How to play
Sholo Guti
Also known as Sixteen Soldiers, 16 Guti, Solah Goti, Solah Guttiya, Bead 16, Hewakam Keliya
- 10M+ downloads
- On Google Play since 2020
- Free to play
What is Sholo Guti?
Sholo Guti is a traditional two-player strategy game long played in Bengal, in both Bangladesh and eastern India. The name comes from the Bengali words sholo (sixteen) and guti (piece or bead), and each player commands sixteen pieces on a board of lines and intersections. Pieces step along the drawn lines and capture by hopping over an enemy piece onto the empty point directly beyond, the same short jump used in draughts.
How to play Sholo Guti
Setting up the board
The board is an alquerque grid, five rows of five points joined by horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, with a triangular extension attached to two opposite sides. That gives 37 points in total, not the 25 of a plain five-by-five grid, and the triangles are what make room for 32 pieces. Each player fills the two ranks of the grid nearest them plus the triangle behind them, for sixteen pieces each; only the middle row of five points is empty when play begins.
The rules, step by step
- Players alternate turns and use one piece per turn, either making a move or making a capture, never both.
- A move is one step along a drawn line to an adjacent empty point. Pieces may move in any direction from the very first move, including sideways and backwards, but a diagonal step is only legal where a diagonal line is actually drawn through that point.
- To capture, your piece must stand next to an enemy piece with an empty point directly beyond it on the same straight line. Jump over the enemy piece, land on that empty point, and remove the captured piece from the board.
- Chain captures are allowed: if the piece lands where another jump is available, it may keep jumping in the same turn, changing direction along the lines as it goes.
- Whether a capture must be taken varies by region and by version. Commonly it is optional, and the rules recorded by Parker let a player decline a jump or stop a chain at any point, but many house rules and digital versions make capturing compulsory as it is in alquerque.
- There is no promotion and no re-entry. A piece keeps the same powers all game no matter how far it advances, and a captured piece is out for good.
How to win
You win by capturing all sixteen of your opponent's pieces. It is also common to count a win when the opponent has no legal move left, and a position in which neither side can force any further captures is usually agreed a draw.
Strategy tips
- Keep your pieces backed up. A piece can only be jumped if the point directly behind it in line is empty, so a second piece sitting on that landing point makes the first one impossible to take.
- Fight for the centre. The middle point of the grid has eight lines running through it, more than any other point, so a piece there attacks and defends in twice as many directions.
- Do not push a lone piece forward. An isolated advanced piece has nothing supporting its landing points and is usually the piece that starts a losing exchange.
- Set traps rather than grabbing material. Offering one piece is strong when the reply leaves your opponent lined up for a chain jump that takes two or three back.
- Bring your triangle pieces out early. The triangle points, especially the apex, connect to very few others, so pieces left there are slow to reach the fight and easy to shut in.
Origin and history
Sholo Guti belongs to the alquerque family of jumping games.
Alquerque, from the Arabic al-qirkat, is thought to have originated in the Middle East, appears in literature by the late 10th century, and had its rules recorded in the 13th-century Libro de los juegos commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile; it is widely regarded as an ancestor of modern draughts.
The South Asian form was documented by Henry Parker in Ancient Ceylon (1909), who described it in Sri Lanka as Hewakam Keliya, the war game, and noted that it was also played in India and Bengal under the name solah guttiya, sixteen balls.
It has always been a folk game rather than a codified sport: the board is often simply scratched into the ground and played with pebbles, seeds or shells, which is why the fine details of the rules differ from village to village.
Frequently asked questions
Sixteen each, which is what the name means: sholo is sixteen and guti is a piece or bead in Bengali. That is 32 pieces on a 37-point board, so only five points, the middle row, are empty at the start.
Both games capture with the same short jump, which is no accident, since draughts and Sholo Guti both descend from alquerque. The differences are the board and the powers of the pieces: here you play on the intersections of a lined board rather than on dark squares, every piece may move and capture in any direction from the first move, and there is no promotion to a king.
It depends on the version. The rules recorded by Henry Parker make capturing optional, so you may ignore an available jump or stop a chain whenever you like. Alquerque, the parent game, makes capture compulsory and removes a piece that fails to take. Many modern and digital versions follow the compulsory rule, so settle it before the first move.
Yes. After a jump, if the piece now stands next to another enemy piece with an empty point directly beyond it, it may jump again, and it may change direction between jumps as long as each individual jump runs in a straight line along the drawn lines.
Bara Guti, also called Baro Guti or Bara Tehni, is the smaller version, played on the plain alquerque board of 25 points with twelve pieces a side and the centre point left empty. Movement and capture work the same way; the game is just shorter and sharper because the triangular extensions and the extra four pieces a side are gone.
