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How to play Wuri
A typical Wuri board has two straight rows of six cavities, called "houses", as in the diagram below, and optionally one house at either end to store captured stones. Each player controls the six houses on their side of the board, and the score house on their right.
The only pieces are 48 seeds. These are typically nickernuts (Caesalpinia bonduc). Beads and pebbles are also sometimes used. When there is no board present, people may simply scoop two rows of pits out of the earth, and so use the ground as a board.
The object of the game is to capture more seeds than one's opponent. Players take turns moving the seeds. On a turn, a player chooses one of the six houses under his or her control. The player removes all seeds from that house, and distributes them, dropping one in each house counter-clockwise from this house, in a process called sowing. Seeds are not distributed into the house drawn from. The diagram shows the result of sowing from house E.
Knowing the number of seeds in each house is, of course, important to gameplay. After a turn, if the last seed was placed into an opponent's house that brought its total to two or three, all the seeds in that house are captured and placed in the player's scoring house or set aside. If the previous-to-last seed also brought an opponent's house to two or three, these are captured as well, and so on. However, if a move would capture all an opponent's seeds, the capture is forfeited, and the seeds are instead left on the board, since this would prevent the opponent from continuing the game. In the diagram, the lower player would capture all the seeds in houses c, d, and e.
Example turn:
The lower player prepares to sow from E.
After sowing, c, d, and e are captured.
The game is over when one player has captured 25 or more seeds, or both players have taken 24 seeds each (draw).
Reflecting traditional African values, players of Wuri encourage participation by onlookers. The game has also had an important role in teaching arithmetic to African children.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oware;
Kanga Ballou: A guide for playing the game of Woaley. Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, Abidjan 1984.
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