Konane

Konane Opening Position

Alternate Names

Ko-na-ne, Hawaiian Checkers

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

There is no standard size of board, called a papa, for this game and many different sizes are used. The points of play for the counters are typically holes made in wood or stone set in a square or rectangle pattern. Arguably, the most common sizes for the square sides are 8x8 or 10x10. 6x6 and 18x18 (using the squares of the Go board as cells) boards are also normal. If the board shown above is the one used, thirty-two each of black and white counters (I’ll call them stones here) are required.

History

Most evidence indicates this is authentically Hawaiian. It was first described to Western Civilization by the well-known British Naval Captain, James Cook.

Objective

The object is to be the last player able to make a legal move.

Play

The board is set up as above: stones are placed alternately black and white, left to right in the first row, right to left in the second row, left to right in the third row, and so on. At completion of the setup, all stones in the same diagonal should be the same color. One player picks up a single black and a single white stone and conceals one in each hand. The second player then chooses a hand, thereby selecting the color they will be playing with in the game. The two stones are then replaced on the papa. Black makes the first play by removing a single black stone from any position on the board. The player with white follows by removing a single white stone from a position adjacent (horizontally or vertically but not diagonally) to the position from which the black stone was removed. Now a black stone may jump (again horizontally or vertically but not diagonally) over a white stone to a necessarily vacant adjacent square on the opposite side of the white stone, thereby removing that white stone from play. Only jumping moves are allowed. Alternate turns entail a move of a single stone of one’s own color by jumping over and removing a stone or stones of the opposite color. Multiple jumps can be made, changing direction if desired, but are not compulsory. When it is a player’s turn and they have no legal jumps left to make they have lost the game.

Variations

Leap-frog is a similar concept, dating to the 19th century or before in England. Any number of persons may play on a large square grid (15x15 and 18x18 are mentioned by H.J.R. Murray). The game commences with every cell of the board occupied by a counter. Each in turn, removes one counter of their choice for the first part of the game and thereafter, every move is a short jump and capture, allowing for enchained captures if possible. The game ends when it is a player’s turn and there is no legal move available to them. Wins the player who has captured the most counters at that point. Murray improved upon this concept by using different colored counters to initially fill the board and assigning different point values to the different colors, e.g. white counting 1, yellow 2, red 3, and green 4. Here, wins the players whose captures have the highest point value.

Take it Away by Sid Sackson can be played the same as Murray's Leap-frog, but its standard version offers a new twist which penalizes the last player to quit. Its standard version is played on a 8x8 checkerboard using sixty-four poker chips of three colors as counters. They are divided as such: 34 white, 20 red, and 10 blue. With the counters placed randomly on all of the cells of the board, the first player removes and captures any white chip. After that, alternating turns entail a single short jump, in any direction orthogonal or diagonal, over another counter thereby capturing it. Multiple enchained jumps may be made in one turn, changing direction each time if desired. After a player has made all of their jumps, they then remove the counters that they jumped over and place them in their stock, to be tallied at the end of the game. At any point in the game a player may announce "Take it Away" and drop out of the game. They will then make no further moves or captures for that game. Players score three points for blue chips, two points for red chips, and one point for each white chip that they have captured. The last player to drop out is known as the "patsy" . This player will want to continue jumping all counters on the board until no further moves are available because counters remaining on the board are counted against his or her total.

Sources