The Mancala Board
A standard mancala board has two rows of six small pits with a large store at each end: fourteen depressions in all. Each player owns the six pits nearest them and the store on their right. The pits go by many names (houses, holes, cups), and the family includes seven-pit and four-row boards too.
The board is the whole equipment list for mancala; there are no dice, cards, or differentiated pieces, just hollows and 48 identical stones. That simplicity is why the game has been played on everything from museum-grade carvings to holes scooped in the dirt, and why every part of the board has collected a dozen names across centuries and continents. Here’s the anatomy.
The parts of a standard board
The small pits are the playing spaces, six per player. Rule sheets and players variously call them pits, holes, houses, cups, or pockets; African and Asian traditions add their own vocabulary, like the Swahili mashimo or the Indonesian anak (“children”). Whatever the name, each starts the standard game holding four stones (three- and five-stone setups exist too).
The stores are the two large pits at the ends, where your score accumulates. American sets usually call them stores or, confusingly, “mancalas”; the Kalah tradition calls them kalahs, and other games say things like ulo (“head,” Philippine sungka) or indung (“mother,” Indonesian congkak). Your store is on your right, a fact that follows from counterclockwise sowing and that the setup guide drills properly.
The stones are deliberately interchangeable: no kings, no ranks. Sets ship with glass gems; traditional games use seeds, cowrie shells, and pebbles. If you’re improvising, anything countable works.
Two rows or four: the family’s great divide
The 2×6 board is standard for Kalah and oware, but it’s one point on a spectrum. Southeast Asia plays wider: sungka and congkak boards run two rows of seven, and regional congkak boards stretch to nine. South India’s pallanguzhi also uses seven a side.
East Africa changes the dimension instead of the width. Bao and omweso boards have four rows of eight pits, with each player owning the two rows on their half. Your seeds circulate only within your own sixteen pits, and combat happens across the middle line. Same sowing motion, profoundly different game; the four-row games are generally reckoned the deepest in the family.
Store pits, notably, are a minority feature. Most traditional games don’t sow into end pits at all; carved end bowls on an oware or ayo board are just parking for captured seeds. The store-as-scoring-target is largely a Kalah signature.
Materials and forms
The classic American board is a folding hardwood slab with routed cups, hinged so the stones store inside. Traditional boards are a craft genre of their own: Philippine sungkaan carved as boats with figureheads, Ghanaian oware boards with hinged lids and drum or fish motifs, heavy East African bao boards built for decades of club play. At the other end of the spectrum sit cloth travel boards, molded plastic, an egg carton with two bowls (a genuinely good DIY board), and the original and oldest form, pits dug straight into the ground. Archaeologists find the durable version of that everywhere: rows of pits cut into rock across Africa and the Middle East, some of them centuries or millennia old, as covered in the history of mancala.
Sizes vary with ambition. Standard folding boards suit a table; tournament oware boards are chunkier; and giant garden versions with bowls stand in for pits at festivals. The game doesn’t care. Fourteen hollows and some seeds, and you’re in business; the rules do the rest.
Frequently asked questions
What are the parts of a mancala board called?
The twelve small playing spaces are pits (also houses, holes, cups, or pockets), and the two large end spaces are stores, also called kalahs or mancalas in American sets. Each player owns the six pits nearest them plus the store on their right. Other traditions use their own names, from ulo to nyumba.
Why is the store also called a mancala?
American rule sheets took the family name and applied it to the scoring pit, so “mancala” ended up meaning the game, the family, and the big pit all at once. Kalah’s designer called the store a kalah. In rules text on this site, it’s always “store” for clarity.
How many holes does a mancala board have?
The standard board has fourteen: twelve small pits in two rows of six, plus a store at each end. Sungka and congkak boards have sixteen (two rows of seven plus stores), and four-row bao or omweso boards have thirty-two pits with no stores at all.
Can I make my own mancala board?
Easily, and people have for millennia. An egg carton with a bowl at each end is a fully functional 2×6 board; dirt pits and 48 pebbles work too. The game needs hollows and counters, nothing more. Just deal four stones per pit and follow the standard setup.