Goré is a curious game played by gouro people from Ivory Coast. The main feature is that it is not only a strategy game like other mancala games. Also it is a bargaining game (in the following lines you will know how the players can negotiate the recovery of captured seeds).

This game also has the particularity that is played with a board of only 8 holes (but if you want you can play it on a 2×6 board, ignoring the holes at the ends). Each territory has 4 holes in front of each player. In each hole 6 seeds are placed at the beginning of the game.

The player who starts picks up the 6 seeds of any hole of the own row and sows these one by one in counter clockwise direction. Then the turn is over.

When the last seed of a move falls in a hole on the opponent’s side of the board making its contents 2 or 4 seeds, these are captured and removed from the board.

If the previous holes also contain 2 or 4 seeds, these seeds are captured and removed, and so on, crossing the limits of the territory or row. So, this kind of multiple captures can only be performed if you start to capture in the opponent’s side of the board. You can see an example:

In the previous example, the player B sows 4 seeds from the own hole 2. The player reaches to hole 2A:

The player B captures 4 seeds from hole 2A, 2 seeds from hole 1A and also 2 seeds from hole 4B.

This mancala game has the particularity that you can capture the previous holes containing 2 or 4 seeds and also the subsequent holes containing 2 or 4 seeds, and so on, crossing the limits of the territory or row. So, this kind of multiple captures can only be performed if you start to capture in the opponent’s side of the board. You can see an example:

The player B sows 6 seeds from the own hole 2 and reaches to hole 4A.

Player B captures 2 seeds from this hole, 2 seeds from the subsequent hole 1B, and the seeds contained in the previous holes: 2 from hole 3A, 2 from hole 2A, but the single seed contained into the hole 1A can not be captured.

You can capture all the seeds in previous and in subsequent holes, in only one move, as long as these holes contain 2 or 4 seeds. As you can imagine, it can happen that a player captures all the seeds of the board. You can see an example: the Player B sows 3 seeds from the own hole 2.

The player B reaches in the hole 1A and captures 4 seeds.

Because all previous and subsequent holes remain with 2 or 4 seed, the player captures all the seeds and these are removed from the board. The game ends.

Explained all this, you can imagine that Goré is a very fast game and nobody can be distracted because we can win or lose many seeds (or all) in only one move.

The play can become less “aggressive” when the funniest part of the game, begins. You can negotiate the recovery of the captured seeds with the opponent.

A player can negotiate the recovery of the captured seeds if this player gives 1, 2 or 3 holes of the own row to the opponent. The player who gives the holes is who decides if he gives 1, 2 or 3 holes (never is a choice of the opponent). The opponent player puts into each hole that the other player gave him 6 seeds (that will add to the number of seeds already contain initially each of the holes disposed). The player who gives some holes, renounces those holes and now belong to the opponent, although the holes are not situated in the own territory. The opponent may use these holes exactly in the same conditions as the holes in the own territory.

Apparently, these negotiations could further strengthen the adversary (nor should we forget that when a player is forced to give the own holes is because the player is in a position of clear inferiority and the player has no choice). It is not necessarily a bad deal for the player who has gave some holes. By increasing the number of seeds suddenly on the board can lead to situations that encourage and enable the player to trace the game. It is possible that after a few moves the player can recover the lost holes and maybe can win some holes to the opponent.

There may be many turns of negotiation as players want. You can reject a negotiation but this is not typical. If a player does not accept some holes that the opponent has given him, then this can be considered an offense to the opponent. It is said that the player who has won a game at the expense of rejecting a negotiation, that “the player has won, but without glory.”

The game ends when:

• All seeds have been captured.
• There are no more than 2 seeds per hole. In this case each player captures the seeds remaining in the own holes.

The winner is who captures more seeds at the end of the game.

If you know how to play oware game, you can try to practice this game. We think it is one of the funniest mancala games. The rate of play is very fast, which does not exclude that the game can be long.