Planning Strategy in Mancala

Video Transcript

"Today we’re discussing basic tips for playing the game Mancala. Now in this next segment, I would like to talk about planning ahead. Mancala is an extremely strategic game, you can make it as simple or as complicated as you would like. What I always like to do is to plan ahead. If you’re a numbers person, you’re going to love this game. I’m not so inclined mathematically but I also do enjoy this game. Now, what I mean by planning ahead is this, you’ve already put together some basic tips and techniques on how to get ahead, on how to plan ahead, so let’s put these to practice. I put the board together once again. Let’s say I’m starting to play the game, I’ll be the first player and I’ve used 36 stones here. So I pick one of these 6 compartments. Now, strategically, I mentioned to you if your last stone falls in your larger compartment or component, you get another turn, so the first move I always like to make is this one. Take from this little compartment here, 1, 2, 3…you get another turn. Now, the other thing I mentioned to you earlier was, if you last stone ends up in an empty compartment and there are stones in your opponent’s compartment over here, then you’ll get to take those stones. So if you look here, we have 3 stones here so count 1, 2, 3. It’s going to work our perfectly. 1, 2, 3…take their stone, your stone, and you’ve already got 5 stones in your compartment with 2 moves that you have already started to make. In the next clip we’ll do some examples on 36 game stone board."