LET US PLAY SUNGKA

SUNGKA

Sungka is an old and very traditional Filipino Game that has been passed on from generations to generations. I remember playing it at the house of my grandparents when we were young then. It is one of the pasttimes that we loce doing during family gatherings. At our time, we were not too exposed to any gadgets that we see today as they were pretty expensive at that time. I rarely see the yougters of today playing sungka either.

When we had our lunch at Balay ni Tatay (which I will make a review in a separate post, maybe dont pressure me hahaha!). Mind you, the place is a few minutes away from the city. Balay ni Tatay which means Father's House is a farm-based restaurants. I was shocked and as well happ seeing a Sungka there.

How to Play

It is actually very easy playing Sungka. The rules can be changed depending on what conditions you may set. The general rule here is to capture or gather stones to your head, the player with the most stones wins the game.

The Sungka is a carved oblong-shaped wood with with seven holes in two rows. Each holes are called balay (houses) and one big ulo (head). The game only consist of two players, each player owns a head to their left side.

As you can see in the picture above, there is also the stones or you can use any other round and small objects such as rocks, pebbles, shells.. etc. Each seven holes will be filled with stones of the same number in all the holes except for the head.

The players will do bidding who goes first. One will choose which hole he/she will start emptying. All the stones will be distributed one by one in each holes through a clockwise direction even passing the opponents side. Likewise, once the distribution reach the his/her head, the player has to drop one stone too. If the last stone was dropped to a hole with more stones in it, the player has to empty again the contents and continue distributing all the stones at hand.

If the last drop falls to an empty hole on the opponent's side, it becomes and end move. The other player may start emptying one hole from his/her side.

However, if the last stone falls to an empty hole on the player's side, the player gets a bonus! The last stone as well as the adjacent hole or directly across the hole of the opponent side, all the stones are captured and transferred to your head. But if it is empty, nothing is captured.

Each player take turns simultaneously until each one make an end move. The game ends when there is no more holes to empty.

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Seeing Sungka has sent some nostalgic memories of my childhood. I was glad that my childhood was not really corrupted with technology that much. I had truly enjoyed my youth with family and friends through a variety of activities to do just like playing sungka.

Little Mãli here had also enjoyed playing with sungka even though he has no idea what was it. Actually he were more inerested of the white stones, he kept transferring them from one hole to the other.

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How about you? Do you have some old games that you and your family usually do? What is it? Care to share?

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