Kalah, also called Kalaha or Mancala, is a game in the mancala

Mancala

Mancala is a family of board games played around the world, sometimes called "sowing" games, or "count-and-capture" games, which describes the game-play. Mancala games play a role in many African and some Asian societies comparable to that of chess in the West, or the game of Go in Eastern Asia...

 family invented by William Julius Champion Jr

William Julius Champion Jr

William "Willie" Julius Champion Jr., was born on June 15, 1880, in Trinidad, Colorado, and is best known for inventing Kalah, a game in the Mancala family.-Early Life and Family:...

 in 1940. This game heavily favors the starting player, who will always win the three-seed to six-seed versions with perfect play. This game is sometimes also called "Kalahari", possibly by false etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

 from the Kalahari desert

Kalahari Desert

The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending , covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert...

 in Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

.

As the most popular and commercially available variant of mancala in the West, Kalah is also sometimes referred to as Warri or Awari, although those names more properly refer to the game Oware

Oware

Oware is an abstract strategy game of Akan origin. Part of the mancala family, it is played throughout West Africa and the Caribbean. Among its many names are Ayò , Awalé , Wari , Ouri, Ouril or Uril , Warri , Adji , and Awélé...

.

Equipment

The game requires a Kalah board and 36 seeds or counters. The board has six small pits, called houses, on each side; and a big pit, called a Kalah or store, at each end. Many games sold commercially come with 48 seeds or counters, and the game is started with four seeds in each house.

Rules

1. At the beginning of the game, three seeds are placed in each house.
2. Each player controls the six houses and their seeds on his side of the board. His score is the number of seeds in the store to his right.
3. Players take turns sowing their seeds. On a turn, the player removes all seeds from one of the houses under his control. Moving counter-clockwise, the player drops one seed in each house in turn, including the player's own store but not his opponent's.
4. If the last sown seed lands in the player's store, the player gets an additional move. There is no limit on the number of moves a player can make in his turn.
5. If the last sown seed lands in an empty house owned by the player, and the opposite house contains seeds, both the last seed and the opposite seeds are captured and placed into the player's store.
6. When one player no longer has any seeds in any of his houses, the game ends. The other player moves all remaining seeds to his store, and the player with the most seeds in his store wins.

It is possible for the game to end in a draw, with 18 seeds each.

Variations

• An alternate rule has players sow in a clockwise direction, requiring more stones to be sowed in a single turn to reach the store.
• The "Empty Capture" variant modifies the rules to prohibit a player from capturing seeds from his opponent when landing in an empty house -- i.e., only the last sown seed is placed into the store.
• An alternate rule does not count the remaining seeds as part of the opponent's score at the end of the game.

External links

• Kalah on Mancala World (including a sample game, an endgame problem and an extensive bibliography)
• The Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games article on Kalah
• Jeroen Donkers Kalah page.
• Play Kalah online.