Kalah is a popular Mancala game commonly found on internet game sites, sometimes under the names Kalaha, Makalah, or simply Mancala. Its origins are murky but it appears likely that Kalah is not an indigenous game but rather a modern variant of the Indonesian game Congklak. The rules are as follows:
 
The board is divided into twelve holes and two stores. One player plays from the bottom six holes and the other plays from the top six. The stores are used for storing captured pieces. The right store is for the bottom player and the left store for the top player.
 
The game begins with four beans in each of the twelve holes. The bottom player goes first. A move is made by picking up the beans in a player's hole and sowing them one at a time counterclockwise around the board. Sowing begins with the hole immediately after the lift hole and continues until all the beans have been dropped. Beans are dropped in a player's store but not in the opponent's store. Unlike in Wari, beans are dropped in the lift hole on subsequent laps.
 
If the last bean is dropped in the player's store, the player gets another turn, which is indicated by a red strip. (You can get up to three extra turns this way.) If the last bean is dropped in an empty friendly hole, any beans in the opposing enemy hole are captured and the turn ends. If the last bean is dropped in an enemy hole or an occupied friendly hole, the turn ends.
 
The game ends when a player captures twenty-five beans or when all of one player's holes are empty. In the latter case, all remaining beans are awarded to the opponent. If it is your turn to move and you have no beans, you must click on an empty hole to award the remaining beans to the opponent. The winner is the player with the most captured beans at the end of the game.
 
In the variants, the players start with three, five, or six beans in each hole. A player wins by capturing more than half of all available beans (19 beans, 31 beans, or 37 beans, respectively).
 
Please send any comments or bug reports to dtroyka@justice.com.
 
For more Mancala games available on Zillions, check out the Mancala game page.