African chess . Also known as Mancala , Wari , Oware , Ayo , among many others, it was not only a game, but a way of accounting for trade between the tribes of Africa and the Near East .
Knowledge of this game develops in practitioners a high level of mathematical calculation, estimation and anticipation, which is why it has been considered by many scholars as an experience to enhance thinking and skills in people, especially in primary school children. .
Summary
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- 1 Origins
- 2 The board
- 3 Game Rules
- 4 End of the game
- 5 The Ayo version
- 6 The strategy in the game
- 7 The OMO and the OMOC Project
- 8 Sources
origins
It is considered the oldest game in the world, in the African Continent it is played using holes dug in the ground and pebbles, or rings in the sand or beautifully carved wooden boards. Seeds, sticks or anything that can give the desired meaning are used as chips.
The Oware known as Ayo, Warri, Walle, among many other names, is estimated to have been created by Africans throughout the Nile Valley 3500 years ago. Other authors place their birth between the 10th and 15th centuries BC in the same region.
In archaeological searches and excavations, stone-carved boards have been found on the roofs of temples of Memphis , Thebes, and Luxor in Ancient Egypt, marking a date around the year 1400 BC.
It follows that this game may have evolved in Egypt from the boards and counters that were used for accounting and inventory; the evidence of this antecedent, are the boards also found in ancient Sumer .
African chess practice
In Cuba, African chess came with the slave trade in the 19th century , being the Matanzas plain where the practice of this game was most widespread in the Ayo variant.
The board
In the Mancala game, as African chess is generically known, the boards are of various shapes, with six gaps on each side prevailing to be used by players who are faced with an additional hole per opponent to deposit the won chips. .
You can find rudimentary boards made in the earth, even real works of art due to the fine decoration or the carvings that constitute the object itself. The most common are created in wood, but there have been found ceramic creations and very diverse materials
Boards with up to 32 holes have been found in the various variants, such as those used in the so-called Bao de Zanzibar.
The board shape indicates the variant of the game that is used, however the best known is the 12-hole one, whose capacity is designed to hold between 12 and 13 seeds or “chips”.
Game rules
The intention of the game is to get as many chips as the opposite. At the start of the game you have forty-eight, by capturing twenty-five you have won the majority and therefore the game. On the board there are two opponents ready to develop endless strategies and mathematical calculations to anticipate the capture of the most chips.
African chess board
In the Wari variant, also known in Cuba, to start with, four chips are deposited in each of the twelve holes.
The game consists of taking the tiles from one of the six holes on the player’s side and depositing a tile in each hole to the right, with a movement counterclockwise.
In case the selected hole contains many tiles (twelve or more), a complete turn is made to the board; but the hole from which the accounts were taken skips. At the end of the movement, the initial hole will be empty, regardless of whether the number of pieces distributed in the holes one by one, allowed to make a deposit in it.
To win, you must capture a number of chips greater than twenty-five.
The capture is the last part of the movement and can occur if when depositing the last piece or stone, it is done in an enemy hole, and this contains including the deposited account two or three, these are eaten and are kept in the “house” or in the hand if playing on a board without the holes dedicated to this function.
This operation will be repeated, with the holes before the capture hole as long as they contain two or three stones and belong to the enemy, until we reach one that does not meet this condition and from which the stones are not taken. The maximum number of tokens that can be captured in a movement is eighteen, three for each space of the rival.
There is a supplementary rule that forces an opponent to nourish a hole with his opponent if, when making this move, his holes run out of stones. In the event that the game is not possible, the game ends and the player who keeps chips in his holes joins these to those he ate during the game. He is considered to be in control of the board and therefore all tokens on it are his.
There is one more supplementary rule and it is based on that if the player, when capturing his opponent’s chips, leaves him without chips to make a move, he will play again with the obligation to enable his chip opponent.
Game over
The game is over when a player manages to capture the majority of the pieces (twenty-five or more) and that player has won. It also concludes if a player manages to control all the pieces that are left on the board because it is impossible for him to enable his opponent or if he enters a cyclical position, then he adds the stones on the board that he has eaten and the game ends. The player with the highest number of chips becomes the winner.
The Ayo version
This version was the most practiced in Cuba in the 19th century by African descendants of the Aará ethnic group. The same board is used in the game.
The distribution on the board is similar to that of other variants, four seeds or chips are placed in each of the 12 spaces intended for that purpose.
The game starts when one of the two opponents takes the four tiles from one of the holes on their side and deposits them one by one in the following holes counterclockwise, their turn will end when the last chip in your hands fall into an empty hole anywhere on the board. Then the turn to play passes to his opponent.
In this version the capture is only done when the last seed in the player’s hand completes four in a hole on the opponent’s side. The game ends when eight pawns remain on the board and are distributed among the players.
In Ayo when a player fills his holes corresponding to the “pawns” he has won, if he has four left, he is allowed to “buy” a “house” (hole) in the opponent’s territory, which will give him a position very advantageous, since the opponent must “feed” the hole with his own pawns. This allows to accumulate pawns and make strategic plays from your opponent’s side, which would lead to an almost certain victory in the game just by using your intelligence and abilities.
The rules of the Ayo variant only allow captures in the opponent’s territory, when the deposited tile completes all four elements and a golden rule is that after selecting a square to make a move it is impossible to change the move, on pain of losing the match.
The strategy in the game
Popular practice of African chess in Ghana
A basic question to be addressed by an African chess player is the need to perform quick mental calculations and develop skills for anticipation and estimation.
Considerable help is provided by the use of dash symmetry; if six tiles are moved, the end of the move ends in a hole symmetrically opposite the starting point, and the movement from a hole with twelve tiles ends in the hole following the one that originally contained the tiles.
This allows to develop progressive strategies to capture pieces of the opponent in accordance with the culmination of the logical movements to develop by both contenders.
There are two basic techniques in the game: do not give chips to the opponent and accumulate chips in their own spaces, thus preventing the opponent in the endgame from accumulating chips that give him victory.
The OMO and the OMOC Project
The World Oware Organization (OMO), has among its basic objectives to promote meetings to recover one of the oldest games on the planet and in Cuba actions and studies have been carried out in this regard, in order to develop this game that mixes skill and thought.
In Cuba, work is being done to promote the practice of African chess through the OMOC Project (World Oware Organization – Cuba) where the ideas are assumed as maxims: “What you have, you take care of” , “what is threatened, it defends itself “ , ” what was lost, is recovered “ . For this, the African Cultural Center “Fernando Ortíz” in Santiago de Cuba has developed research to contribute to the knowledge of this game that develops logical thinking and mathematical calculation.
The OMOC Project starts from human recreation as an element that fosters the development of personality and in this sense it articulates very solidly with the National Institute of Sports and Recreation INDER .
