Mancala Best Move Calculator
Pits are numbered from each player's own left. Stones move counterclockwise: yours left to right, theirs right to left. 48 stones on the board.
Type in the stones in each pit and store, pick the rules and whose turn it is, and the calculator ranks every legal move from best to worst. Each move gets a score and a plain reason: extra turn, capture, or a pit it leaves open. It uses the same search as the Hard computer opponent on this site.
How to enter a position
Sit the board the way you see it on your screen. Your pits are the bottom row, numbered 1 to 6 from your left, and your store is on the right end. Your opponent’s pits are the top row and their store is on the left end. Their pits are numbered from their own left, which is your right, because stones travel counterclockwise.
- Pick the rules. Capture is standard mancala (Kalah): landing in your own empty pit takes the stones opposite. Avalanche is the chain-sowing mode where landing in a full pit picks it up and keeps going. The Avalanche rules page covers the differences.
- Pick whose move it is. Usually that’s you, but you can also check what your opponent’s best reply is.
- Enter the count for every pit and both stores. Tap a box to type, or use the + and - buttons. “Starting position” fills in four stones per pit; “Clear” sets everything to zero so you can enter a mid-game board from scratch.
- Press “Find best move”.
The line under the board shows the total number of stones. A standard game has 48, so if yours says 47 or 49, one of the counts is off.
How to read the results
The best move is highlighted in green on the board and listed first. Every other legal move follows in order.
Most scores read “Edge”, a number like +2.4 or -1.0. That’s the computer’s estimate of how far ahead the player moving will be after looking 10 moves into the future (8 in Avalanche), assuming both sides play the moves it rates best. Stones in a store count in full and stones still sitting in pits count partly, since they aren’t banked yet. Moves within about a stone of each other are close to equal; big gaps mean something real is at stake.
Near the end of the game the search can often see every possible finish. When it does, the score changes to a result like “Wins by 3” or “Tie with best play”, and those results are exact. If the search finds a forced win or loss before it sees every line, you’ll see “Forced win by 4+”, meaning a win of at least that many stones.
The tags under each move come from actually playing the move on the board you entered:
- Extra turn: the last stone lands in your store and you go again.
- Captures N of their stones: the last stone lands in your empty pit opposite a loaded one (Capture mode only).
- Sets up another extra turn: after the free move, another of your pits also reaches the store exactly.
- Leaves your Nth pit open to capture: after this move, your opponent has a reply that captures that pit.
- Chains: in Avalanche, how many stones get sown before the turn ends.
What it can’t do
It isn’t a perfect-play solver. Ten moves of look-ahead is enough to find captures, extra-turn chains, and most traps, but a deeper search can occasionally prefer a different move when two options are close. Standard mancala has been solved by computers, and the is mancala solved page explains what that result covers. This calculator doesn’t use that solution; it searches your position fresh each time.
If you want the reasoning behind the moves it picks, the mancala strategy guide covers extra turns, captures, and endgame counting, and the first move guide walks through the opening the calculator ranks first from the starting position. To practice against the same search instead of just consulting it, play the computer on Hard.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheating to use a mancala calculator?
In a game against a friend who doesn’t know, it’s the same as asking a stronger player to whisper moves to you, so most people would call it cheating. It’s fair game for reviewing a finished game, settling an argument about what the right move was, playing against a computer, or learning why a move is strong. The fastest way to stop needing it is to look at the reason tags until you spot extra turns and open pits on your own.
How accurate is the calculator?
It plays the moves the site’s Hard computer opponent would play: a full search 10 moves ahead in Capture mode and 8 in Avalanche, counting every extra turn as a move. It isn’t perfect, so treat moves with nearly the same Edge as roughly equal. When the search reaches the end of the game on every line, the results say so and are exact.
Does it work for GamePigeon mancala on iMessage?
Yes. GamePigeon has Capture and Avalanche modes, and those are the two modes here. Copy the board as you see it, with your pits on the bottom and your store on the right. The calculator uses this site’s rules: a capture needs stones in the opposite pit, and the game ends when the player about to move has an empty side. If an app handles those edge cases differently, rankings for the last few moves of a game can differ.
Does it handle Avalanche mode?
Yes. Switch the rules to Avalanche before you search. The calculator follows every chain to the end, the same way the game does, and never counts captures, since Avalanche has none. Chain moves are hard to count in your head, which is exactly when a calculator helps most.
Why can’t it find a move?
Either a box holds something other than a whole number, the side you picked to move has no stones in its pits (in a real game that means the game is already over), or the board has more than 96 stones in total. The message under the board says which one.