Mancala Games /Layli Goobalay(1)

Layli Goobalay

There are at least two different games with this name. The other one can be found at Layli Goobalay (2).

Layli Goobalay (literally: "closing the holes") was described by G. Marin in 1931 for the first time outside of Somalia. The board is dug in the ground and the pieces are dry camel dung called "salo". Slightly different variants of the same game exist, among them a comparatively simple game which is promoted by the Somali ethnomathematician Jama Musse Jama in Italy.

The following rules were recorded in the area of Berbera, Somaliland, where it is a favourite pastime of the Isaaq clan.

Rules

• Layli Goobalay is played on a board that consists of two parallel rows of up to 12 holes on each side. A player controls the 12 holes on his side of the board.

Diag: Initial position

• Each move a player empties the contents of one of his holes that is not an Uur and distributes one ball in each of the following holes in a clockwise direction (as observed by G. Marin).

• If the last ball is dropped in an occupied hole, the player takes its contents, including the last dropped ball, and continues to distribute the balls in a clockwise direction. The move ends if the last ball is dropped in an empty hole.

• If the last ball is dropped into an empty hole on the player's own side, he captures this last ball together with the contents of the opposite hole if it contains one, two, or four balls or more balls. A move which captures nothing is called "abar" ("famine").

• If the opposite hole contains three balls, one of these is put into the hole in which the last ball was dropped, so that each hole has two balls. These two holes now form an Uur ("pregnant"), and both are owned to their creator. An Uur may never be emptied by either player. Balls must be added to an Uur during the normal course of distribution. However, if the last ball is dropped into an Uur, the move ends.

• The game is over when one player has no legal move left. Each side then counts the balls he has captured together with the balls in his Uurs and any balls remaining on his side of the board outside of Uurs. Sometimes towards the end of the game the balls continue to circulate in a repeating pattern. Then the remaining balls are divided between both players as in Oware. The player who captures most balls wins.

Strategy

The two most important techniques are:

• Forcing your opponent to make an abar while you capture twice in a row.

• Creating an Uur early in the game.

References

Gering, R.

Layli Goobalay: The Preferred Game of the Camels. In: Abstract Games Magazine 2003; 4 (13): 9, 14, 29.

Jama Musse Jama.

Shax: The Preferred Game of Our Camel-Herders and Other Traditional African Entertainments. Sun Moon Lake, Rome (Italy) 2000, 29-36.

Jama Musse Jama.

Layli Goobalay: Variante Somala del Gioco Nazionale Africano. Redsea-Online Publishing Group, Pisa (Italy) 2002.

Jama Musse Jama.

Layli Goobalay. Pisa (Italy), 2003.

Marin, G.

Somali Games. In: Man: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1931; 61: 506-507.

Pankhurst, R.

Gabata and Related Board Games of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. In: Ethiopia Observer 1974; 14 (3): 180-181.

Russ, L.

The Complete Mancala Games Book: How to Play the World's Oldest Board Games. Marlowe & Company, New York (USA) 2000, 46-47.