Mancala Rules

Mancala is a two-player board game of sowing and capturing stones. Players take turns scooping up the stones from one pit and dropping them one at a time around the board, trying to end in their own store for a free turn or in an empty pit to capture. There are no dice and nothing is hidden, so every game is decided by the moves. The name covers a whole family of games played across Africa, the Middle East and Asia; the version sold in most boxed sets in the US and UK is Kalah, and that is the one these mancala rules describe, followed by the main variations and the strategy that wins games.

Mancala Rules at a Glance

How to Set Up the Board

1. Place the board lengthways between you, so each player has a row of six pits in front of them.
2. Put four stones in each of the 12 pits. Leave both stores empty.
3. Your store is the large pit on your right. Every stone that ends up there is yours.
4. Decide who goes first with a coin toss or a dice roll, and swap for the next game.

How to Play Mancala

1. Pick a pit. On your turn, take all the stones from any one of the six pits on your side.
2. Sow the stones. Moving counter-clockwise (to your right), drop one stone into each pit in turn, starting with the next pit. When you reach your own store, drop one in it too, then carry on into your opponent’s pits if you still have stones. Never drop a stone in your opponent’s store; skip it.
3. Free turn. If your last stone lands in your own store, take another turn straight away. There is no limit, so one turn can chain several moves.
4. Capture. If your last stone lands in an empty pit on your own side, and the pit directly opposite has stones in it, take that last stone and all the stones opposite and put them in your store. Your turn then ends.
5. Otherwise your turn ends and your opponent plays.
6. End of the game. As soon as all six pits on one side are empty, the game is over. The other player puts all the stones still on their side into their own store.
7. Count up. The player with more stones in their store wins. A 24–24 draw is possible.

A Worked Example

At the start every pit holds four stones. Count your pits 1 to 6 from your left. If you play pit 3, its four stones go into pits 4, 5 and 6 and the last one into your store, so you get a free turn. It is the only opening move that does.

Later in the game, suppose your pit 1 holds two stones and your pit 3 is empty, with five stones in the pit across from it. Playing pit 1 drops a stone in pit 2 and the last one in empty pit 3. That is a capture: the stone in pit 3 and the five opposite go to your store, six in all.

Common Rule Variations

Mancala sets often come with slightly different instructions, so agree on these before you start:

Other Mancala Games

Kalah is a modern version, but mancala games are played under many names around the world:

Mancala Strategy: How to Win

• Open with pit 3, then pit 6. Pit 3 is the opening free turn. Computer analysis of the game shows that following it with pit 6 is the strongest start.
• Count for free turns. A pit gives a free turn when it holds exactly as many stones as the steps to your store: 1 in pit 6, 2 in pit 5, 3 in pit 4 and so on. Take those moves first, playing the pit nearest the store before the others so you don’t spoil them.
• Keep pit 6 working. The pit next to your store needs only one stone for a free turn, so every time it refills you have an extra move.
• Look at both empty pits. Before you move, check which of your empty pits you can land in, and which of your opponent’s empty pits sit across from a big pile of yours.
• Hold stones near the end. In the standard rule the stones on your side at the finish are yours, so a pile you don’t have to move can decide a close game, as long as it can’t be captured.
• Count to 25. Once your store reaches 25 the game is won, so play safe moves from there.

Mancala Odds: Is the Game Solved?

Yes. Kalah with six pits and four stones has been solved by computer: with perfect play the first player wins by 8 stones, or by 10 under the empty-capture rule (Irving, Donkers and Uiterwijk proved the empty-capture result in 2000, and Mark Rawlings worked out every opening in 2015). Pit 3 gives the first player a second move at once, so there are ten possible openings:

Between real players the edge is far smaller. In 100,000 simulated games between two players who move at random, the first player won 48%, the second 45%, and 6% were draws. Simple rules matter far more than going first: a player who always takes a free turn when one is there, and otherwise the move that puts the most stones in the store, beat a random opponent 99% of the time going first and 98% going second. Drop the free-turn rule and keep only “biggest gain”, and those figures fall to 97% and 94%.

Where Mancala Comes From

The word comes from the Arabic manqala, from the root naqala, “to move”. Mancala boards cut in stone and pottery have been found at Roman-era sites in Israel from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and in the Aksumite towns of Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the game is mentioned in the 10th-century Arabic Book of Songs. Kalah itself is American: William Julius Champion Jr. patented and sold his board in the mid-20th century, and it is now the best-known mancala game in the West. It was also one of the first games played by computer, on a PDP-1 in the early 1960s.

More Games to Try

For another game of counting and planning for two, try backgammon or checkers, and for up to six players, Chinese checkers. For tiles rather than stones, see the dominoes guide and Mexican Train, and for dice, Farkle.

The Filipino version: Sungka, played with seven holes a side, 98 shells and moves that keep going round the board.

Mancala: frequently asked questions