How to play Mancala
- Choose the computer (Easy, Medium or Hard) or a friend on the same screen. Your six pits are along the bottom and your store is on the right. On a phone the board stands upright, with your pits on the left and your store at the bottom.
- Click one of your pits to pick up all its seeds and sow them one by one into the pits to the right, around the board into your store and on to the other side. The other player’s store is skipped.
- When the last seed lands in your store, you go again. When it lands in an empty pit on your side and the pit across has seeds, you capture them along with that last seed. The game ends when one side is empty; the most seeds in a store wins.
Tips for winning at Mancala
- Count to your store. A pit that’s exactly as many seeds away from your store as it holds ends in your store and gives you another turn. On the first move with four seeds, the third pit from the left does it.
- Chain free turns. Play the free turn closest to your store first, so the seeds behind it don’t change the count.
- Watch for captures both ways. Before you move, check whether you leave an empty pit of yours across from a big pile, and whether the other player could land in one of their empty pits across from yours.
- Hoard near the end. Seeds left on your side at the end go to your store, so building a big pile in your rightmost pits can pay off late in the game.
About the game
Mancala is a family of sowing games played with seeds or stones in rows of pits, found across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This version uses Kalah rules, the form usually sold as Mancala in the US: two rows of six pits, a store at each end, extra turns and captures. You can play the computer at three levels or a friend on the same device, with three to six seeds per pit.