Bean game
The Bean Game is an ancient board game that belongs to the Mancala family of games. At the same time, the term is used in Germany as a generic name for very different Mancala variants.
history
The actual bean game was first described by the pastor Fritz Jahn in his book Old German Games (1917). In it he reports on a trip he undertook in 1908 to Kardis (island of Ösel) in what was then Russian Estonia, where he visited a manor owned by Baron von Stackelberg . There he found the duplicate of a bean game board, the original of which is still kept in the winter palace of the tsars, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The original board was a gift from the Shah of Persia (presumably Aga Mohammed ) to Tsarina Catherine the Great , née Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst (reign: 1762–1796). The bean game spread in German-Baltic and Prussian aristocratic families until it was made known by Jahn in the entire German-speaking area and in all social classes. Jahn pursued adult educational goals. He wanted to educate the workforce and, through his contacts to the Patriotic Women's Association, build the German soldiers who were wounded in World War I.
Jahn calls the variant described by him the Baltic Bean Game or the Kardis Bean Game , while he calls another variant, which was played on a board that was half the size, the German Bean Game .
A Mancala game was first mentioned in the German Empire by Job Ludolf in 1699 in the Lexicon Aethiopico-Latinum . In Weikersheim Castle near Bad Mergentheim, there are two Mancala game tables made of oak from 1709 (or 1704?), Which were made by the Sommer family of artists in the Baroque style . The rules of the Weikersheim Mancala game seem to have been lost. These are the oldest evidence of Mancala games in Germany, but they probably have nothing to do with Fritz Jahn's bean game. It has also been suggested that the first Mancala Games reached Central Europe through returning crusaders . However, there is no scientific evidence for this thesis.
A detailed analysis of the rules of the game shows that the bean game is very similar to the Central Asian and Arabic mancala games. This goes very well with the game's history of origin. The similarity to black African mancala games is striking. Game scientists Siegbert A. Warwitz and Anita Rudolf were able to document the Mancala, also known as Wari or Bao, for Togo and Egypt. It is played there by children and adults as a street game with dried fruits. They also pointed out that there are hollows of this game of indefinite age on the Great Pyramid.
The main traditional areas of distribution of the bean game in the 19th century, as far as they can still be reconstructed with the sparse sources, were the Baltic States, East and West Prussia and Pomerania. In the Baltic States, the game died out after the October Revolution due to the expropriation, expulsion and murder of German aristocratic families from 1917. In the eastern regions of the German Reich , the bean game ceased to exist with the expulsion of the German population after 1945. Several game books were published in the GDR that describe the bean game in detail. The oldest surviving lot comes from the Dresden Go pioneer Bruno Rüger from 1962. Bean game boards were produced in the 1980s in Plant 5 of VEB Plasticart in Annaberg-Buchholz and VEB Plastikspielwaren Berlin , which called the game Sabo or Badari .
Today there are also simple bean game programs on the Internet.
Rules of the game
material
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The bean game board consists of two rows of pits, each with six pits. There is also a larger treasure cave at both ends where the beans that have been caught are collected. Each player owns the six pits on his side of the board and the treasure cave to his right .
72 beans serve as game pieces.
preparation
At the beginning of the game there are six beans in each slot.
Pull
In each turn a player empties one of his playing hollows and then distributes the contents one by one, bean by bean, counter-clockwise into the following playing hollows. The beans are first placed in your own, then in the opponent's gambling hollows. The treasure caves are ignored when distributing.
Beat
When the last bean fills a slot to two, four or six beans, all of its contents, including the last bean distributed, are trapped. If there are further hollows with two, four or six beans in an uninterrupted sequence "behind" (in mancala games, this means against the direction of pull; here: clockwise), then their contents are also beaten. The captured beans are placed in the player's treasure cave . It can be captured on your own half of the board as well as on the opposing side.
Playing
The game ends when a player can no longer move. The beans that are still on the board belong to the player whose side they are. Each player tries to catch more beans than his opponent. Since there are 72 beans in total, 37 are enough to win the game. If each player catches 36 beans, the game ends in a draw.
notation
It is common to number the hollows from 1 to 12 in order to record a game. The hollows 1–6 are on the side of the player who starts the game.
Historical games
- B. Rüger, 1962:
- 4.8; 6.12 (2 of well 8); 6.7; 3 (2 of 12), 7; 5.8 (2 out of 12); 4 (2 of 7), 11; 5 (2 of 7), 11 (2 of 12); 2, 11 (2 of 12); 4.7; 3.8; 4 (4 of 5), 11; 1 (2 of 2), 10; 6.10 (6 of 12); 4 (4 of 7), 8 (6 of 11); 1 (4 out of 5), 9 (2 out of 5); 3 (4 out of 10, as well as 2 out of 9, 8, 7), 12; 1.11; 1.12; 1.
- Since North can no longer move, South gets all the beans that are still on the board. South wins with 28 points.
- H. Machatscheck, 1972:
- 3.9; 5.7 (2 in well 3); 6.8; 4?, 7 (6 out of 9 plus 2 out of 8); 1.12! (2 of 1); 2.11; 5 (2 of 11), 9 (each 4 of 2 and 1); 3 (each 6 from 7 and 8), 11 (6 from 12); 5.10; 3 (2 of 5), 9? (2 of 10); 6.11 (4 each of 2, 1 and 12); 4.10 (2 each of 12 and 11); 5 (2 of 6), 7; 3.10; 4.9; 5.8 (2 out of 12); 1.9; 2.10; 3.12 (2 of 1); 4.11; 5 (2 of 6), 12 (2 of 1); 2 (2 of 3).
- North wins by 28 points.
literature
- B. Arbeiter, W. Ruhnke: Board games (4th supplement to the German game manual). Ludwig Voggenreiter Verlag, Potsdam (Germany) 1937, 10–12.
- Erwin Glonnegger : The game book: board and placement games from all over the world. Ravensburger Buchverlag & Heinrich Hugendubel Verlag, Ravensburg & Munich (Germany) 1988, ISBN 978-3-9806792-0-6 , 214.
- W. Hirte: Our games: 1000 and more. Verlag für die Frau, Leipzig (Germany) 1971, 307–309.
- F. Jahn: The maintenance of the game in war and peace as a task of the Fatherland Women's Association. Patriotic Women's Association 1916.
- F. Jahn: Old German games. Furche-Verlag, Berlin 1917, 14–15.
- K.-H. Koch: Games for two. Hugendubel, Munich (Germany) 1986, 59-63.
- H. Machatscheck: Ticket to Ride: The Magic World of Board Games. New Life Publishing House, Berlin (Germany) 1972, 157–158.
- Theodor Müller-Alfeld: Board games. Ullstein publishing house, Frankfurt / Main & Berlin (Germany) 1963, 153–156.
- B. Rüger: It's your turn: 42 games at the table. VEB Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig (Germany) 1962, 34–37.
Individual evidence
- ^ Fritz Jahn: Old German Games (1917), p. 14f. ( PDF online )
- ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: From the sense of playing . Reflections and game ideas. Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1664-5 . , Page 119.
