Oware

The board and the goal

Two rows of six pits, four seeds in each, forty-eight altogether. You take the near row, the south side, A1 to A6 from your left; your opponent takes the far row, B1 to B6. There is no store at either end.

Captured seeds leave the board for good and go into your scoring area, a pile beside you, so the number of seeds still moving shrinks as the game goes on. Twenty-five wins and stops the game at once; twenty-four each is a draw.

Sowing

Choose any pit on your own row that has seeds, lift all of them, and drop them one at a time into the pits that follow, counter-clockwise: A1 up to A6, across to B1, along to B6, then round to A1. The twelve pits are one continuous ring, and there is no store to sow into.

One thing is skipped. If you lift twelve or more seeds your lap comes back round to the pit you emptied, and you step over it every time you pass. A big handful never refills its own pit. Count forward before you lift, because only the last seed can capture.

Capturing two or three

You capture only on your opponent's side, and only with the seed that ends your move. If your last seed lands in one of their pits and leaves it holding exactly two or exactly three seeds, lift those seeds out and set them aside.

Nothing else takes anything. A pit ending on one is safe, a pit ending on four or more is safe, and a last seed landing on your own row captures nothing however inviting the pit across from it looks.

Then look back one pit, against the direction you were sowing. If that pit is also theirs and also holds two or three, take it as well, and keep walking backwards while the run continues. The first pit holding anything else stops you, and so does the edge of their row: a capture never carries on into your own pits. The prize move ends at the far end of a line of thin pits and rakes the whole line.

Feeding your opponent

You may not starve the other player. If their entire row is empty when your turn begins, you must play a move that puts at least one seed on their side, and only those moves are offered to you.

If nothing you hold can reach them, the game ends there and you take every seed left on the board into your scoring area. The totals still decide the result. While they have even a single seed anywhere, the rule does not apply and you may play whatever you like.

The grand slam

A move that would capture every seed your opponent has left is called a grand slam, and tables have never agreed about it. Many players think wiping the other side out in one move is unsporting rather than clever, so this site offers three answers and shows which is in force.

In abapa, the default, the move is legal but captures nothing: you play it, the seeds stay put, and your opponent still has something to move. In the forbidden variant the move is not offered at all. In the third it does exactly what it looks like and takes the lot. The difference only shows up late, but at that point it decides games.

How the game ends

Three quick endings: twenty-five seeds in a scoring area wins, twenty-four each is a draw, and a player who cannot feed an empty opponent ends it and takes what is left on the board.

The fourth is repetition. Late games can lock into a loop, the same few seeds going round with neither side able to break it. When the same position comes up for the third time, with the same seeds in the same pits and the same player to move, the game stops on its own. Each player takes the seeds on their own side and those totals decide it.

Reading the notation

A move is written as the pit you emptied: A4, B2. An x with a number, such as x7, gives the seeds that went to your scoring area, counting the whole chain as one. A hash means the move ended the game. Oware has no free turns, so you will never see a plus sign.

Choose a variant