Tuesday, January 22. 2008
Ovvalhu(gondi): an African game?!
I was watching a presentation tonight titled "African fractals, in buildings and braids" (on TEDTalks) and was totally absorbed in it when an African game board shown in it caught my eye - the board looked eerily similar to something I knew: an Ovvalhugondi. I had always been under the impression that "Ovvalhu" was a distinctly Maldivian game but just like many other supposed Maldivian games of the likes of "Koraa" and "Baibalaa", I wondered if Ovvalhu too was just another foreign game that had been absorbed into our culture. Anyway, I was compelled to look up more about the mentioned African origin game called "Mancala".
Finding out more about Mancala was a much easier task than I thought. Rather than it being an obscure game played in a lone part of Africa that had little mention in any literature, Mancala was literally something of a global phenomenon that had many a mention of it, played all over the world and had dozens of online shops selling the boards. There even were online versions of the game! Mancala or Manqala in Arabic, basically refers to a class of games that all have similar game play - the objective always being to capture more "stones" than the opponent. There are a number of variants (see Wikipedia's list), as adopted by different countries or areas, that differ in the finer details of how its played. Apparent differences obviously include the number of pits in the board and the number of "stones" used in play.
I might be wrong (very wrong, infact) but from what I read I suspect that Ovvalhu takes after the version played in South India or possibly the version played in Ghana. Ovvalhu may not be our national game but Ghana's Mancala variant called "Oware" is supposed to be their national game. I found it amusing that the names sounded similar but that might just be mere coincidence(?!). A similarity that certainly is not a coincidence is that Maldivians also used to play Ovvalhugondi with "Laagulha" (picture), ie. the seed of "Kashikumburu", which is what Oware is supposedly played with (in the Caribbean atleast).
What was even more interesting, to me, was to learn that Mancala (or atleast some variants of it) had been analysed using combinatorial game theory. The game of Awari was tackled by two Dutch scientists who generated the entire state-space for the game - mounting upto almost 9 billion positions - and cracked the perfect play for the game (here's their paper). Perfect play is a game theory term for a strategy or set of moves that guarantees a certain outcome in a game - a win or a draw at the least - if the game allows so, mathematically. I have no interest in Ovvalhu but I find such computational challenges almost erotic. I'm very much tempted to attempt analyzing Ovvalhu for a perfect play as well, so I've added it to my list of future boredom-killer projects.
Anyway, though it is pretty conclusive that Ovvalhu is not a Dhivehi game, I think it is interesting to learn that it certainly is one with an exciting history and background!
Finding out more about Mancala was a much easier task than I thought. Rather than it being an obscure game played in a lone part of Africa that had little mention in any literature, Mancala was literally something of a global phenomenon that had many a mention of it, played all over the world and had dozens of online shops selling the boards. There even were online versions of the game! Mancala or Manqala in Arabic, basically refers to a class of games that all have similar game play - the objective always being to capture more "stones" than the opponent. There are a number of variants (see Wikipedia's list), as adopted by different countries or areas, that differ in the finer details of how its played. Apparent differences obviously include the number of pits in the board and the number of "stones" used in play.
I might be wrong (very wrong, infact) but from what I read I suspect that Ovvalhu takes after the version played in South India or possibly the version played in Ghana. Ovvalhu may not be our national game but Ghana's Mancala variant called "Oware" is supposed to be their national game. I found it amusing that the names sounded similar but that might just be mere coincidence(?!). A similarity that certainly is not a coincidence is that Maldivians also used to play Ovvalhugondi with "Laagulha" (picture), ie. the seed of "Kashikumburu", which is what Oware is supposedly played with (in the Caribbean atleast).
What was even more interesting, to me, was to learn that Mancala (or atleast some variants of it) had been analysed using combinatorial game theory. The game of Awari was tackled by two Dutch scientists who generated the entire state-space for the game - mounting upto almost 9 billion positions - and cracked the perfect play for the game (here's their paper). Perfect play is a game theory term for a strategy or set of moves that guarantees a certain outcome in a game - a win or a draw at the least - if the game allows so, mathematically. I have no interest in Ovvalhu but I find such computational challenges almost erotic. I'm very much tempted to attempt analyzing Ovvalhu for a perfect play as well, so I've added it to my list of future boredom-killer projects.
Anyway, though it is pretty conclusive that Ovvalhu is not a Dhivehi game, I think it is interesting to learn that it certainly is one with an exciting history and background!
