How to Play Pallanguzhi: Rules of the Traditional Tamil Board Game

If you grew up in Tamil Nadu, there is a good chance you have seen a long wooden board with two rows of little cups tucked away in a cupboard at your grandmother's house. That board is a Pallanguzhi board, and the game played on it is one of the most loved traditional indoor games in Tamil homes.

Pallanguzhi is a "sowing" game. You pick up seeds from one pit and drop them one by one into the pits that follow, trying to collect more seeds than your opponent by the end. It sounds simple, and it is easy to learn, but a good player thinks several moves ahead. In this guide we will look at the tradition first, and then walk through the exact rules used in our free online version.

A game from Tamil homes

The name roughly means "many pits", and that describes the board well. A traditional board is usually made of wood and has 14 pits arranged in two rows of seven. Some boards fold in the middle like a box, and some are beautifully carved, some shaped like a fish and others decorated with simple patterns. In many homes, families simply scooped small hollows in the ground or used two rows of bowls when no board was around.

The counters were whatever the house had: tamarind seeds, cowrie shells, small pebbles or seeds of other trees. Pallanguzhi was played mostly at home, and it is especially remembered as a game played by women and children, during long afternoons, holidays and family gatherings. Grandmothers taught grandchildren, and the game quietly taught counting, patience and planning along the way.

Pallanguzhi belongs to the large family of "mancala" games that are played in many parts of the world, but the way it is played in Tamil homes has its own flavour and its own words.

Many families, many rules

Before we get to the rules, an important note: there is no single official rulebook for Pallanguzhi. Families and villages play many regional variations. The number of seeds in each pit, the direction of sowing, how captures work and whether there are extra rounds can all change from one house to another. If your paati played differently, she was not wrong. She was playing her family's version.

For the online game we chose one clear, popular set of rules so that everyone plays the same way. Here it is.

The rules used on TNChatZone

The board and setup

• The board has 2 rows of 7 pits. The row nearest to you is your side; the row on the other side belongs to your opponent.
• Every pit starts with 5 seeds.
• Players take turns. On your turn you choose one non-empty pit on your own side.

Sowing

1. Pick up all the seeds from the pit you chose.
2. Sow them anticlockwise, dropping one seed into each pit as you go, moving around the board onto your opponent's side and back again.
3. When you drop your last seed, look at the next pit.

What happens after the last seed

• If the next pit has seeds: pick them all up and keep sowing from there, one seed per pit, exactly as before. Your turn continues.
• If the next pit is empty: you capture the seeds in the pit after that empty pit. Those seeds go to your store, and your turn ends.
• If there are two empty pits in a row: your turn ends with no capture.

The Pasu rule

Whenever sowing makes any pit reach exactly 4 seeds, that little group is called a pasu, and it is captured straight away by the player who owns that row. So if you drop a seed into one of your opponent's pits and it becomes 4, your opponent gets those seeds. Watch out for this, because it can work for you or against you.

In the online game, the Pasu rule is switched on by default. You can turn it off if you prefer a simpler game.

How the game ends

• The game ends when the player whose turn it is has no seeds on their side to play.
• At that point, the other player collects all the seeds that are still on their own side.
• Everyone counts their seeds. The player with the most seeds wins.

One more TNChatZone rule keeps every game moving: if 30 turns in a row pass with no capture, the game ends and each player keeps the seeds still in their own row.

A quick example

Say you pick a pit with 5 seeds. You drop one seed into each of the next five pits. Now you look at the sixth pit. If it holds 3 seeds, you scoop them up and continue sowing three more pits. If, instead, the sixth pit is empty, you look one pit further: if that pit holds 6 seeds, those 6 are yours and your turn is over. That chain of "pick up and keep going" is what makes Pallanguzhi exciting, because one small move can travel all the way around the board.

Tips to play better

• Count before you move. The best habit in Pallanguzhi is counting where your last seed will land. It takes a few seconds and saves a lot of seeds.
• Look for "empty then full". The juiciest captures happen when your last seed lands just before an empty pit that is followed by a big pile.
• Mind the 3s. Any pit with 3 seeds can become a pasu with one more seed. Think about who owns that row before you drop a seed there.
• Keep seeds on your side late in the game. If your opponent runs out of seeds first, the seeds still on your side become yours.
• Do not rush the big pit. A pit with many seeds is powerful, but sowing it early can spread seeds onto your opponent's side. Sometimes it is wiser to wait.

Play Pallanguzhi online

You can try these rules right now in our free Pallanguzhi game. You play against the computer, choose Easy or Normal, and can switch the Pasu rule on or off. It is a lovely way to remember the game, or to learn it for the first time before you play on a real board with your family.

If you enjoy traditional games, you might also like Aadu Puli Attam, the goats-and-tigers game, and our guide to 10 traditional Tamil games children loved. And if you have a family version of Pallanguzhi with different rules, share it with others in your district room on the TNChatZone app. Someone from Madurai may play it completely differently from someone in Coimbatore, and that is half the fun.