Oware

Oware is played on a board with 2 rows of 6 pits and a score store on each side. Each small pit starts with 4 seeds (48 total). You control the bottom row.

1. Click one of your 6 pits to sow. All seeds are picked up and distributed one per pit, counterclockwise.
2. Lapping rule: if a pit has 12 or more seeds, skip the starting pit on every full revolution.
3. Capture: if the last seed lands in an opponent's pit and brings it to exactly 2 or 3 seeds, capture those seeds into your score. Continue capturing backwards through consecutive opponent pits that also have exactly 2 or 3.
4. Starvation rule: you may not make a move that leaves your opponent with zero seeds - unless it is your only possible move. Valid pits are highlighted.
5. The game ends when one player has captured 25 or more seeds, or fewer than 12 seeds remain on the board. Each player then claims the seeds on their own side.
6. The player with the most captured seeds wins.

Full rules guide & cultural history →

Oware is one of the oldest known board games in the world, originating among the Akan people of present-day Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Archaeological evidence suggests mancala-family games have been played in Africa for over 7,000 years. The name comes from the Twi word often translated as "he/she marries" - by legend, for a couple who married so they could keep playing without end. The Asante also tell a tradition that King Opoku Ware I would set reconciled quarreling couples to play the game together as a path back to harmony.

The finest boards are carved from a single block of sese - the same wood Asante carvers reserve for royal stools - their circular pits hand-gouged and polished to a dark patina by decades of play; the British Museum holds a warri board carved in the form of an Ashanti stool. The playing pieces are not beans but nickernuts: glossy gray-green sea-beans that drift on ocean currents across the world. Oware spread throughout the African diaspora via the transatlantic slave trade, surviving across the Caribbean and South America as Wari, Awari, and Ayo.

The starvation rule - that you must not leave your opponent without seeds unless it is your only move - is a window into Akan values: competition should not mean destruction, for a game without an opponent is no game at all. Today Oware is played competitively worldwide, with world championships held at London's Mind Sports Olympiad since 1998.