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Congklak : a tradisional game from Indonesia

2 players game, congkak, congklak, game, Indonesian game, mancala, mancala board, seeds, traditional game, traditional game from Indonesia

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Jan
05

Congklak : a tradisional game from Indonesia

Congklak

a tradisional game from Indonesia

Have you ever played it before? It’s one of my childhood game.

Congklak is a mancala game. It’s also played in Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand an Philippines. In Malaysia, they called this game, congkak. The word congklak in Indonesia means cowrie shells, which is used in this game. Congklak is believed to originate from the word ‘congak’ which in old Malay language means count. It is believed that the game originated in Malacca Kingdom where it became very popular and spread to the South East Asia region. This spread was due to the many travelers who visited the kingdom because it was a trading city. In the early days, it was thought that this game was for the king and family and palace residents, however later it spread to the general population of the kingdom. As the congkak board is shaped like a boat it is believed that it is based on the legend of a fisherman unable to go to the sea during rainy season who lost his income during this time. To prevent boredom he created this game which is similar to his boat. However, on the island of Java, the board always has a dragon head at each end and the sides of the board (which is made of wood) are carved to look like reptile scales.

To play this game, you need 2 people to play it. The congklak board has 14 holes in 2 sets of 7, plus an additional store for each player. Each player controls the seven holes on their side of the board, and their score is the number of seeds in their left-hand store. The pieces are 98 undifferentiated seeds. 7 seeds are placed in each hole except the stores, which remain empty. The objective of the game is to capture more seeds than one’s opponent. So the winner is the one who got the biggest amount of seeds.

Players take turns moving the seeds except in the first move which is performed simultaneously. 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 clockwise from this hole, in a process called sowing. Sowing skips an opponent’s store, but does not skip a player’s own store. If the last seed falls into an occupied hole, all the seeds are removed from that hole, and are sown starting from that hole. The process continues until the last seed falls into a player’s store, or an empty hole. If the last seed sown falls into a player’s own store, they immediately earn another turn, which can begin at any of the seven holes under their control. If the last seed sown falls into an empty hole on the current player’s side, then the player captures all the seeds in the hole directly across from this one, on the opponent’s side. If the opposing hole is empty, no seeds are captured.

This game is quite famous along the Indonesian children. They used many material as the seeds such as shell, marble or even a stone. In Java island, this game is called dakon. In Lampung, they called it dentuman lamban. And in Sulawesi, they called it mokaotan, maggaleceng, aggalacang and nogarata.

For further information about this game, you can typed mancala as the keyword. You can see a similar game to congklak in many other countries. It just have a small differences between them.

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