Kasimalaकासीमाला

The board

A Kasimala board is three long rows of cells, seventeen to a row on most boards. Each player sits along one of the narrow outer rows, which is that player's home row. Between them runs the wider middle row, the mala, which both sides use.

Some mala cells are marked with a cross: counting from either end, every fourth cell carries one, starting with the end cell itself. These marked cells are laigas, or bhong, and pieces on them are safe. Seventeen cells give five laigas: the two end cells, the middle cell, and one halfway between the middle and each end.

The route

Your pieces travel a snake-shaped route. First along your own row from left to right. Then up into the mala at its right-hand end and back along it from right to left. Then up into the other side's row at its left-hand end and along it from left to right. From there a piece drops back into the mala and repeats those last two legs for the rest of the game.

Nobody ever re-enters their own row or carries a piece off the board, so pieces keep circling until they are captured.

The other side follows the same route from its own seat, so the two sides travel in opposite directions. They run into each other in the mala, and each side's circuit passes over the other side's home row, waiting pieces and all.

Setting up

Each side has one piece for every cell of its row: seventeen on the usual board. Put one on each cell of your home row. They are all waiting pieces until they start.

The first player throws first.

The throw

Throw the four strips. Each lands face up or face down. Count the strips face up:

• One face up is a kasi: 1 cell. Only a kasi starts a piece.
• Two face up is a dwadi: 2 cells.
• Three face up is a sudi: 3 cells.
• All four face up is a chya: 4 cells, and you throw again afterwards.
• None face up is a ngha: 5 cells, and you throw again afterwards.

Four fair strips can fall sixteen ways. Six of them make a dwadi, four each make a kasi or a sudi, and only one each makes a chya or a ngha, so twos are common and fives rare. The computer throws four strips one by one, so the odds here are the same as at a real board.

Starting pieces

A piece moves for the first time only on a kasi, and each kasi starts one piece by moving it a single cell along its route.

The first piece to start is the one at the right-hand end of your row, next to the turn into the mala: its kasi steps it onto the laiga at that end of the mala. The piece to its left starts next, then the one after that, working along the row.

A kasi always goes to starting a piece while you have one waiting, even if you would rather move another. If the other side holds the laiga that piece must step onto, the kasi is lost. When nothing is left waiting, a kasi is simply a move of one cell for any started piece.

Moving

For any other throw, pick one of your started pieces and move it the full count along its route. Nothing blocks the way: a piece goes past pieces of either side and past held laigas. What counts is the cell where it stops.

Any number of your own pieces can stand together in one cell. When you move from such a stack, only one piece leaves it.

A throw that no piece of yours can use is simply lost. At the start that happens a lot: until a kasi comes, there is nothing to move.

Capturing and the laigas

Finish a move on a cell holding enemy pieces and all of them are captured and removed from the game, however many share the cell. Waiting pieces in the other side's row are no exception.

Laigas are different. Pieces on a laiga cannot be captured, and while you have a piece on one the other side is not allowed to finish a move there. More of your own pieces may join it.

How the game ends

The side that captures every piece of the other side wins.

A clean win, with all of your own pieces still on the board, is called a gulmasi and counts double in Bhaktapur. The results screen marks it.

As a safety net, a game here ends after 2000 throws: the side with more pieces then wins, and equal numbers are a draw. Ordinary games are over in a few hundred throws.

Where these rules come from

Kasimala is Bhaktapur's own game. It had almost died out when the municipality added it to the class 6 local curriculum and to the city's sports competitions, and older players still meet for it at temple squares and pati in the old town. This table follows what Bhaktapur has written down:

• Three rows with a wide mala, seventeen cells as a rule and twenty-five on long boards, and a laiga on the first and every fourth cell of the mala: Roshan Raj Tuitui's article on bhaktapur.com, from elders of Taulachhen, Chochhen and Siddha Pokhari and the book Khwapa Pahichan. Seventeen cells with five safe cells also match the Kasimala app by Ramesh Prajapati and Jacob Schmidt-Madsen's notes.
• Seventeen pieces a side: Sajha Entertainment and the Prajapati app. Jacob Schmidt-Madsen saw each side fill its own row when he watched the game in Bhaktapur in 2016.
• The throws and their names, the extra throw after a 4 or a 5, starting only on a kasi, starting from the right, the safe laigas and winning by capturing every piece: bhaktapur.com and the Prajapati app. A gulmasi scoring double: bhaktapur.com.
• The route through your own row, the mala and the other side's row, then round the last two for good, is the path of the tâb family of games, which Schmidt-Madsen links Kasimala to.
• The sources do not say whether a kasi may move a started piece while others wait, whether waiting pieces can be captured, or whether pieces may stack. The answers here (a kasi starts a piece first, waiting pieces can be captured, stacks are allowed and are captured whole) are this table's reading of the game.
• The game Schmidt-Madsen watched was on a board of thirteen with two safe cells, and he understood that captures happen only in the mala and that the aim is to bring pieces into the other side's row. Bhaktapur's written rules capture anywhere and play to the last piece, and so does this table.

The long board

Some boards in Bhaktapur have twenty-five cells to a row instead of seventeen. Choose it before the game: each side then has twenty-five pieces and the mala has seven laigas.