Never-Ending Moves in Bao

Bao is a member of the large family of mancala games. It is generally considered to be the most complex mancala game with respect to the number of game rules (Townshend, 1986; De Voogt, 1995). Within the context of this note, it is impossible to describe the rules of Bao in their full length, so we restrict ourselves to the main discriminative characteristics, and to those rules that are necessary to understand the note. The complete rules for Bao can be found in De Voogt (1995) and also, adapted to computer Bao, in Donkers et al. (2005). An interesting question for Bao players is whether there are never-ending moves in Bao. The Bao masters of Africa do not believe that Bao can produce a never-ending move (De Voogt, 1995, p. 38). In contrast, Donkers and Uiterwijk (2002) argue that there is a high probability that a neverending move does occur in real game play. In this note we present an overview of never-ending moves; we discuss both trivial and complex never-ending moves. Moreover,...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: ICGA
• Authors: Tom Kronenburg, H. H. L. M. Donkers, Alex J. de Voogt
• Keywords: Complex Mancala Game, De Voogt, ICGA 1997, ICGA 2006, Mancala Game