits and sow them, one per pit, anticlockwise: along your row to the right, then back along your opponent’s row to the left. The aim is to collect more seeds than your opponent. Tap a pit to play it.

Kalah (the common Western game)

• 4 seeds in each pit (you can pick 3 to 6). Your store is the big pit at your right; the opponent’s store is on the left. Sow into your own store, skip your opponent’s.
• If your last seed lands in your store, you move again.
• If your last seed lands in an empty pit on your side and the pit opposite has seeds, you capture them and your last seed into your store.
• The game ends when one side is empty. The other player puts all their remaining seeds in their own store. Most seeds wins.

Oware (Abapa rules, from Ghana)

• 4 seeds in each of 12 houses, no stores in the sowing (the big pits only keep your captured seeds). If a house has 12 or more seeds, you skip it when you go round.
• If your last seed makes a house on your opponent’s side hold exactly 2 or 3, you capture it, then check the house before it, and keep capturing backwards while the houses hold 2 or 3 (staying on their side).
• If a capture would take all the opponent’s seeds (a grand slam), nothing is captured.
• If your opponent has no seeds, you must make a move that gives them some. If you can’t, the game ends and you keep the seeds on your side.
• The first player to capture 25 wins. 24 each is a draw.

Mangala (the Turkish / Arab treasure game)

• 4 stones in each pit, a treasure at each end. The first stone goes back into the pit you picked up, the rest go on round. A pit with a single stone just moves it to the next pit. Your own treasure gets a stone as you pass, your opponent’s doesn’t.
• Last stone in your treasure: move again.
• Last stone makes a pit on the opponent’s side hold an even number (2, 4, 6…): you capture that pit.
• Last stone in an empty pit on your side: you capture the stones opposite plus your stone.
• When a row is empty the game ends and the player with the empty row takes what is left on the other side. Most stones wins.

This version

• You are the bottom row; the computer (Easy, Normal or Hard) or a friend (“Pass and play”) has the top row. Hint shows what the Hard computer would play.
• These are the usual rules; houses differ (for example the Mangala “single stone” and end-of-game details). Oware stops after 400 moves with each side keeping its own seeds.