Timing Plays to Your Opponent in Mancala

Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Melissa Schenk and on behalf of expertvillage.com, today we’re discussing strategy techniques for playing the game Mancala. Now, our next strategy technique is called “timing ones plays to the other side.” And it’s simply that, you’re basically timing your opponent, your other side of the board. You’re watching all of the plays that your opponent is making and trying to time just when to make the right move. For instance, if we have a look at the board once again here in this example, we’re going to try and time out our play to the other side. Now, inevitably you’re occasionally going to have to overshoot your own Mancala. In this case, we’ll demonstrate on your side of the board, G-L. Again, sometimes you’re going to have to overshoot and end up some of your stones onto my Mancala side or my smaller bins. It happens; it’s the game. Now, a good player that will watch for really great opportune times to unload 2 full bins. In this case, we’re keeping our eye on the letter G, H, and I. Now, a good player too will also be able to reduce the overhead cost of any kind of a looping maneuver in here, and it’s always a good idea to keep your eyes on G, H, and I. If you can have enough stones that will end you up in your larger Mancala. You’re not giving any stones away in a looping strategy at all, so we’re going to go H, I, J, K, L, and one’s yours; therefore, you will get another turn. Here you can see L. I can put one stone in there and get another turn. You have to keep your eye on these. In H for instance, we take those and go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; we get another turn. L; see we’re playing that game, playing from bin L as often as possible. We get another turn. You can see by keeping your eye on G, H, and I, we can really push a lot of the stones down to our larger Mancala and we’re not looping around the board, we’re really in some cases starving, that’s another strategy that we discussed in an earlier segment, starving our opponent of stones. If you recall, we still get another turn. For this case, maybe we’ll take I, 2 stones out of I and put them into J and K as well. You can see we’re trying to time out in this case, our place to the other side of the board.

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