To play mancala, two players sit across a board with two rows of six pits and a large store at each end. On your turn you scoop up every stone from one pit on your side and drop them one at a time, counterclockwise, into the pits that follow. Stones that reach your store are yours to keep. Most stones in your store at the end wins.
That is the version sold in most American stores, a game properly called Kalah. But “mancala” is not one game. It is a whole family of count-and-capture games, played across Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, with almost as many rule sets as places that play it.
The quick answer: Put four stones in each small pit. Take turns picking up all the stones in one of your pits and sowing them one per pit, counterclockwise, into your own store but never your opponent’s. Land your last stone in your store and you go again. Land it in an empty pit on your side and you capture the stones across from it. When one side runs out, the game ends.
What is mancala?
Mancala is a name for a family of board games, not a single game. The word comes from an Arabic root meaning to move or transfer, according to AramcoWorld. The games share one idea: players move seeds or stones around a board of pits by “sowing” them one at a time, and they capture stones according to where the last one lands.
The board shapes vary. Some have two rows of six pits. Others have four rows of eight. Players have used carved wooden boards, pits scooped in the dirt, and seeds, shells, or pebbles as counters.
How old is it? That is less certain than many websites claim. A game played in holes in the ground leaves little behind, and specialists are skeptical of some stone pits that have been called ancient mancala boards. AramcoWorld’s overview, which draws on the scholar Alex de Voogt, lays out that uncertainty carefully. What is clear is that the family is old and widespread. In 1896, the Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum published Stewart Culin’s study Mancala, the National Game of Africa, which already described versions from across the continent and beyond.
What do you need to play mancala?
- A board. Two rows of six pits plus a store at each end. Folding wooden boards cost about $15 to $20 at big-box stores; for example, a solid wood mancala set at Target was about $19 at the time of writing.
- 48 stones. Four per pit. Most sets include a few extras.
- Two players.
No board? An egg carton with two bowls at the ends works, and so do 48 dried beans. That makes mancala one of the easiest games to set up at a kitchen table.
How do you set up the board?
- Place the board lengthwise between the two players.
- Each player owns the six small pits on their side, the row nearest them.
- Each player owns the large store on their right.
- Put four stones in each of the twelve small pits. Leave the stores empty.
Some people play with three stones per pit for a shorter game, or with five or six for a longer one. Four is the standard.
How do you play mancala, step by step?
These are the rules for Kalah, the version most Americans know as “mancala.” William Julius Champion Jr. patented and sold it in the United States in the 1950s, drawing on the older African games.
1. Pick up and sow
On your turn, choose any one of your six pits that has stones in it. Pick up every stone in that pit. Moving counterclockwise (to your right along your row), drop one stone into each pit that follows, including your own store.
2. Skip your opponent’s store
If you have enough stones to go all the way around, keep sowing into your opponent’s small pits, but skip their store. Your stones never go into their store.
3. Last stone in your store: go again
If the last stone you drop lands in your own store, you take another turn. There is no limit. A good opening can chain two or three turns in a row.
4. Last stone in an empty pit on your side: capture
If your last stone lands in an empty pit on your own side, look across at your opponent’s pit directly opposite. If it has stones, capture them all, plus your one stone, and put them in your store. If the opposite pit is empty, most house rules say nothing happens, and your stone stays put.
5. End of the game
The game ends when all six pits on one player’s side are empty. The other player moves any stones still on their side into their own store. Count the stores. Most stones wins. Ties are possible.
House rules differ on a few points, especially the capture on an empty opposite pit and who gets the leftover stones at the end. Agree on them before you start.
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What is the best beginner mancala strategy?
Every tip below follows from the rules above.
- Count to your store. A pit that is three spaces from your store with exactly three stones in it will end in your store and earn a free turn. Look for those first.
- Play the pit closest to your store early. Moving one stone from the pit next to your store earns a free turn and does not disturb your other pits. Do that before moves that change other counts.
- Chain your free turns. After each free turn, check the counts again. One move often sets up the next.
- Watch for empty pits. An empty pit on your side, across from a full pit on theirs, is a capture waiting to happen. Look for a pit that will end exactly there.
- Protect your big piles. If your opponent has an empty pit across from your biggest pile, they may be one move from taking it. Move that pile or fill the empty pit.
- Hold stones late. Near the end, stones still on your side go to your store when the game ends. Running your side empty too early can hand the rest of the board to your opponent.
Good players count every move before they make it. That is the real skill in mancala, and it is great arithmetic practice for kids.
What are Oware and Bao?
Kalah is the easiest entry point. Two of the most celebrated traditional mancala games are Oware from West Africa and Bao from East Africa.
Oware
Oware is a two-row, six-pit game strongly associated with the Akan peoples of Ghana and played across West Africa. It also traveled to the Caribbean, where it is often called warri; AramcoWorld notes championship warri tournaments in Barbados and Antigua.
The board looks like Kalah’s, with 48 seeds and four per pit, but the rules differ in ways that matter:
- There are no stores in the sowing path. Captured seeds are set aside.
- You capture from your opponent’s side, not your own. If your last seed brings an opponent’s pit to exactly two or three seeds, you take them, and you can keep capturing backward along their row while the pits hold two or three.
- In common rule sets, you may not leave your opponent with no seeds to play if you can avoid it.
- The winner is the first to capture more than half the seeds, 25 of 48.
These are the widely played “abapa” rules, as described in Oware’s reference entry. Local rules vary.
Bao
Bao is a four-row game played along the Swahili coast of East Africa, from Kenya and Tanzania down toward Mozambique, with a strong tournament tradition on Zanzibar. “Bao” means board in Swahili, and the full game is called bao la kiswahili, per AramcoWorld. The board has four rows of eight pits, and each player owns the two rows nearest them.
Bao is widely considered one of the most complex games in the mancala family. Captured seeds do not leave the board; they get sown back into the capturer’s rows, so the material keeps changing hands. Its best-known written rules come from Alex de Voogt, who wrote them down between 1991 and 1995 from the teaching of Zanzibari masters, as summarized here. If Kalah clicks for you, Bao is a deep game to grow into.
Is mancala a good game for winter break or Kwanzaa?
Mancala is a good game for winter break. It takes two minutes to teach, the board is cheap, and it rewards the counting kids already know. It fits on a small table and plays in about 15 minutes. For more picks, see our list of board games for winter break with kids.
Families looking for games with African roots to play during Kwanzaa, which runs from December 26 to January 1, may also enjoy it. To be clear, mancala is not a Kwanzaa tradition in itself. It is simply a game from the same continent with a long, rich history of its own, and Oware or Bao can be a doorway into that history.
For other quiet two-player options, our guide to two-player cooperative board games has more. And if a grandparent learned a different set of mancala rules growing up, play theirs. That is how these games have always traveled. The game is the reason. The people are the point.
If you like old games that are still played everywhere, backgammon is another two-player classic worth learning.
For another quick classic, see how to play checkers.
FAQ
Which way do you move in mancala?
Counterclockwise, starting with the pit to the right of the one you picked up. You sow into your own store but skip your opponent’s.
What happens if your last stone lands in your store?
You take another turn. There is no limit, so plan chains of free turns when you can.
How do you capture in mancala?
In Kalah, if your last stone lands in an empty pit on your own side, you capture that stone plus all the stones in your opponent’s pit directly across from it.
Who wins when one side runs out of stones?
The game ends. The other player moves their remaining stones into their own store, and whoever has more stones in their store wins.
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