Konane
Kōnane is a two-player strategy board game from Hawaii which was invented by the ancient Hawaiian Polynesians. The game is played on a rectangular board and begins with black and white counters filling the board in an alternating pattern. Players then hop over one another's pieces, capturing them similar to checkers. The first player unable to capture is the loser.
Before contact with Europeans, the game was played using small pieces of white coral and black lava on a large carved rock which functioned as both the board and a table. The Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park has one of these stone gameboards on its premises.
While the game of Kōnane has been compared to draughts since the time of Captain James Cook, the similarity begins and ends with how the pieces move and capture, the objective and winning condition of the game are completely different, and is best understood independently from draughts. In draughts, one player's pieces are initially set up on one side of the board opposite the other player's pieces. In Kōnane, both players' pieces are intermixed in a checkered pattern of black and white occupying every square of the board. Furthermore, in Kōnane, all moves are capturing moves, captures are made in an orthogonal direction (not diagonally) by "jumping" over the opposite color piece into an empty space, and in a multiple-capture move, the capturing piece may not change direction.
Kōnane has some resemblances to the games of Leap Frog, Fanorona and Main Chuki or Tjuki. In both Kōnane and Leap Frog, every square of the board is occupied by a playing piece in the beginning of the game, and the only legal moves (after the first turn) are orthogonal captures by the short leap method. However, there are significant differences in Kōnane and Leap Frog.
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