Bao

a traditional [|mancala board game] played in most of [|East Africa], most popular among the [|Swahili people] of [|Tanzania], especially [|Zanzibar] and [|Kenya]. Bao is the [|swahili] word for //board// or //board game//. . Bao is a [|two-player] [|abstract strategy game], and considered as one of the most complex mancala games. The Bao board has four rows of eight pits, each player owns two adjacent rows. || toc  =Bao 0.1= Bao 0.1 is a Bao playing program by Jeroen Donkers running under Windows :
 * Home * Games * Bao**
 * [[image:Tavolabao.jpg width="320" link="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tavolabao.jpg"]] ||~  || **Bao**,
 * Initial setup in Bao la kiswahili ||~  ||^   ||

=See also=
 * Awari
 * Kalah

=Selected Publications=
 * [|Thomas Hyde] (**1694**). //[|De Ludis Orientalibus (Libri Duo: Historia Nerdiludii)]//, Oxford

1978 ...

 * Philip Townshend (**1978**). //Games of Strategy: A new Look at Correlates//. [|The Association for the Anthropological Study of Play, Vol. 4, No. 4]
 * Philip Townshend (**1979**). //Anthropological perspectives on bao (mankala) games//. Institute of African Studies, [|University of Nairobi], [|amazon]

1980 ...

 * Philip Townshend (**1982**). //[|Bao (mankala): the Swahili ethic in African idiom]//. [|Paideuma] 28
 * Alex de Voogt (**1995**). //Limits of the Mind: Towards a Characterisation of Bao Mastership//. Ph.D. Thesis, CNWS Publications

2000 ...

 * Alex de Voogt (**2002**). //[|Reproducing board game positions: Western Chess and African Bao]//. [|Swiss Journal of Psychology], Vol. 61, No. 4
 * Jeroen Donkers, Jos Uiterwijk, Alex de Voogt (**2002**). //Mancala Games - Topics in Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. Step by Step.// Proceedings of the 4th Colloquium ‘Board Games in Academia’ (eds. Jean Retschitzki and Rosita Haddad-Zubel), Editions Universitaires, Fribourg, Switzerland, pp. 133–146.
 * Jeroen Donkers, Jos Uiterwijk (**2002**). //Programming Bao//. 7th Computer Olympiad Workshop, [|pdf]
 * Jeroen Donkers, Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk (**2003**). //Opponent Models in Bao: Conditions of a Successfull Application//, Advances in Computer Games 10, [|pdf]
 * Alex de Voogt (**2003**). //[|Muyaka's poetry in the history of Bao]//. [|Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 66, No. 1]
 * Jeroen Donkers, Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk (**2004**). //Probabilistic Opponent-Model Search in Bao//. (M. Rauterberg, ed.) Proceedings International Conference on Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2004. LNCS 3166, Springer, Berlin. pp. 409-419. [|pdf]

2005 ...

 * Tom Kronenburg, Jeroen Donkers, Alex de Voogt (**2006**). //Never-Ending Moves in Bao//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2, [|pdf]

=External Links= > [|Zanzibar Bao Rules for the Computer] > media type="custom" key="24043190"
 * [|Bao (mancala game) from Wikipedia]
 * [|Bao] from [|Wikimanqala]
 * [|Bao la kiswahili] from [|Mancala World]
 * [|Bao page] by Jeroen Donkers
 * [|The Rules of Bao]
 * [|Bao (Zanzibar) rules] by Rob Nierse, [|The Game Cabinet]
 * [|Bao (Malawi) rules] related to Pete Duckworth by Mark Chikoko, transcribed by Adrian Brooks, [|The Game Cabinet]
 * [|Bao as a research problem] by [|David MacKay]
 * Simon Phillips, [|Philippe Saisse], [|Pino Palladino] - Mancala, [|Zoetermeer], November 15, 2009, [|YouTube] Video

=References= =What links here?= include page="Bao" component="backlinks" limit="60"
 * Up one Level**