Mak Khom (หมากขุม) is live: the Thai sowing game of relay drops and kin thaen captures

What is Mak Khom?

Mak Khom (หมากขุม) is the folk sowing game of Thailand, of the Congkak family — the "sowing games" (mancala) found across Southeast Asia, a distant cousin of Vietnam's Ô Ăn Quan and Indonesia's Dakon. The board is a boat: each player has 7 small pits on their side and 1 store at their right-hand end, a closed circuit of 16 cells. Every pit starts with 7 seeds — 98 in all, both stores empty.

The rules in 60 seconds

• Sow: pick up ALL the seeds in one of your pits and sow one per cell around the fixed circuit — through your own store (dropping one seed in) and skipping your opponent's store. There is no direction choice.
• Relay: if your last seed lands in an occupied pit, pick that pit up and keep sowing — still the same move.
• Store landing — go again: if your last seed lands exactly in your own store, scoop another pit — still your turn.
• Opposite capture (kin thaen — กินแทน): if your last seed lands in an empty pit on YOUR side, capture the whole pit directly opposite across the board plus the capturing seed into your store. A seed that dies on the opponent's side captures nothing.
• Ending: after any move, if one side's pits are all empty the game ends — every seed still in the pits is swept into the store of the player whose side emptied. The bigger store wins.

The tradition

Mak Khom is associated with Nakhon Si Thammarat in southern Thailand and is traditionally played on carved wooden boards with shells or seeds. A traditional match opens with a simultaneous sowing race and runs over several rounds: the loser of a round starts the next with fewer pits — a "widow town" (mueang mai). This digital version plays a single round with alternating moves, to suit online play.

Play it free now

▶ Play Mak Khom now — a 12-level AI, two-player rooms with chat and voice, replays with video export, an interactive 5-lesson playbook verified by the engine itself, and a daily maximum-capture puzzle. All 26 locales from day one, no install needed.

If you know Ô Ăn Quan, come and feel how its Thai cousin differs: no mandarin pieces, no direction choice, and the deeply satisfying kin thaen opposite capture.

Read next

• Ô Ăn Quan vs Mak Khom: one mancala family, two philosophies of sowing