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Glass Bead Game
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The Rules (1: Movement & Capture)

The Glass Bead Game belongs to the mancala family. There are two players, north and south. The board with the beads in the initial position can be seen in the diagram below.

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The board consists of two rows of five pits and two cups for collecting captured beads. Each player controls the five pits and the cup on his side. In the initial position each pit contains one stone and one gem.
  • Gems can be captured and range in point value from 1 to 5 as indicated.
  • Stones cannot be captured: they're always in the pits and have no point value.

  • Players move and must move in turn. South moves first. On his turn a player selects a pit on his own side of the board, picks up all the beads in it, and sows them, one at the time, into the other pits around the board, moving in a counterclockwise direction. No beads are sown into the cups.
  • A player is free to choose which bead to drop in which pit. No pit may receive more than one bead unless there are enough beads to go around the board more than once. No pit may be skipped except the pit whose contents are moved: this pit must be skipped. So if the original pit contains more than nine beads, the tenth bead is sown into the same pit as the first, and any additional beads continue to be sown counterclockwise, as usual.

Single Capture
  • If the last bead sown is a stone that falls into a pit on the opponent's side of the board, and if that opponent's pit contained exactly one bead before the stone was placed there, the player making the move makes a capture.
  • It's irrelevant whether the single bead in the opponent's pit was there in the first place, or whether it was placed there by the moving player as part of the same turn, in a move involving enough beads to go around the board and into the opponent's pits once again.
  • What is captured depends on the single bead in the final pit:

    • If it is a gem, it is captured, which means that it is removed from the pit and placed in the player's cup. This is known as direct capture.
    • If it is a stone, the player may choose any gem from any of the opponent's pits and place it in his cup. This is known as indirect capture. If there are no gems on the opponent's side of the board, the player may choose any gem from his opponent's cup instead (no gem is ever completely safe till the game is over). If the opponent's cup is empty too, no capture is made.
Multiple Capture
  • If the last two or more beads sown are stones that fall into pits on the opponent's side of the board, and  if each of these opponent's pits in an unbroken row counting backwards from the last contained exactly one gem before the stones were placed there, the player making the move makes a direct multiple capture of all gems involved.
  • If the last two or more beads sown are stones that fall into pits on the opponent's side of the board, and  if each of these opponent's pits in an unbroken row counting backwards from the last contained exactly one gem before the stones were placed there, the player making the move makes an indirect multiple capture, which means that he may choose one gem for every pit involved, from his opponent's pits. If there are no or an insufficient number of gems on the opponent's side of the board, the player may proceed to choose any gems from his opponent's cup instead, till he reaches the appointed number or till no more gems are available.
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