How to play Sholo Guti

Sholo Guti, which means "sixteen beads", is a traditional capture game from Bangladesh and eastern India, where it is traditionally drawn on the ground and played with stones or seeds. It belongs to the same family as the old game Alquerque: each side fills half of a criss-crossed board with pieces, and beads take each other by jumping, much as in draughts.

There is no luck in Sholo Guti at all. Both sides see everything, and every result comes from the moves made. The board is crowded at the start, so the game rewards players who look a move or two ahead: one careless step can open a path for a chain of jumps that wipes out several beads at once.

How to play on skill.games

You play the white beads and always move first. The computer plays the dark beads.

• Select a bead: tap one of your beads. Green dots appear on the points it can step to, and rings show where it can land with a jump. The rival beads a jump would take are circled in red.
• Move: tap a green point to step there, or a ring to jump.
• Chain jumps: after a jump, if the same bead can jump again, the game waits for you. Tap another landing point to keep jumping, or tap the bead itself to end your turn.
• Change your mind: tap the selected bead again to deselect it, or tap a different bead.

On wide screens the board is shown sideways, with your end on the left. During a long quiet spell, the status line counts the moves made without a capture.

Before each game the settings popup lets you choose Easy, Normal, Hard or Crazy. The menu button in the top-left corner pauses the game. An unfinished game is saved at the start of every turn, so you can continue it next time.

The results screen shows the beads left on each side, beads taken and lost, turns and how the game was decided, plus your record at that level: wins, losses, draws, win rate and streaks.

Rules

The board. The board has 37 points joined by lines. In the middle is a square grid of five by five points. Every point has lines to its neighbours across and up and down, and every other point also has diagonal lines, forming a pattern of crossed squares. At each end, a small triangle of six more points is attached to the middle of the grid's edge.

Setup. Each side has sixteen beads. Yours fill your triangle and the two rows of the grid nearest to it; the computer's fill the other end the same way. Only the middle row of the grid starts empty.

A turn. On your turn you move one bead in one of two ways:

• Step: move along a line to a neighbouring empty point, in any direction, forwards, sideways or backwards.
• Jump: if a rival bead sits on a neighbouring point and the point just beyond it, on the same straight line, is empty, jump over it and land there. The jumped bead is taken off the board at once.

Chain captures. After a jump, the same bead may jump again if another capture is available from where it landed, and it can keep going. You may stop after any jump. Only the bead that made the first jump can continue the chain.

Captures are optional. You never have to jump just because you can. Choosing a quiet step instead is allowed.

How the game ends.

• If a side loses all its beads, it loses.
• If a side has no legal move on its turn, it loses.
• If 40 moves in a row, counting both players' moves, pass without any capture, the game stops. The side with more beads left wins, and equal numbers make it a draw.

Strategy tips

• Check every jump before you step. Before moving, look at the point you are leaving and the point you are moving to. Ask whether a rival bead could jump into the gap or over the bead you just moved.
• Watch for chains, not single jumps. The real danger is a jump that lands where it can jump again. A loose line of beads with gaps between them can be swept up in one turn.
• Keep beads backed up. A bead with a friendly bead directly behind it on the line cannot be jumped from the front, because there is no empty landing point.
• Offer trades only when you gain. You may let the computer take one bead if your reply takes two, but captures are optional, so it may decline.
• Use the diagonals. Points with diagonal lines connect in up to eight directions, so they are both stronger and more dangerous than points with only four. Control of them decides many fights.
• Don't rush out of your triangle. The triangle points connect to the grid through a single point, so beads left there late can be slow to join the fight. Bring them out steadily while the front is still solid.
• Mind the 40-move count. If you are ahead on beads, a long quiet stretch wins the game for you. If you are behind, you need to force captures before the count runs out.

Difficulty levels

• Easy: looks only at its own next move, plays a random move about a third of the time (though it avoids simply handing you a bead for free), and often overlooks a second jump in a chain.
• Normal: looks a little further ahead, at its move and your reply. It still makes an occasional random move and sometimes cuts a chain short.
• Hard: looks several moves deeper, almost never plays a random move and never overlooks a chance to continue a chain.
• Crazy: searches deeper still, never plays a random move, and punishes almost every loose bead. It is the toughest test the game offers.