Mancala rules in 30 seconds
- Four stones start in each of the twelve small pits — 48 stones in all.
- On your turn, scoop one of your pits and sow the stones counterclockwise, one per pit.
- Your store is the large pit on your right. Drop a stone in as you pass it; always skip your opponent’s.
- If your last stone lands in your store, you take another turn.
- If it lands in an empty pit on your side, you capture that stone plus everything in the pit across.
- The game ends when either side is empty; the other player sweeps, and the most stones wins.
This page teaches Kalah — the version of Mancala most US players know, and the one played on this site. Mancala is a family of related games; other variants such as Oware or Congkak use different capture and endgame rules. If you learned on a two-row wooden board with six pits per side, these are your rules.
Setup: the board and the stones
A Mancala board has twelve small pits — six on your side, six on your opponent's — and two large stores (also called mancalas), one on each end. Your store is the large pit on your right; your opponent's is on their right (your left). At setup, four stones go in each small pit — 48 stones in all — and both stores start empty.
Board anatomy
Sowing: taking a turn
On your turn, pick up every stone from one of your six pits, then sow them counterclockwise: drop one stone into each following pit. When you pass your own store, drop a stone in. When you pass your opponent's store, skip it — no stone ever lands there on your turn.
Here is a numbered example of the most popular opening:
The extra-turn rule
If your last stone lands exactly in your store, you immediately take another turn. The opening above does exactly that: four stones from the third pit reach pits four, five, six — and the store. Chaining extra turns is the fastest way to build a lead, and it's why good players count stones before they sow.
The capture rule
If your last stone lands in an empty pit on your own side, and the opposite pit holds stones, you capture: your landing stone and every stone in the pit directly across go into your store.
A capture
Worked example. Your first pit holds two stones and your third pit is empty, with five stones sitting in the opponent's pit directly across from it. You sow those two stones: the first lands in your second pit, the second lands in the empty third pit. Because it stopped in an empty pit on your own side, you take that stone and all five across — six stones into your store, and a six-stone swing in one move. This is the single most valuable move in the game, and setting it up deliberately is the fastest way to improve; you can practice against the computer with undo turned on until you spot the pattern automatically.
When capture does not happen: if the opposite pit is empty, there is nothing to capture — your stone simply stays where it landed. Landing in an empty pit on your opponent's side never captures either.
No capture
The endgame sweep
The game ends the moment one player's six pits are all empty. The other player then sweeps every stone remaining on their own side into their store. Finally, count the stores: whoever holds more of the 48 stones wins. 24–24 is a tie. Emptying your side first is not automatically good or bad — what matters is where the sweep leaves the count.
Endgame sweep
The sweep is why the endgame is really a counting problem: long before the last stones move, you can work out who empties first and how many stones the sweep hands over. Emptying your own side while your opponent still holds a pile is usually a mistake — you are gifting them the sweep. Our Mancala strategy guide covers the counting habits that decide close endgames, and you can practice against the computer at three difficulty levels to test them.
Kalah vs other Mancala variants
Played a version with different rules? You probably did — this is the most argued-about part of Mancala. The usual flashpoints:
- Capturing on an empty opposite pit. In Kalah (used here), no — the last stone just sits. Some house rules allow capturing the single landing stone.
- Skipping the opponent's store. Standard Kalah always skips it. Some casual sets sow into both stores.
- What ends the game. Kalah ends when either side is empty, with the sweep as shown above. Oware and other family variants end and score completely differently.
- Number of stones. Four per pit is standard Kalah; three-, five-, and six-stone deals exist and change the strategy substantially.
None of these are "wrong" — they are different games in the same family. When you play here, the board enforces the Kalah rules on this page, and the computer plays by exactly the same rules you do.