Guide

How to play Bao by mail

This page is for people who never thoght that it is possible to play Bao by mail and who never heard about the possibility of writing down a match. [Read How to play Bao through this site, too]

The follosing picture is a board used to play Bao:

Now let's sit by the board sides.
You sit by the north (kaskazini) side
I sit by the south (kusini) side


Let's give now a name to each row of pits.
Your rows are a - b
My rows are A - B


and to the pits:

So, your front pits are: a1 - a2 - a3 - a4 - a5 - a6 - a7 - a8
while, your back pits are: b1 - b2 - b3 - b4 - b5 - b6 - b7 - b8

My front pits are: A1 - A2 - A3 - A4 - A5 - A6 - A7 - A8
the back ones are: B1 - B2 - B3 - B4 - B5 - B6 - B7 - B8


So your house (nyumba) is called a5, while mine is called A5 (Read more at Notational system).
Now we start playing.

I start to play, because I am 'south' (kusini).
I start from the pit A6 and I sow them leftward, that is I take a seed from my reserve and I put it into the sixth pit from left pick up the three seeds and I sow them into the pits 5, 4 and 3.
How can you know what I have done?
In the mail I'll write: A6<, that is I start from pit 6 in the row A and I sow leftward < (read more at Notational system).
You'll know that the new situation on the board is:

You'll capture my seeds from the pit A4, and maybe you'll sow them from your first pit on your left, so in the mail you'll send me you'll write: a5> (read more at Notational system).
I'll know that the new situation is:

Our web site allow you to do all above explained much easier and it will check the validity of your move. Read more at How to play through this site]

Now you are ready to read How to take part in a tournament by mail!

Following the same method you can play Bao by mail against a friend who lives very far.