Konane is an ancient Hawaiian board game played by everyone, from the ruling class downwards, and mastering the strategic and analytical skills needed to be a good Konane player was thought to make a person a better leader in battle and at home. How to play this game was almost completely lost, a researcher in 1924 could only find a single native Hawaiian that was knowledgeable of the game. So, while a complete rule set does exist, accounts of the game before it was suppressed by Westerners give glimpses at variations and complexities to Konane that are impossible with these known rules – meaning, an unknown amount of knowledge of Konane was lost.

How to Play

Refer to rules for a complete account. In essence, after the first move by each player, which involves removing one of their own stones (thereby, making some room on the game board), every move a player makes is to capture an opponent’s stone or stones by jumping over that stone to an open space. The jumping is done in one direction and is either up/ down/ left/ or right.

How to Win

The capturing aspect to Konane makes the game kind of feel like a Checkers type game, but, one mustn’t think that the object of the game is to capture all the opponent’s stones. Instead, to win the game, one’s opponent has to have no legal moves left.

It’s this aspect of the game that I find the most interesting because the game might end with still a fair amount of pieces still left on the board, and, the game becomes more about getting your opponent to lose as opposed to trying to make yourself win.

Strategy

When this was first offered at Goldtoken I tried to find out about the strategy of this game because the first few games I played felt like a random jumble of capturing. There was not a lot to find – given it’s history, I’m not surprised. (If Chess almost died out and I was the last person to remember the game there would a lot of strategy that would need to be recovered and rediscovered by future players .)

I've played enough that I sometimes think I almost maybe understand some of the strategy to this game. So, take the following as something less than gospel.

The most important factor in securing a victory, I've found, is to make sure you bank a few moves that can used at the end of the game. The best place to do this is in one of the corners that you've isolated from the rest of the board.

I suspect that when capturing your opponent's stones that it's more important to focus on removing possible future moves of your opponent then trying to merely maximize how many stones one can capture. Exactly how this translates to influencing one's gameplay is something I'm still working on. However, sometimes, I decide not to continue a move to capture a second or third stone if it means my stone ends up somewhere that will give my opponent the chance to use a stone or stones that were previously to far away to have any legal moves, and, I'm pretty sure it was the correct thing to do, some of time, at least.

I have also noticed that ideas that I think work on the larger board variants of Konane don't necessarily seem to work with the small board variants.

I'd like to add more, but, right now I only have a few more half-baked ideas. Maybe I'll come back at a later point when I'm more sure. I have slowly warmed to this game, so, if your first impression of the game is kinda negative, I suggest playing a bit more because I think there's more meat to this game then what's initially apparent.