Mancala

How to play

This is Mancala under the standard Kalah rules — the version most people mean when they say "Mancala." Each side has six small pits and one store, to that player's own right. The game starts with four seeds in each of the twelve small pits, and both stores empty.

On your turn, pick one of your own pits with seeds in it. You pick up every seed in that pit and sow them one at a time into each following pit, moving counter-clockwise around the board — including your own store, but skipping over your opponent's store entirely. You never drop a seed into the store that isn't yours.

If your very last seed lands in your own store, you get an extra turn — pick any pit and go again. If your last seed lands in one of your own pits that was empty before that seed arrived, you capture: that seed and every seed in the pit directly opposite it, on your opponent's side, all go straight into your store. The game ends the moment either player's six pits are all empty; whoever still has seeds sweeps every one of them into their own store, and the player with the most seeds in their store wins.

Playing the computer, or a friend

The computer opponent weighs seeds already in your store far more heavily than seeds still sitting in play, since a banked seed can never be captured back. Easy searches only a couple of moves ahead and often misses a capture developing a move or two out. Medium and hard search much deeper and are considerably harder to catch out with a move that only looks safe one turn at a time — Mancala rewards seeing several moves ahead more than most games this size, precisely because an extra turn can chain into another extra turn.

Switching the opponent to two players passes the same board back and forth on one device, with no computer involved. Your game is saved in this browser as you play, so closing the tab does not cost you the position.

Tips for a stronger game

Look for a pit that lands its last seed exactly in your store before anything else — it costs you nothing and gives you another move immediately, which is close to a free tempo advantage early in the game.

Keep an eye on your own empty pits. A pit sitting empty on your side is a capture waiting to happen the moment you can land a single seed in it with something sitting in the pit opposite — the bigger that opposite pit has grown, the more valuable the capture.

Don't let your own pits pile up too high without a plan. A pit with many seeds sows all the way around the board and further, handing your opponent extra seeds and information about what's coming, and a very full pit is often better emptied earlier on your own terms.