How to play
Mancala is a family of sowing games played for thousands of years across Africa and Asia. This game uses the Kalah rules: the six-pit, four-stone version most people learn first, and the one usually meant by “mancala” in English. The Turkish game with its own sowing and capture rules is a separate game here, Mangala. The board has two rows of six pits and a long store at each end. Forty-eight stones start four to a pit. Your row is the bottom one and your store is on your right. On a phone held upright the board stands on end: your pits run down the left column, your store is at the bottom, and the computer’s pits climb the right column to its store at the top. You move first.
Sowing. Tap one of your pits that has stones. All of them are lifted and dropped one at a time, counterclockwise, starting with the next pit along:
- Your own store gets a stone when you pass it. The opponent’s store is skipped.
- With 13 or more stones you go all the way round, and the pit you started from gets a stone too.
The pits light up one after another as the stones fall, so you can follow where a move went.
Where the last stone lands decides what happens next:
- Your store → you move again, as many times as you keep landing there.
- An empty pit on your side, while the pit directly opposite has stones → that stone and everything opposite go to your store.
- Anywhere else → the turn passes.
Ending. The game stops the moment either row of six pits is empty, right after the move that emptied it. Stones still sitting in the other row go to their owner’s store. Most stones wins; 24 each is a draw.
Rule options
The Rules button opens three settings. Changing any of them starts a new game; a game already in progress keeps the rules it began with, even after you close the page and come back.
- Stones per pit: 3, 4 or 5 (36, 48 or 60 stones). Three stones makes a short, tactical game; five gives long sowings that circle the board.
- Capture into an empty pit: on by default. Turned off, the game is decided by store landings and the end sweep alone.
- Stones left on the board at the end: by default the owner keeps them. The other setting hands them to the player who emptied their side, which turns the finish into a race.
Controls and modes
Choose Computer or Friend at the top. Against the computer, pick Easy, Medium or Hard. The three levels look 2, 4 and 7 moves ahead and count a chain of extra turns as part of one line, so the hard player sees the follow-up of a store landing before it happens. With Friend, two people share one device and take turns on the same board; the status line names the sides Bottom and Top, and the store counts next to it follow the same order.
Hint marks the pit the medium-level search would sow. Undo takes your last move back, together with the computer’s reply. Your game is saved as you go, with difficulty and rule choices.
Opening
At the start every pit holds 4, so a pit’s last stone lands four pits further on. Counting from your store, the fourth pit (the third from your left) ends exactly in the store: a free extra turn, and the pits beyond it now hold 5. Most players open there. In our bot matches with random moves the first player won about 48 percent of games and the second about 45 percent, with the rest drawn; with perfect play the first player is known to win, so the second player has to work for every stone.
Strategy
Chain your store landings. When two pits can both end in your store, sow the one nearer the store first. It doesn’t change the far pit’s count, so the second extra turn is still waiting.
Keep an empty pit facing a full one. An empty pit on your side opposite a loaded pit is a capture waiting to happen. Count which of your pits can drop its last stone there, and remember that a stone landing in an occupied pit captures nothing.
Starve the capture. The same pattern on the computer’s side works against you. Before you move, look at the opponent’s empty pits and the stones you have across from them. Sowing a heavy pit away is often better than leaving it there to be taken.
Hoard late, not early. A big pile in your rightmost pits is safe from captures only while nothing opposite is empty. Near the end, though, a loaded pit on your side is worth keeping if the leftovers go to their owner, because an empty opponent row hands it to you.
Watch the sweep. When the opponent’s row is nearly empty and yours is full, ending the game quickly banks everything on your side. When the reverse is true, slow down and spread your stones so the computer can’t empty out and leave you with scraps.
For the Turkish version with its own first-stone rule and even-number captures, try Mangala; for the big nine-pit board, Toguz Korgool.
If you enjoy Mancala, try Mangala or Marble Push next.
