Congkak Game

Congkak - a traditional board game.

Congkak is a traditional game very well known in the countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand and Philippine. Players practiced the capability of "mental calculation" to win the game. A player with the efficient capability to calculates few steps in advance will have an advantage in collectiong more points, and to win the game.

The Congkak board has seven holes in each player side, plus an additional bigger store-hole for each player. In the beginning, each holes has seven seeds, except the bigger holes are empty. Each player controls holes on their side, and their score is the number of seeds in their store.

Players take turns moving the seeds except in the first move which is performed simultaneously, beginning with the hole closest to his/her own store. After this first simultaneous movement, once the last seed falls into an empty hole, the players' first turn is over and the opponent of the player who reached an empty hole first commences his/her turn after the other player has finished his opening move too. On a turn, a player chooses one of the seven holes under their control. The player removes all seeds from this hole, and distributes them in each hole from this hole, in a process called sowing. Sowing skips an opponent's store, but does not skip a player's own store.

The game ends, when a player has no seeds in his holes at the start of his turn. The remaining seeds are awarded to his opponent.