How to play Oware

Oware is the great sowing game of West Africa, played for centuries in Ghana, where it is a national game, and across the Caribbean under names such as awale, wari and ayo. It belongs to the mancala family: two rows of six pits, 48 seeds, and a race to capture more than half of them. The rules played here are Abapa, the version used in international tournaments.

Oware rewards patience and counting. Captures happen in the opponent's pits, so every seed you sow over there is both a gift and a trap, and the rule that you must never leave your opponent with nothing to play makes the endgame a real puzzle.

How to play on skill.games

In the settings popup choose a difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard or Crazy) and press PLAY. You always move first. Your row is the one nearest you; the trays at the two ends only hold captured seeds, yours on the right. On a phone held upright the board turns so it fits the screen: your row is on the left and your tray is at the bottom.

• Your pits glow: on your turn every pit you may sow from has a gold ring. When the computer has no seeds, only the pits that would give it some are lit.
• Sowing: tap one of your glowing pits. You can also press and slide: the pit under your finger lights up and a dotted ring shows where its last seed will land. Lift your finger to sow.
• Counts: the number of seeds in every pit and tray is shown beside it.
• The sowing hand: the seeds hop from pit to pit one at a time, with the number still in hand riding along.
• Captures fly into your tray one pit after another, with a +n over it. A move that would capture everything shows GRAND SLAM - NO CAPTURE.
• Must feed: if the computer has no seeds, the status line says GIVE THE BOT SEEDS and a pit that would not reach it is refused.
• The latest move: a small red dot marks the pit the last move was sown from.
• Score line: the top of the screen shows how many seeds each side has captured and whose turn it is.

The menu button in the top-left corner pauses the game and lets you resume, start a new game or switch the sound on or off. The game is saved at every turn, so an unfinished game can be picked up later with CONTINUE.

At the end the winner's tray lights up, then the results screen shows the captured seeds, the number of moves and how the game ended, together with your statistics for that difficulty: wins, losses, draws, win rate, current streak and best streak.

Rules

• The board has two rows of six pits; each player owns the row nearest them. Every pit starts with four seeds, 48 in all.
• On your turn pick up all the seeds in one of your pits and sow them one by one into the following pits, counter-clockwise. Seeds never go into the trays. If a pit holds 12 or more seeds, the sowing laps the board and skips the pit it started from.
• Capture: if your last seed lands in one of your opponent's pits and brings it to exactly two or three seeds, you capture them. Then look at the pit before it: if that is also your opponent's and now holds two or three, capture it too, and so on backwards until a pit does not qualify or you reach your own side. You never capture from your own row.
• Grand slam: a move that would capture every seed on your opponent's side is allowed, but it captures nothing.
• Feeding: if your opponent has no seeds, you must make a move that gives them some. If no move can, the game ends and you take all the seeds left on your side.
• Winning: the first player to capture 25 seeds wins. If both reach 24, it is a draw.
• Endless games: when a position comes round again with the same player to move, or 100 moves pass without a capture, the game ends and each player takes the seeds on their own side. Then the player with more seeds wins.

Strategy tips

• Count the landing pit. A pit with n seeds lands n pits further on (one more if it laps past its start). Before each move, find which of your pits end in an opponent pit holding one or two seeds: those are your captures.
• Look for chains. The best captures take several pits at once. Opponent pits with one or two seeds next to each other are a chain waiting for the right sowing.
• Leave no ones and twos. Pits on your side holding one or two seeds are what your opponent wants to land on. Try not to leave them where an enemy pit can reach.
• Build a big pit. Experienced players let one pit grow to a dozen or more seeds. Sown at the right moment, it laps the board, turns many of the opponent's pits into twos and threes and captures a long chain.
• Keep moves in reserve. Small pits near the right-hand end of your row let you make quiet moves that change nothing on your opponent's side, so you can wait while they are forced to weaken their position.
• Use the feeding rule. If you can arrange for your opponent to run out of seeds when you cannot feed them, you collect everything on your side. Equally, do not run yourself dry when the computer can starve you.
• Think about the end count. Near the end every seed matters: the game stops at 25, and in an endless position the seeds on your side count for you.

Difficulty levels

• Easy: plays a random pit about a third of the time; otherwise it takes the biggest capture it can see right now.
• Normal: looks three moves ahead and sometimes plays at random.
• Hard: looks seven moves ahead and also weighs the seeds each side still has in its row.
• Crazy: searches as deep as it can in the time it has, which near the end of a game is far enough to see it through. To beat it, build your advantage in the middle game, before the board thins out.