What Can You Tell Me About The Game Warri?

Warri is an ancient game that originated over 3600 years ago in Sudan. The game was originally played with pebbles and holes dug in the earth. Warri travelled across the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th century with the African slaves who worked on plantations in North American and the Caribbean.

Warri is played with 48 seeds or pebbles on a rectangular board with 12 depressions or "houses" (The name Warri comes from the Ijo dialect word meaning "houses"). These depressions are arranged in six pairs along the length of the board. There are two players and the game starts with 4 seeds in each "house". The object of the game is to capture the majority of the seeds, and the game ends when one player has 25 seeds.

Each player's home base is the six depressions on one side of the board. In turn, a player takes all the seeds in any one of their "houses" and, moving counter-clockwise, deposits one seed in each depression until done. If the last seed falls in an opponents "house" with 1 or 2 seeds those seeds are captured and are added to the player in turn's score. If the depression behind the captured one also has only 1 or 2 seeds, it too can be captured, and so on.

This is a game that can be played light heartedly by chance or luck, or it can be played as a mathematical strategy.