Kalah

Kalah

Ranks: Two

Sowing: Single lap

Region: USA, Germany

Kalah, also called Kalaha and often simply Mancala, is a game in the mancala family introduced to the West by William Julius Champion Jr in the 20th century. When someone refers to "the game Mancala", they are probably referring to this game, although there are deeper mancala games available: this game heavily favors the starting player. Confusingly, this variant is also sometimes referred to as Warri or Awari although those names more properly refer to the game Oware. Occasionally this game can be mis-named as "Kalahari", this is likely to have happened as a result of westerners returning from Africa and naming the game after the Kalahari desert.

Contents

1 Rules

1.1 Equipment
1.2 Setup
1.3 Object
1.4 Sowing

1.4.1 Example turn:

1.5 Extra turn
1.6 Capturing
1.7 Variation

2 External links

Rules

Equipment

The Kalah board has six pits in front of each player, and one pit at each end which stores captured seeds. Each player controls the six pits on their side of the board, and their score is the number of seeds in their right-hand house.

The only pieces are 36 undifferentiated seeds.

Setup

At the beginning of the game three seeds are placed in each pit except the end pits. Typically, the winner of the previous game starts the next game.

Object

The object of the game is to capture more seeds than one's opponent. Since the game has only 36 seeds capturing 19 is sufficient to accomplish this. Since there are an even number of seeds it is possible for the game to end in a draw, where each player has captured 18.

If one player finds that they no longer have any seeds in their playing pits, then the game also ends, and the player who still has seeds in her pits moves these seeds to their scoring pit.

Sowing

Example turn:

Lower player begins sowing from the highlighted hole.

Since the last seed fell in the store, the lower player takes an extra move. |} The last seed fell in an empty hole, opposite an occupied one, capturing the seeds shown.

Players take turns moving the seeds. On a turn, a player chooses one of the six pits under their control. The player removes all seeds from this pit, and distributes them in each pit counter-clockwise, including their own scoring pit, but not the opponent's.

Extra turn

If the last seed landed in the player's own scoring pit, they win an additional turn. As long as the last sown seed keeps landing in the player's scoring pit, they earn additional turns.

Capturing

If the last sown seed lands in one of the current player's empty pits, directly across from an opponent's pit containing one or more seeds, both the last seed and the facing seeds are captured and placed into the current player's scoring pit.

Variation

Instead of three seeds, players may begin with four, five, six, or more seeds in each pit.
The "Empty Capture" variant modifies the capturing rules to allow a player to capture zero seeds from the opponent when landing in an empty pit -- ie: only the last sown seed is placed into the scoring pit.
When a player no longer has any seeds to sow, the scores may be determined solely by the number of seeds in the scoring pits -- not counting the seeds left in the starting pits of the other player.

External links

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