Bao la Kiswahili

Each player owns two rows of eight pits; the inner row faces the opponent. Every pit starts with two seeds. Player 1 starts. A singleton cannot begin a move. Empty the opponent’s front row or leave them without a legal move to win. A first sow from 2–15 seeds that lands in an occupied front pit facing opponent seeds is a capture move (mtaji). If any such move exists, a capturing move is compulsory. Choose a highlighted pit, then its legal clockwise or anticlockwise direction. Capture all seeds from the facing opponent pit. Start sowing them in a head pit itself, moving inward. A capture at front 1 or 2 forces the left head; 7 or 8 forces the right head. At front 3–6, retain the current direction. Your capturing pit keeps its seeds. During mtaji, capture again whenever a sow ends in a previously occupied front pit facing seeds. Otherwise relay from a previously occupied landing pit. A previously empty landing pit ends the move. If no initial capture exists, play takata from a front pit holding at least two seeds; use the back row only when no front pit can start. Takata never captures, even after relays. A start with 16 or more seeds is always takata. The only occupied front head cannot be sown outward into the back row. This is the Kujifunza learning edition. It has no seeds in reserve, namua opening, special nyumba or takasia rule. It is distinct from the full Bao la Kiswahili tournament edition. A repeated position or nonterminating relay ends an unranked session. Bots use deterministic bounded search. They are practice opponents, not a human skill rating. Games stop after 2,000 moves or four active hours; incomplete and local results are unranked.

Bao la kujifunza · 4×8 learning edition. Optional clean solo wins compare matching bot settings and this exact rule edition. Device saving starts off. No remote opponent, account or public leaderboard. Games stay in this tab. No server leaderboard, account or remote multiplayer is included.

Use Tab or arrow keys to reach a legal pit; Enter or Space selects it. Bao adds two direction buttons. Pause hides the board and stops the active clock.

No. Quick play starts a complete built-in round with sensible defaults. Open Customise this game only when you want to change the available settings.

Play stays in this browser, with no account or remote leaderboard. Personal bests are saved only if you enable that option. Reset clears the round; use Erase device scores to remove those optional records from this browser. Private prompts and answers are excluded from the shared summary actions.