playstrategy.org

A New game - Mangala

#11

@woll I'll take this opportunity to share a annotation from a game so you can get an idea.

[Event "?"]
[Site "PlayOK"]
[Date "2026.09.12"]
[Round "-"]
[White "cdf1239"]
[Black "diegocoteaux"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Time "21:32:27"]
[TimeControl "180"]
[WhiteElo "1205"]
[BlackElo "1210"]

1. 51 51 2. 4M - 3. 15 56 4. 5M - 5. 3M - 6. 66 3M 7. - 42x
8. 6M - 9. 34 5M 10. - 16 11. 12x 2M 12. - 46 13. 12x 23
14. 4M - 15. 5M - 16. 56 65x 17. 34 3M 18. - 56 19. 46 34
20. 45 4M 21. - 56 22. 5M - 23. 56 12 24. 65 56 25. 6M -
26. 12 64 27. 45x 6M 28. - 34 29. 34 46x 30. 23x 56 31. 23
6M 32. - 12 33. 45x 1-0

"51": 5 - initial and 1 - finish
"4M" - The player played with square 4 and stopped on his "Deposit". So he plays again.
"x" - It represents a capture

I hope this helped. And thank you for your attention; I'm glad other players liked the idea.

#13

Thanks to @DiegoCoteaux @sbstnmntlf @renatatrad @SelvinGUA @germancali @mrcarrom @Leandro_Amancio @Andrea who have expressed their interests in having Mangala added to PlayStrategy.

Adding Mangala is something that is near the top of our list of priorities, and something I hope we'd get to at some point in 2026. I'll pass on the keen interest to all those involved in deciding PlayStrategy's focus.

@DiegoCoteaux Thanks for sharing the rules - this will help us get an implementation correct.

@germancali when is the America's Cup for Mangala planned? Is there a date?

In addition to Mangala, are there any other mancala variants that the community are particularly keen on?

Finally, we are aware of a clone of PlayStrategy with Mangala, we urge the community to wait for an implementation on PlayStrategy or to continue with PlayOk in the meantime.

#14

@statmatt Thank you for the quick response. I'm glad to know it's a priority for the team.Regarding the Copa América that Germancali referred to, it is already underway, and playok.com is used for that purpose.

Regarding the possibility of adding another mancala game, I imagine that including Mangala would already be a great achievement.

However, I wish it were possible to insert studies for Mancala games using PGNs, as is the case with chess. Currently, I can only insert them starting from the FEN position.

I even created a Chrome extension to play Oware matches in studies from PGN, but it would be much better if the site provided this tool integrated.This is my suggestion for improving Mancala games.

#16

@statmatt from an actual Study. I'm a teacher and I teach these board games; I use the Study tool to replay games annotated by PGN. In chess, it's possible to insert a PGN and create a study with the entire game reproduced. But I can't do that in Mancala. My studies that I create work well in the initial diagram or using the FEN position. A great improvement would be to accept PGNs for Mancala games. For example, I have many annotated games of WNG that I could include as study material, and it would be much faster to have this tool.

#17

Dear @statmatt, the America's Cup already started in 2025 and involved Oware, Mangala, and Togyzqumalaq. The 2026 edition includes Bestemshe. For 2027, we hope to play 16 tournaments (4 for each game), with Saturdays for juniors and Sundays for seniors, making a total of 32 tournaments.

Until you include Mangala, we will keep playing on PlayOK.

Bao is another insteresting mancala game that we would like to have on PlayStrategy.

Thank you.

Reconnecting