Seeded players

Natural History, Feb, 1998 by Alex de Voogt

More than four thousand miles away from his native Zanzibar, Abdulrahim Muhiddin Foum sat with his back to two wooden game boards, taking on two opponents in the complex East African game of bao. This exhibition of a master's skill, held in the Netherlands in 1997, was the first-ever attempt by a "blindfolded" bao player to play more than one game simultaneously. The audience, composed more of curious observers than of knowledgeable bao players, watched in silence as Abdu pondered his next move. He dictated "six left," and someone behind him distributed seeds as instructed into the holes on one of the boards. Meanwhile, the adversary at the second board announced his move: "Five right." Even the audience members who had received only a cursory introduction to the rules were dazzled by the rapidly changing positions projected for them on video screens.

Invited to play at an international conference and various universities in the Netherlands, Abdu had found it difficult to concentrate in the foreign land's unfamiliar, fast-paced surroundings. In his first attempts at blindfolded play, he had preferred a casual, noisy atmosphere to soothe his nerves. But now he needed silence to create the peace of mind in which to plan his strategy. In the end, neither game ended in victory for Abdu, but the experiment proved that blindfolded bao was possible. Afterward, Abdu presented his analysis, not only replaying the moves from memory but also retracing them backwards - a difficult feat in bao.

Abdu's accomplishment resembled that of Said bin Jubair, a seventh-century black African who was the first recorded chess player to compete with his back to the board. But some people in Zanzibar do not believe that Abdu's demonstration in the Netherlands ever took place. It is not the sort of stunt he is likely to duplicate back home, since no local player would risk the humiliation of losing to a man who is not even looking at the board. In any case it would be an open invitation to cheating, which is not unheard of in bao strategy.

Bao involves distributing, capturing, and redistributing sixty-four seeds on a game board with four rows of eight holes. It is part of the mancala game family, which consists of many variants with different numbers of rows (usually two, three, or four), holes per row (three to twenty-four or more), and a proportionate number of counters (usually seeds or cowrie shells). The rules also vary, but all mancala games involve a distinctive way of making moves, which is by spreading counters, one by one, into consecutive holes.

Mancala is one of the oldest board games in the world, although no one knows how old. It may have begun as a game played in holes scooped in the sand or earth (as it often still is today), or on wooden boards not likely to survive the centuries. Some modern packagers of mancala claim it was played in ancient Egypt, but the evidence for this is questionable. The first solid evidence consists of first-century boards from Africa and the Middle East.

Despite considerable research, the geographic origin of the game also remains a matter for speculation. Variants of mancala have a long history in most areas of Africa, in large parts of South and Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East. Africans introduced the game to the Caribbean and parts of South America. Mancala also has followers in Western Europe and North America, mainly as a result of its recent commercial introduction.

One theory is that mancala is an African invention, perhaps from North Africa. While Asian mancala is played predominantly by women and children, African mancala is played mostly by men, including kings and chief as part of royal ritual. Complicated variants have been described in West and East Africa, and beautiful boards from these regions are found in various museums. Recent investigations in Asia, however, have revealed many previously undocumented variations, a wide geographical spread, and elaborately carved boards. Even mancala games with four rows, like bao, may be found in China, while they were once thought to exist only in Africa.

Only two mancala games have an established tradition of championship competition: warri (also known as awele, awari, oware and wari) in West Africa and the Caribbean, and bao (also known as solo, bau, and mbau) in East Africa. Warri has two rows of six holes and relatively simple rules, while bao has four rows of eight holes and many complicated rules. An important characteristic of bao is that captured seeds are immediately reentered into the game. As a result - unlike chess, checkers, or warri - the game does not diminish much in complexity toward the end. All the seeds captured from an opponent may be lost again; only when the opponent has no more seeds in playable position does he lose the game.

Each move typically involves a sequence of picking up and spreading the seeds around the board. Once a move is initiated, its end position is calculable, provided one knows the complete hierarchy of rules. Those who become bao masters usually begin to learn the game in their early teens, as do masters of other board games. East African children - boys mostly - play at bao clubs before the older men arrive, learning the rules and strategies.