Sungka - Rules, History & Strategy Guide

Sungkâ is the Philippine member of the Southeast Asian mancala family, whose relatives include congkak in Malaysia, congklak and dakon in Indonesia and Brunei, chonka in Sri Lanka, ohvalhu in the Maldives, and chongka in the Marianas and Taiwan, carried there by Filipino migration. What sets this whole family apart from other mancalas is that a player’s own store counts as a hole during sowing.

The oldest known mancala boards come from a ruined fort of Roman Egypt and date to the 4th century AD — but that is the mancala family as a whole, not sungka, and the route by which these games reached Southeast Asia is unknown. There is no reliable origin date for sungka itself. Boards are traditionally carved as elongated wooden boats, and the seeds are often cowrie shells.

Two rows of seven holes with a large store at each end. Every small hole starts with seven seeds — 98 in all — and you win by gathering more of them into your store than your opponent does.

1. Scoop up all the seeds from one of your own holes and drop one into each hole around the board, passing through your own store but never your opponent’s.
2. If your last seed lands in your own store, you go again from any of your holes.
3. If your last seed lands in a hole that already had seeds, pick up everything there and keep sowing. This relay is what makes a Sungka turn long.
4. If your last seed lands in an empty hole on your side, you capture the seeds in the opponent’s hole directly opposite, plus your own last seed, into your store — and your turn ends.
5. If your last seed lands in an empty hole on the opponent’s side, your turn simply ends and that seed stays there.
6. The round ends when the player to move has no seeds left; the remaining seeds go to the other player.
7. Refill from your own store, seven seeds a hole. Any hole you cannot fill is burnt: it is skipped for the rest of that round.

• Count to your store. Any hole holding exactly the number of seeds needed to end there gives you a free extra turn — chain those and one turn can run a long way.
• Extra turns are worth more than captures early, because each one buys you another look at the board.
• Set up captures by emptying a hole on your side and watching the opposite hole fill; the payoff is both piles at once.
• Watch what your relay leaves behind. A long chain that ends by loading your opponent’s side hands them the material.
• Burnt holes shorten the circuit, which changes every count. Recount from scratch at the start of each new round.

Hole counts across this family range from three to nine or more a side, and the rules shift with them, so a congkak or dakon board you meet elsewhere may behave differently. Traditionally sungka opens with both players sowing at the same time, which cannot work against a computer — Arcadia therefore alternates turns with you moving first. Sources also disagree about which way round the board the seeds travel, so no direction is claimed here as the historically correct one.