The game rules

Basic Rules

The game is played with a tray containing 2 rows of 6 squares (or holes), each square containing 4 seeds initially.

Players are one in front of the other, with a row in front of each player. This row will be his side. Direction of rotation is set and the player who starts the game is chosen.

The goal is to have the most seeds picked at the end of the game. The winner is whoever has the most seeds, but there may be a draw if both players have as many seeds.

The basic rules are the rules said Côte d'Ivoire rules that seem the most used.

Players take turns. A round is played as follows: the player takes all the seeds of one square of his side and he distributes them in all the following squares on his row then on row of his opponent in the direction of rotation (a seed in each square after the one where he picked seeds). If the last seed falls into an opponent square and there are now two or three seeds in this square, the player picks these two or three seeds . Then he looks at the previous square, if it is in the other side and contains two or three seeds, he picks these seeds, and so on until he came to his side or until there has a number of seeds different of two or three.

He does not skip squares when distributing except when twelve or more seeds, that is to say, he does a full turn: he does not fill the square in where he just takes the seeds.

He must "feed" the opponent, that is to say, when he has no seeds, it is mandatory to make a stroke that allows him to play. If this is not possible opponent is said in famine, the game ends and the player who would play captures the remaining seeds

If a stroke should take all the opponent seeds, then the stroke can be played, but no pick is made: you should not "starve" the opponent.

Seeds count

Visual examination of the squares can help determine the square number of seeds when there are not too many (less than ten), but when there are a lot of seeds that has been distributed only memory allows to know it. If a player has forgotten the count of one of his squares, he can count the seeds, but it can not do for the squares of his opponent.

Game options

For players who are accustomed using slightly different rules, with preferences options allow you to change some of these rules:

* You can limit the number of squares where you can picks seeds at once (1 to 6 - with 6 this is equivalent to no limit)

* If the number of squares where you can pick is limited and there are more pickable squares than limit, you can choose between pick only the latest and pick nothing,

* You can choose to pick only if there is 2 seeds in the square and not when there are 3 seeds.

Endgame options

The game ends when a player is in famine, he has no seeds and his opponent can not provide it. However, this situation can sometimes require a large number of strokes and even never happen, and the game becomes of few interest when there are only a few seeds in the game

We could decide to stop when a player has more than half the seeds since his opponent will not be able to join, but it may be interesting to continue to play and more this can never happen, we can even have draws ...

This is why, in addition to the end on a player famine, other endgame options are provided:

* Stop if a player has picked up more than half of the seeds,

* Stop if there is at most a number of seeds set (this number can be selected between 1 and 12, for instance 6).

When end on famine the player picks up his opponent remaining seeds. In other end cases the players pick up the remaining seeds with 2 options:

* Seeds are equally distributed

* Each player picks the seeds of his side