How to play Mancala

Sow seeds around a board of twelve pits, land your last seed in an empty pit to capture across from it, and fill your store to beat the computer.

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Mancala is not one game but a family of hundreds, played across Africa and Asia for well over a thousand years. The version here is Kalah, the two-row, six-pit form that is standard in the West — and unlike most games in the family it is fully solved: with perfect play the first player wins.

The board

Two rows of six pits face each other, with a larger store at each end. Your store is the one to your right. Each pit starts with four seeds, forty-eight in total. The row nearest you is yours; the row opposite belongs to the opponent.

Sowing

A turn is one move: pick up every seed from one of your own pits and drop them one at a time, counterclockwise, into each following pit. You sow into your own store but skip the opponent's entirely — which means a lap of the board is thirteen pits for you and thirteen for them, not fourteen.

The two special rules

These are the whole game. *Free turn*: if the last seed lands exactly in your own store, you move again immediately. Chaining free turns is how a strong player takes four or five moves in a row while the opponent sits still. *Capture*: if the last seed lands in an empty pit on your own side, and the pit directly opposite it contains seeds, you take that last seed together with everything opposite and put it all in your store. A capture into a well-stocked opposite pit can swing a dozen seeds at once.

Ending the game

The game ends as soon as one player has no seeds left on their side at the start of their turn. The other player then sweeps every remaining seed on their own side into their store. Whoever holds more than half of the forty-eight seeds wins; twenty-four each is a draw. That sweep rule is why deliberately emptying your own side can be a winning move rather than a surrender — but only if the opponent's side is loaded.

Reading a position

Two counts tell you almost everything: how many of your pits are exactly the right distance from your store to end there (pit 1 needs 1 seed, pit 2 needs 2, and so on), and which of your empty pits face a full opponent pit. The first is your supply of free turns; the second is your supply of captures.

Controls

Tap one of your six pits to sow its seeds counter-clockwise around the board.

Keyboard

Number keys 1 to 6 sow from that pit.
U takes back a move, N starts a new game.

Difficulty

Use the Easy / Normal / Hard control to set how hard the computer plays.

Strategy tips

Look for free turns first, every single turn. A pit holding exactly the number of seeds needed to reach your store is a move that costs you nothing.
Chain them. Play free-turn moves from the pit nearest your store outward, so that earlier sowings set up later ones.
Keep an empty pit on your side facing a well-stocked opponent pit — that is a capture waiting for a seed to land in it.
Watch the opponent's capture threats before your own. An empty pit on their side facing a full pit of yours means you should empty that pit or fill theirs.
Late in a game, count what the sweep rule gives you. Emptying your own side wins if their side is loaded and loses badly if it is not.
Avoid sowing so far that you feed the opponent's row for free; a twelve-seed pit hands them most of what it carries.
Seeds in your store are permanently safe. When ahead, prefer the move that banks seeds over the move that looks aggressive.