Mancala rules

Mancala is a two-player game played on a board with two rows of six pits and a store at each end. Each pit starts with four seeds. On your turn you pick up all the seeds in one of your pits and sow them one at a time, counter-clockwise, into the following pits, adding one to your own store as you pass it but skipping your opponent’s. A last seed in your store earns another turn, and a last seed in an empty pit on your side captures the seeds across from it. When one row is empty the game ends, and the player with the most seeds in their store wins. This guide explains each rule in detail. It covers Kalah, the most common modern mancala and the version played on this site.

Overview

• Players: 2
• Time: 5 to 15 minutes per game
• Ages: from about 6. Children who can count to 12 can play, and the game rewards adults who plan ahead.
• Equipment: a mancala board (12 pits and 2 stores) and 48 seeds, stones or marbles. Without a board, two rows of six cups or an egg carton with two bowls for stores works fine.

“Mancala” is the name of a whole family of sowing games played across Africa, the Middle East and Asia for many centuries. The version most people meet on a wooden board bought in North America is Kalah, a simplified modern form with stores and extra turns. If you want the background, read the history of mancala.

Setting up

Place the board between the two players, long side facing each player. The six small pits nearest to you are your pits. The large store at your right-hand end is your store. Your opponent owns the far row and the store at the other end, which is on their right.

Put 4 seeds in each of the 12 pits, 48 in all, and leave both stores empty.

It helps to number your pits 1 to 6 from your left, so that pit 6 sits right next to your store. Pit 1 is 6 steps from your store, pit 2 is 5 steps away, and so on down to pit 6, which is 1 step away. You will count these distances all game long.

Decide who goes first. Going first is a small advantage, so in a series of games take turns starting.

Objective

Finish the game with more seeds in your store than your opponent has in theirs. Seeds reach your store in three ways: by sowing past it, by capturing, and by keeping the seeds left in your row when the game ends.

How a turn works

1. Choose one of your six pits that has at least one seed. You may never pick an empty pit, a store, or a pit on your opponent’s side.
2. Pick up every seed in that pit. You cannot leave any behind.
3. Sow them counter-clockwise, one seed per pit, starting with the next pit to the right. When you reach your store, drop a seed in it and carry on into your opponent’s row. If you still have seeds when you reach your opponent’s store, skip it and continue into your own row.
4. Look at where the last seed landed. That decides what happens next: another turn, a capture, or nothing special.
5. Pass the turn, unless you earned another one.

The rules in detail

Sowing goes counter-clockwise

Seeds always travel the same way: along your row toward your store, then along your opponent’s row toward theirs. With 4 seeds in your pit 1, for example, the seeds go into your pits 2, 3, 4 and 5. With 4 seeds in your pit 6, the first seed goes into your store and the other three go into your opponent’s pits 1, 2 and 3.

Your store, never your opponent’s

You add a seed to your own store each time you pass it. You skip your opponent’s store completely, so seeds only enter a store through its owner’s sowing, captures or the final sweep. Once a seed is in a store it stays there until the end of the game.

Extra turn: last seed in your store

If the last seed you sow lands in your own store, you take another turn right away. There is no limit: you can chain two, three or more extra turns in a row. At the start of a game, pit 3 holds exactly 4 seeds and sits exactly 4 steps from the store, so it is the opening move that earns an extra turn. With 3, 5 or 6 seeds per pit, the matching opening pit is pit 4, pit 2 or pit 1.

Capture: last seed in an empty pit on your side

If the last seed lands in an empty pit on your own side, and the pit directly across on your opponent’s side has seeds, you capture. Take that last seed and all the seeds from the opposite pit and put them in your store. Your turn then ends.

Pits face each other in pairs: your pit 1 is across from your opponent’s pit 6, your pit 2 from their pit 5, and so on.

Three details often cause arguments:

• The opposite pit must have seeds. If it is empty, nothing is captured. Your last seed stays where it landed and your turn ends. This is the usual Kalah rule and the default here. The Empty capture option switches to the house rule where you bank that single seed anyway.
• It has to be your side. A last seed that lands in an empty pit on your opponent’s side does nothing.
• “Empty” means empty when the last seed arrives. A pit that already got a seed earlier in the same sowing is not empty any more.

