Cups (Mancala game)

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Cup ( German  Cup ) is a modern Mancala variant used by the Jewish basket makers Arthur and 1965 Forest Amberstone was invented (father and son).

history

Both inventors are, together with Sid Sackson , founding members of NYGA (" New York Games Associates "), a club for game inventors. Forest Amberstone is a well-known tarot teacher in the United States today .

The game was described by Sid Sackson in 1969 in the book A Gamut of Games , which was translated into German in 1981. In Germany, a variant that is played on a smaller board is called BohnDuell or Bohnenduell . BohnDuell tournaments have been taking place in the board game world since March 2003 . There is a BohnDuell guild that maintains an Elo list of the best players.

Rules of the game

material

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Cups is played on a board that consists of two rows of cups. Each row has four to ten cups that serve as playing hollows. At the right end of each row there is a pot that holds the captured beans. Each player owns the row on their side and the pot to their right.

For each cup there are ten beans that serve as game pieces. If each player has ten cups (as in the picture above), he needs 100 beans. The beans are in stock at the beginning of the game and are only played out gradually.

Pull and hit

Each player only plays on his half of the board. In each turn a player takes one bean up to a maximum of as many beans from his supply as he has playing hollows and distributes them individually from left to right into the cups in his row.

When the last bean falls into an empty cup and the opponent's hole opposite is filled, you beat its contents, but not the last bean distributed. The beaten beans are placed in their own pot.

Instead of playing beans from the supply, you can also distribute the contents of your own cup individually to the right, provided the last bean falls into the pot.

It is not allowed to go without the train. If a player can no longer move, his teammate must continue to play until he can no longer move.

Playing

The game ends when neither player can move. The beans that are still on the board are not counted. The winner is whoever has hit the most beans. With the largest board, 101 beans are enough, with BohnDuell, which is played on a 2 × 4 board, only 41 are enough to achieve this. A tie results if both players have won the same number of beans in the end.

swell

  • Amberstone, W. Personal Communication (email to Ralf Gering) . New York (USA) May 16, 2005.
  • Sackson, S. A Gamut of Games . Pantheon, New York (USA) 1969, 40-45.

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