Kaloo isolo board

Isolo

Four-row mancala. Sow, capture, and leave your opponent with no legal move.

Practice

Play the computer

Learn the board against the computer — always free, never staked.

Head to head

Create a game

Both players pay the stake. Leave your opponent with no legal move and you take the pot minus a 5% fee. A drawn game returns both stakes.

Winner takesK9.50
Invited

Join a game

Paste an invite link or enter the code your opponent shared.

The rules

How Isolo works

A four-row mancala of the Sukuma people of northern Tanzania, in the same family as Bao and Omweso.

  • You own two rows — the inner one faces your opponent.
  • Play any of your pits holding two or more seeds; they are sown one per pit, anticlockwise, around your own two rows only.
  • Last seed into an empty pit — your turn ends.
  • Last seed into a full pit — pick it up and keep sowing.
  • Last seed into a full pit in your inner row — you capture the opponent's seeds in that column and sow them on.
  • You can only take a column they have filled front and back; a turn keeps capturing, however many times, until a seed lands in an empty pit.
  • Leave your opponent with no legal move and you win.