How to play Oware (Ayò)

Oware is one of the oldest games still played anywhere, and one of the friendliest to learn: two rows of houses, forty-eight seeds, and hands that never stop moving. Across West Africa it is played on stoops and market stalls, as Ayò in Nigeria and Oware in Ghana, and it hides ferocious arithmetic under a very calm surface.

The board and the pieces

The board is two rows of six houses. The row nearer you is yours, the far row is your opponent's, and every house starts with four seeds, forty-eight in all. The seeds do not belong to anyone. They belong to whoever captures them.

How you win

Capture twenty-five seeds and you have won: that is more than half, so nothing can catch you. Games can also end early, and when they do, each player takes the seeds sitting on their own side and the bigger pile wins. Twenty-four seeds each is a draw.

The rules that matter

Sowing. On your turn, scoop up all the seeds in one of your houses and sow them one by one into the houses that follow, moving anticlockwise around the whole board, your houses and your opponent's alike. A big handful goes all the way round: it skips the house it came from and carries on.

Capturing. If your last seed lands in one of your opponent's houses and brings that house to exactly two or three seeds, you capture them. The capture then walks backward: if the house just before it also holds two or three, you take that one too, and so on until the chain breaks or you reach the end of their row. Only the last seed can start a capture. The seeds you drop along the way are just sowing.

You must feed your opponent. If your opponent's row is empty, and you have a move that would give them seeds, you must play one. Starving your opponent is not allowed while you can help it. In the same spirit, a capture that would take every last seed on your opponent's side is allowed, but captures nothing: the seeds stay on the board and the game goes on.

Running out of moves does not lose. This is the rule that surprises chess players. If a player has no move, or the same position comes round again, or the game simply goes on too long with nothing captured, it ends there: each player takes the seeds on their own side, and the count decides the winner. You can be the one with no move and still win comfortably. In oware, only the seeds matter.

How a match works on Dream Games

Both players put up the same stake, and both stakes are set aside before the first move. The winner takes 90% of the pot and we keep 10% as our fee. If the game is a draw, both players get their stake back in full and we take nothing.

Each player has ten minutes on the clock for the whole game. Your clock only runs while it is your turn. Run out of time and you lose, even if you are ahead on the board.

Try it

The best way in is simply to play. Practice is free: pick a bot on easy, medium or hard, or send a friend a link. Nothing is staked and nothing is recorded, so you can experiment as much as you like.

When you are ready to play for something, find an opponent in the lobby. You see the stake and the payout before you accept, and nothing leaves your balance until you say yes.