Mancala

1. The board has 2 rows of 6 pits, with 4 seeds in each pit, and a store at each end. Your pits are the row nearest you, and your store is on your right.
2. On your turn, pick one of your pits with seeds. Take all its seeds and drop them one by one into the next pits, counterclockwise: along your row, into your store, then along the other row. Skip the other player's store.
3. If your last seed lands in your store, you take another turn.
4. If your last seed lands in an empty pit on your side, and the pit across has seeds, you capture both: that seed and all the seeds across go into your store.
5. When one side has no seeds left in its pits, the game ends. Each player puts the seeds left on their side into their store. The fuller store wins.

These are the rules of Kalah, a modern mancala game first sold in the United States in the 1950s. Mancala is the name of a whole family of seed games, played around the world for centuries. Play the computer at Easy, Medium or Hard, or choose 2 players and take turns on one phone or computer. On a keyboard, keys 1 to 6 play a pit from left to right, or move with the arrow keys and press Enter.

• Count to your store. A pit with as many seeds as the steps to your store gives you another turn: 1 seed in the pit next to it, 2 in the pit before that, and so on.
• When two pits give another turn, play the one nearer your store first. The other pit still has the right count afterwards.
• Watch the empty pits. An empty pit on your side can capture the pit across. An empty pit on the other side is a threat to your pit across from it.
• A pit with 13 seeds goes all the way around the board and ends in the pit it came from, which is then empty: it captures the pit across.
• Near the end, count the seeds on each side. When one side runs out, each player keeps the seeds on their own side.