Big pits that go all the way around

A pit can grow large during a game. Sowing 13 seeds takes you exactly once around the board (12 pits plus your own store, skipping your opponent’s store), so the 13th seed lands back in the pit you started from. You emptied that pit when you picked the seeds up, so it counts as empty, and if the pit across has seeds you capture. With 14 seeds or more, every pit has already received a seed on the first lap, so the last seed can never land in an empty pit and there is no capture.

Larger pits also feed many seeds to your opponent’s row, so a big pile is a resource to use at the right moment, not a reason to sow early.

The end of the game

The game ends as soon as all six pits on either side are empty. It is checked after every move, so the game can end in the middle of a run of extra turns, or straight after a capture.

When it ends, each player moves any seeds still in their own row into their own store. Usually only one row still has seeds, and its owner keeps them. This is why running out of seeds is not automatically good: if you empty your row first, your opponent banks everything left on their side.

Winning, draws and counting

Count the seeds in each store. More seeds wins. If both stores hold the same number, the game is a draw.

Because the seed total never changes, you can tell when a game is decided before it ends:

Variants and house rules

Kalah itself is played with small differences from one rule sheet to the next, and the mancala family as a whole is far bigger.

Kalah options

• Seeds per pit. Four is standard. Three makes a short, sharp game; five or six makes longer games with bigger pits, longer laps and larger captures.
• Empty capture. Some players bank the last seed even when the pit across is empty. It slightly rewards landing in empty pits and changes endgame counting.
• When the game ends. Some rule sheets end the game only when the player whose turn it is has nothing to sow, so the opponent may still drop seeds into the empty row first. The usual Kalah wording, used here, ends the game the moment either row is empty, and the seeds left on the board stay with the owner of the row they are in.

Other mancala games

• Oware (also called Awale, Ayo and other names), from West Africa, uses two rows of six pits and 4 seeds per pit, but the stores are not part of the sowing path. You capture on your opponent’s side, when your last seed makes a pit hold exactly two or three seeds, and you are expected to give your opponent seeds to play when their row is empty.
• Bao, from East Africa, is played on four rows of eight pits and has a separate opening phase. It has a reputation as a demanding game that takes years to master.
• Omweso from Uganda also uses four rows of eight, and Congkak and Sungka from Southeast Asia use two rows of seven pits with stores and long chains of sowing.

Which rules this site uses

The Mancala game here plays Kalah with 6 pits per player: 4 seeds per pit by default (3, 5 or 6 in the setup), counter-clockwise sowing that skips the opponent’s store, an extra turn for a last seed in your store, a capture only when the opposite pit has seeds (unless you turn on Empty capture), and an end of game the moment either row is empty, with each player keeping the seeds in their own row. The board does all the counting, so nobody can drop a seed in the wrong store.

Common mistakes and rule disputes

• Dropping a seed in your opponent’s store. It is an easy slip on a real board. Skip their store every time.
• Sowing into the pit you started from too early. The first seed goes into the next pit, not back into the one you emptied. The starting pit only gets a seed after a full lap of 13.
• Claiming an extra turn after a capture. Only a last seed in your own store earns another turn.
• Capturing from the wrong place. You capture when you land in an empty pit on your side, not on your opponent’s side, and the seeds you take come from the pit directly across.
• Capturing from an empty pit. With the standard rule, an empty opposite pit means no capture at all.
• Forgetting the final sweep. When a row runs empty, the seeds in the other row go to that row’s owner before you count.
• Moving only some seeds. You always sow the whole pit.

Glossary

• Pit (or house, cup): one of the 12 small hollows, six per player.
• Store (or kalah, mancala): the large hollow at each player’s right-hand end where captured and sown seeds are kept.
• Seed (or stone, bean, marble): a playing piece. All seeds are identical.
• Sowing: picking up all the seeds from one pit and dropping them one at a time into the following pits.
• Lap: a sowing that goes all the way around the board, 13 seeds or more.
• Extra turn (free turn): another move earned by a last seed in your own store.
• Capture: taking the seeds from the pit across from your empty pit, plus your last seed.
• Empty capture: the house rule that banks your last seed even when the pit across is empty.
• Hoarding: letting seeds pile up in one pit to use later.

Play it now

The quickest way to learn is to play. Open the Mancala board and start a game with a friend on one device, or choose the computer on Easy for a gentle first opponent. When the rules feel natural, the beginner Mancala strategy tutorial shows how to chain extra turns, set up captures and count the endgame.