How to Play Konane

By Jaques of London · Est. 1795 · Updated 2026-08-17

Konane is a two-player abstract strategy game played on a grid board with black and white stones. One player controls black, the other white, and the entire game revolves around a single action: jumping over an adjacent enemy piece in a straight line and removing it. Simple to learn in minutes, the game quickly rewards careful positional thinking.

Players love Konane for its clean logic and the way early decisions echo through the endgame. It is compact enough for a kitchen table and deep enough to hold serious players' interest over many sessions. A standard board is 8x8, though smaller grids are equally popular for shorter or introductory games.

A little history

Konane is traditionally associated with Native Hawaiian culture and is one of the few board games documented in pre-contact Hawaii. Early accounts by European explorers in the late eighteenth century describe Hawaiians playing a game of this type, and it was reportedly popular among ali'i (Hawaiian nobility) as well as commoners. Beyond these broad observations the detailed early history is thin, and its precise origins and how the rules evolved over time are unclear.

Setting up

1. Place the board between the two players so both can reach it comfortably.
2. Fill every square of the board alternating black and white stones, beginning with a black stone in the top-left corner, so the pattern resembles a chessboard covered entirely with pieces.
3. Decide who plays black and who plays white.
4. Black takes the opening move. Black removes one of their own stones from the board: either the stone nearest the centre of the board or any stone they choose, depending on which opening convention the players agree to use. The standard convention is that black removes one of the two central black stones.
5. White then removes one white stone that is orthogonally adjacent (not diagonal) to the gap just created.
6. Play begins. The board now has exactly two empty squares sitting next to each other, and it is black's turn to move.

How to play

1. On your turn you must move at least one of your pieces. You cannot pass unless you have absolutely no legal move available.
2. A move consists of jumping one of your pieces over an adjacent enemy piece that is directly next to it in an orthogonal direction (up, down, left, or right). No diagonal moves are permitted at any time.
3. The piece you jump over is immediately removed from the board and set aside. The jumping piece lands in the empty square immediately beyond the captured piece.
4. The square you jump into must be empty before the jump. The piece cannot jump over an empty square or over one of your own pieces.
5. Multiple captures in a single turn: after a jump, if your piece can continue jumping over more enemy pieces in the same straight line and in the same direction, you may keep jumping. You can also change direction during a multi-jump turn, provided each individual jump still goes in a straight orthogonal line. Each piece jumped over is removed immediately.
6. You are never forced to take the maximum number of captures available. You may stop a multi-jump sequence at any point after completing at least one valid jump.
7. Only one of your pieces may be moved per turn, though that piece may complete multiple jumps.
8. A piece that lands in a square with no further jumping opportunities simply ends its turn there.
9. Play alternates strictly between black and white after each full turn.

Winning and scoring

The player who leaves their opponent with no legal move on the opponent's turn wins the game. There is no points scoring system. Because captures are mandatory in the sense that a player must make at least one jump to move, a player loses when none of their pieces has an adjacent enemy piece to jump over in any direction. There are no draws in standard Konane play: one player will always eventually run out of moves.

The fine points

The most common dispute concerns multi-jump direction changes. The standard ruling is that a piece may change direction during a multi-jump turn, but each individual hop must be a straight orthogonal jump. A piece cannot reverse direction within the same continuous jump sequence, meaning it cannot jump back over the same line it just came from in the same turn. If players have not agreed this before play, settle it before the first move of any game.

A second dispute arises over the opening removal. Some players allow black to remove any black stone and white to remove any adjacent white stone; others restrict the first removal to the central stones only. Neither convention is universally standard, so agree in advance. Additionally, a player who has at least one legal move cannot pass: passing is only legal when no jump at all is possible, and at that point the passing player immediately loses.

How to win more often

• Control the centre early. Pieces in central positions have more directions available for jumping and are harder to strand.
• Think several captures ahead before committing to a multi-jump sequence. Removing the wrong pieces can open corridors that benefit your opponent more than you.
• Preserve mobility. Keeping your pieces spread across the board gives you more options later; clustering them lets your opponent cut off whole sections.
• Count your opponent's escape routes. If a group of their pieces has only one direction left to jump, work to close that direction off rather than chasing pieces elsewhere.
• Do not rush captures just because they are available. Sometimes declining to take a piece leaves your opponent with no profitable reply, whereas taking it opens a sequence they can exploit.

Variations

Smaller Board

Konane plays well on grids smaller than 8x8. A 6x6 board with 18 stones per side produces a faster, sharper game that is ideal for younger players or when time is short. The rules are identical; only the board size changes. Some players use a 4x4 grid as a teaching tool to explore the logic of the game before scaling up.

Larger Board

Historically, very large boards of 13x13 or even larger were reportedly used in Hawaii. On boards of this size the opening phase matters enormously because isolated groups can form early and become permanently cut off. All standard rules apply; the extended board simply multiplies the strategic complexity and lengthens play time considerably.

Restricted Opening

In this variant black must remove one of the four central stones on an 8x8 board (the four squares nearest the middle), and white must remove an orthogonally adjacent white stone to whichever black stone was taken. This narrows the opening options and produces a tighter, more symmetrical start that some experienced players prefer for competitive play.

No Direction Change

In this stricter variant a piece that begins a multi-jump in one direction must continue in that exact direction for the entire turn and may not change direction mid-sequence. This simplifies adjudicating multi-jumps and produces a different tactical landscape in which long straight corridors become the primary strategic target.

Konane: frequently asked questions