Endodoi is a traditional mancala game played by the Maasai people across Kenya and Tanzania, using a board of two rows of holes, commonly twelve per row, into which players sow small seeds or counters. On a turn a player lifts all of the counters from one hole on their own side of the board and distributes them one at a time into the following holes moving counterclockwise around the board. If the last counter a player sows lands in an empty hole on their own side, they capture that counter along with whatever counters sit in the hole directly opposite on the opponent's side. The game continues, alternating turns between the two players, until neither side has a legal move left to make, at which point whoever has captured the greater number of seeds is the winner. Endodoi shares its basic sowing and capturing structure with Ayoayo, a mancala game played by the Yoruba people of Nigeria, though researchers have found no documented historical link between the two traditions. Maasai players are noted for playing Endodoi at a very fast pace, moving and capturing seeds quickly enough that onlookers often struggle to follow whose turn is whose.
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1. Endodoi (Wikipedia)
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Endodoi is a traditional mancala game played by the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania.
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