Peralikatuma

How to play peralikatuma

The rules

• Peralikatuma is the alquerque of Sri Lanka, once called Ceylon: a game of stepping, jumping and capturing for two.
• The board is a square of five by five points with a triangular arm on each side, 49 points in all. Lines run along the rows and columns of the square, along its two long diagonals, and diagonally between the middles of its sides. Each arm has its tip at the middle of a side of the square, a cross line, a centre line and two sides, and the sides run straight on into the square's diagonal lines.
• Each player has 23 pieces. Yours fill the two rows nearest you, the point at the left end of the middle row, the whole arm behind you and the whole arm to your left. Your opponent's are set out the same way from the other side, so only the three middle points of the middle row are empty.
• Players take turns moving one piece. A piece steps along a line, in any direction, to the next point, if that point is empty.
• To capture, jump: if an enemy piece stands next to yours on a line and the point straight beyond it is empty, jump over it onto that point and take the enemy piece off the board. From where it lands, the same piece may jump again, and again, in the same move; you may stop whenever you like.
• Capturing is not compulsory, but it has a price: if one of your pieces could have captured and you made another move instead, your opponent may take that piece off the board.
• You win by taking all your opponent's pieces.

In this version

• Under New game you choose your colour and who starts, and whether you play the machine, at one of three strengths, or two on one screen.
• The right to take a piece that failed to capture is used before the opponent's own move, and it lapses if it is not used then. If several pieces could have captured, one of them may be taken. A move that captures anything, even a chain stopped early, gives no such right.
• Pieces you jump over stay on the board until your move is finished, so the same piece cannot be jumped twice and you cannot land on its point.
• A player who cannot move has lost.
• The same position three times, or sixty moves without a capture, is a draw.

New game