A complete guide: the goal, sowing stones through the pits counterclockwise, the extra turn and capture, controls on muta.pro and tactics for beginners. Read it and go straight to the board.
Mancala is a counting duel between two players on a board with pits. Your task is to gather more stones in your store than your opponent. Stones travel from pit to pit, turn by turn, and whoever accumulates more seeds in their storehouse by the end of the game wins. There is no randomness — only the calculation of chains of moves and captures.
The board is two rows of 6 pits and one large store at the edge for each player. The bottom row of six pits and the right store belong to you, the top row and the left store to your opponent. Each small pit is filled with 4 stones (48 in all on the board), and the stores start empty. The player whose pits are on the bottom moves first.
Each player has six pits of their own and one store to the right of them. Earned stones are placed in the store — that is your score.
On your turn choose one of your pits, take all the stones out of it and drop them one by one into the following pits counterclockwise.
As you pass your own store, drop a stone into it. The opponent's store is skipped when sowing — you never place seeds there.
If the last stone lands exactly in your store, you move again. Lucky chains let you make several turns in a row.
If the last stone lands in your empty pit (making it hold exactly one stone) and the pit opposite has seeds, you take both that stone and all the seeds opposite — everything goes into your store.
The game ends as soon as all six pits on one player's side are empty. The stones remaining on the board go to their owners' stores.
When someone's side empties, each player sweeps the stones remaining in their own pits into their own store. After that the seeds in the stores are counted: whoever has more wins. An equal number of stones means a draw. There are 48 stones in all on the board, so 25 or more already guarantees a win.
Look for pits from which the last stone lands exactly in the store — a chain of several moves in a row pulls you sharply ahead.
Keep your pit empty opposite a loaded pit of the opponent — one precise stone will grab a whole handful.
Before sowing, work out whether you will expose your rich pit to a capture by the opponent on the next move.
Toward the end of the game, watch that you keep seeds for a move — otherwise the opponent will collect the remainder for themselves.
The extra turn in mancala is not luck but arithmetic. The distance rule is simple: for the last stone to land exactly in the store, a pit must hold exactly as many seeds as there are steps to the store. Counting from the far pit to the near one, your six pits stand at distances of 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 from the storehouse. So the pit right next to the store fires into it with one stone, the neighboring one with two, and so on.
The numbers are steps to the store; a pit with one stone right next to it always grants an extra turn.
The power of the technique lies in chains. A single extra turn decides almost nothing, but a link of three or four in a row reshapes the game. You have to plan a chain from the end: first find the move that will finish in the store, then the one before it, which also finishes in the store and does not destroy the setup for the next link.
A pit right next to the store with one stone grants an extra turn at any moment. Save it as the last link of a chain or as a safety tempo when no other moves into the store remain.
Before the first sowing, mentally run the whole chain to the end. A move that looks profitable but breaks the count of the next link is worth less than a modest but self-contained series of three extra turns.
Play the pits so that an early sowing does not add seeds to a pit that is due to fire into the store. It is usually safer to go from the far pits to the near ones, not the other way around.
A capture triggers on a strict condition: the last stone falls into your empty pit, and the pit opposite holds seeds. Both halves matter. To set up a capture deliberately, the target pit must be empty by the moment of sowing, and the sowing must end exactly in it — that is, the played pit must hold as many stones as there are steps to the empty target.
The blue row is the opponent's pits; your last stone fell into an empty pit (yellow), opposite the loaded pit "4" — you take it and your stone into the store.
The real target of a capture is not your own lone stone but the opponent's rich pit opposite. That is why strong players keep one or two of their pits empty in advance opposite the opponent's loaded pits and wait for the precise stone. It is a "loaded spring": worth nothing on its own, but on the right move it carries a whole handful into the store.
The game breaks off the instant all six pits on one player's side empty, and the remainder on the board is swept to the owners. Hence the main principle of the endgame: what matters is not only your store, but also whose side empties first and how many seeds are left with the opponent to go to them.
Your row is almost empty: by playing the "2" by the store, you break off the game, and the opponent's 11 seeds go to them — the break-off is profitable only if your store is already ahead.
There are two mirror plans. The first is emptying your side: if you lead on the store and there are few stones on the board, it pays to quickly pour out your pits and force the end while the opponent has unused seeds piled up. The second is accumulation: if you are behind, hold your seeds, drag the game out and prepare a large final collection before the board empties.
Closer to the end, look for pits from which a single sowing finishes in the store and empties your side at the same time. Such a move gives a point, an extra turn and brings the break-off, favorable to you, closer.
If the opponent has a big handful and their side is close to zero, speed up the resolution: a break-off on their empty side forces the remainder to go to you, not the other way around.
A lone pit from which you can no longer reach the store or set up a capture is ballast. Put it into play early, before it becomes a gift to the opponent at the final sweep.
Mancala seems simple, and that is exactly why the same slips repeat game after game. Going over them is more useful than memorizing another ten tips: most losses are not a brilliant move by the opponent, but a gifted tempo or handful of seeds.