Konane
Quick Pitch
Konane is a traditional Hawaiian strategy game where players jump over and capture each other's pieces in straight lines — similar to Checkers but played on a grid with all pieces starting on the board.
Hook
Konane was played by Hawaiians for centuries before Europeans arrived, using boards carved from stone and pieces made from black and white pebbles. Unlike Checkers where pieces move diagonally, Konane pieces jump in straight lines — horizontally and vertically — giving the game a distinctly different feel. It's a piece of Pacific Island heritage that's genuinely fun to play.
Equipment Needed
- An 8×8 grid board (a standard checkerboard works perfectly)
- 32 pieces in two colors — 16 per player
Improvising with what you have:
- Draw an 8×8 grid on paper
- Use black and white stones, coins, or buttons in two colors
- A regular checkers set works fine
Setup
- Fill the entire 8×8 board in a checkerboard pattern: alternate pieces of each color so that every square has a piece and no two same-color pieces are adjacent. This means the board starts completely full.
- Decide which player controls which color.
- To begin, one piece is removed from the board to create an opening. Traditionally, a piece is removed from the center area — either player may remove one of their own pieces from the four central squares. The other player then removes one of their own adjacent pieces to that gap.
- The player who made the second removal goes first.
Rules
Objective
Force your opponent into a position where they cannot make any legal move. The player who cannot move loses.
How Pieces Move
Pieces in Konane only capture — they never simply move to an empty square. On each turn, you must jump one of your pieces over an adjacent enemy piece in a straight line (horizontally or vertically — no diagonal movement). The jumped enemy piece is removed from the board.
You may make multiple jumps in a single turn with the same piece, as long as each jump continues in the same direction and lands on an empty square with another enemy piece to jump over next. You cannot change direction mid-turn.
You cannot jump over your own pieces.
Winning
The game ends when one player has no legal move available — either because all their remaining pieces are completely surrounded or because there are no adjacent enemy pieces to jump over. That player loses.
Expert Player
Tips
Controlling the opening is critical. The two removed pieces at the start determine the initial structure of the game. More central openings create more dynamic early games; edge openings tend to lead to more constrained positions.
Preserve your mobility. The lose condition is having no legal move, so the most important long-term goal is keeping your pieces in positions where they always have something to jump. Pieces that are boxed in or completely surrounded by same-color pieces are dead weight.
Think about chain jumps. A piece that can make a long chain of jumps in one turn is enormously powerful — it can clear an entire corridor and potentially win the game in a single move. Look for setups that allow chains of three or four jumps.
Force your opponent into corners. Edge and corner positions have fewer possible jump directions. Herding your opponent's pieces toward the edges limits their jump options and sets up the losing no-move condition faster.
Track the piece count. With fewer pieces on the board, mobility becomes more precious. In the endgame, the player who has maintained better piece positioning almost always wins.
Variations
- Larger Board: Some versions are played on a 10×10 or larger grid with more pieces, making for a longer and more complex game.
- Multi-Direction Jumps: A non-traditional variant allows pieces to change direction during a multi-jump turn, significantly increasing complexity.
Learn More — History & Origins
History & Origins
Konane is a pre-contact Hawaiian board game — meaning it was played in Hawaii before any European arrival in 1778. The exact age of the game is unknown, but oral tradition and archaeological evidence suggest it was a well-established part of Hawaiian culture for centuries. Early European visitors noted Hawaiians playing the game with carved stone boards and smooth black and white pebbles collected from beaches and riverbeds. Some surviving stone boards, worn smooth with use, are held in Hawaiian cultural collections today.
The game was widely played across Hawaiian society, from commoners to ali'i (nobility). Captain James Cook and his crew documented seeing the game played during their visits to the islands in the late 18th century, providing one of the earliest written records. After European contact, many traditional Hawaiian cultural practices declined under the influence of missionaries and colonial disruption, and Konane largely faded from widespread play during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Cultural Context
The revival of Konane in the late 20th century has been tied to the broader Hawaiian cultural renaissance — a movement to reclaim and celebrate indigenous Hawaiian language, traditions, and practices. The game is now taught in Hawaiian schools, featured at cultural events, and used as a way of connecting younger generations to traditional knowledge. Several commercial sets are available, and the game appears in Hawaiian cultural education programs.
Konane is a remarkable example of how the same fundamental mechanic — jump-and-capture — appears independently across distant cultures. Without any known contact between Hawaii and medieval Europe, Konane and Checkers evolved structurally similar games. This parallel development suggests that jump-and-capture mechanics are simply intuitive to human game designers regardless of cultural background.