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Das Bohnenspiel

Mancala Games

Das Bohnenspiel, meaning the bean game in German, is a two-player German mancala game described in the 1937 reference work Deutsche Spielhandbuch. The board consists of two rows of six pits each, called houses, with each house starting the game holding six beans. On a turn a player picks up all the beans from one of their own houses and sows them one at a time into the following houses moving counterclockwise around the board. A player captures the beans sitting in any house, on either side of the board, that ends a sowing move holding exactly two, four or six beans, removing those beans from play and adding them to that player's own store. The game continues in this way, house by house, until one side's row of houses is emptied of beans and no further legal move is available, at which point the beans each player has captured are counted to determine the winner.

Facts
Origin Year
1917 1
Game Type
German mancala game 1
Sport
Game Type (category)
Mancala Game 1
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Sources
1. Das Bohnenspiel (Wikipedia)
  • Lead paragraph, first sentence
    is a German mancala game described in the 1937 Deutsche Spielhandbuch.
  • History
    The Bohnenspiel was first mentioned by Fritz Jahn his book Old German Games (1917).
  • Lead paragraph, classification
    German mancala game
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