Zamma

Alternate Names

Damma

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A Zamma board and forty each of black and white counters are required for play. Note that all positions on the board are not intersections as is typical to most games of this family where the counters are placed at intersections. These positions are marked with four-pointed stars here and they are no less significant than any other position on the board.

In other words, a counter must stop at every position if moving forward along a column and not just the intersections.

History

Zamma is played in the Sahara of Africa. The method of promotion of single counters to gain more powers of movement may be ancestral to that of modern Checkers.

Objective

The goal is to capture all of the opponent’s counters, the first player to achieve this being the winner. A player may also win by blocking any legal move by his opponent. If it is agreed that a draw seems imminent, the player with more counters may declare victory.

Play

Counters are placed at all the positions except the middle one, as above. Alternate turns between players entail the movement of a single friendly counter towards the opponent’s side along a line to a neighboring vacant position or a jump over an opponent’s counter in a straight line to a vacant position beside the counter being jumped. Non-jumping moves are forward only, but a jump may be in any direction. Counters are captured by being jumped over and are then removed from the board. Double or multiple captures in one move are permitted and direction may be changed after each enemy counter has been jumped. On any turn that it is possible to take an opponent’s counter it is compulsory to do so. If a player does not make the compulsory capture on their turn by failing to notice it, their opponent may then remove that counter as a bonus before their next move.

Upon reaching the far end of the board a counter is promoted to a mullah (sultan). A counter that only briefly reaches the far end of the board as part of a jumping sequence, however, does not promote. The mullah is very powerful and may move any distance along an unimpeded line in any direction beginning with the player’s next move. A mullah may also jump and capture in any direction.

Sources