The board consists of two rows of six cells, holes or cups. Each player owns a row. There are two extra cells, not part of the board proper, for holding each player's captives.
The pieces are all alike. They are sometimes referred to as stones, pebbles or seeds. There are 48 in all.
At the start of the game the 48 pieces are distributed evenly in the 12 cells - four to a cell.
To make a move a player picks up all the pieces in a cell in his own row and moving counter-clockwise around the board, from his own row to the opponent's and back again to his own, deposits them, one at a time, in each cell that he passes over, without skipping, until the pieces are used up. If the number of pieces is large enough, the move may come back to the square which originated the move. In that case that square is bypassed, no piece being placed in it, and the seeding continues in the next cell.
The players alternate turns playing and must make a move on each turn.
A capture occurs when the last piece of a move is deposited in a cell on the opponent's side and the number of pieces, after the drop, is either two or three. If the the cell before the last was also raised to two or three then those pieces are also captured, and so on for each previous cup as long as the row is still the opponent's and no cell with a count other than two or three intervenes.
The game ends when a player, on his turn, finds he has no pieces to move - all of his cells are empty. For scoring purposes, the pieces remaining on the board are added to the victor's captives. The player with the majority of captives is the winner.
An unusual move rule arises when one side has no pieces remaining. If the player on move sees his opponent has no pieces and he can make a move that will leave pieces in one or more of the opponent's cells, then he must, by rule, make such a move. If no such move is available, then the game is over - or will be when it is the opponent's turn, according to the previous paragraph.
When there are few remaining pieces in play, it may be there can be no further capturing, the pieces just bootlessly chasing each other around the board. In this case, the players agree to terminate and the score consists of those captives already held plus the pieces in each player's cells.
Those are all the rules. Enjoy the game.
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