Kōnane or rarely mū^[1] is a two-player Hawaiian strategy board game invented and played by its native people. The game is played on a rectangular board and begins with black and white counters filling the board in an alternating pattern. Players then hop over one another's pieces, capturing them similar to checkers or draughts, though both players' pieces mingle in position by default occupying every square of the board unlike the separate sides in checkers; the objective and winning conditions of the game are also completely different.^[2] All moves in kōnane are capturing moves, captures are made in an orthogonal direction (not diagonally) by "jumping" over the opposite color piece into an empty space, and in a multiple-capture move, the capturing piece may not change direction.^[3][4] The first player unable to capture is the loser.^[3][2] The word mū may had referred the act of capturing people as slaves or sacrifice.^[1]

Kōnane has some resemblances to games of the English leap frog, fanorona in Madagascar and main cuki (also spelled chuki or tjuki) among the Malays and Javanese of Southeast Asia.^[5] Before contact with Europeans, the game was played using small pieces of white coral and black lava on a large carved rock which functioned as both the board and a table. The Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park has one of these stone gameboards on its premises.^[6] It was recorded in the Kumulipo, it was also noted by James Cook described the game during his only visit to Hawaii on his third and final voyage prior to his death there.^[7]

The Bishop Museum organized the first professional tournament of the game in February 2026.^[8]

The game is traditionally played on a rectangular board (papa, also papa mū "capture board" or papamū) consisting of an even and odd number of columns and rows, though modern kōnane is often played on a square board with an even number of both columns and rows; modern versions use felt boards and marbles as pieces.^[9] Pieces are laid out on in the beginning of the game in an alternating checkerboard pattern of two colors on top of a table, on the ground, or on any flat surface sometimes with indented (puka). Furthermore, the game can be generalized to any size geometrically.^[4] In practice, square kōnane boards can range from 6×6 to over 14×14.^[10] Traditional rectangular board dimensions include 6×7, 8×9, 9×13, 14×17,^[7] and 13×20.^[2][4]

The game begins with all the pieces on the board (or table, ground, etc.) arranged in an alternating pattern.^[2][4][10] Players decide which colors to play (black or white).

1. Black traditionally starts first and must remove one of their pieces either from the middle of the board, where there are 2 black and 2 white pieces that are diagonally opposite each other or remove a black piece from one of the four corners of the board (which will also consist of 2 black and 2 white pieces diagonally opposite from each other).^[2][10]
2. White then removes one of their pieces orthogonally adjacent to the empty space created by Black. There are now two orthogonally adjacent empty spaces on the board.^[2][10]
3. From here on, players take turns capturing each other's pieces. All moves must be capturing moves.^[3] A player captures an enemy piece by hopping over it with their own piece similar to draughts; however, unlike draughts, captures can be done only orthogonally and not diagonally. The player's piece hops over the orthogonally adjacent enemy piece and lands on a vacant space immediately beyond.^[2][4] The player's piece can continue to hop over enemy pieces, but only in the same orthogonal direction. The player can stop hopping over enemy pieces at any time, but must at least capture one enemy piece in a turn. After the piece has stopped hopping, the player's turn ends. Only one piece may be used in a turn to capture enemy pieces.^[3][10]

The player unable to make a capture is the loser; their opponent is the winner.^{[3][2][4][10]} It is impossible to draw in Kōnane, because one player eventually cannot perform a capture.

Bob Hearn proved that Kōnane is PSPACE-complete with respect to the dimensions of the board, by a reduction from nondeterministic constraint logic.^[11][12] There have been some positive results for restricted configurations. Ernst^[5] derives Combinatorial-Game-Theoretic values for several interesting positions. Chan and Tsai^[13] analyze the 1 × n game, but even this version of the game is not yet solved. In the 2008 paper "Konane has infinite nim-dimension", Carlos Pereira dos Santos and Jorge Nuna Silva showed that Kōnane contains all other combinatorial games.^[14][15]

Brainvita, also called Peg Solitaire, is a game for one person, in which the rules of Kōnane are used to move clockwise in turns. The procedure and aim of the game are identical to the original.

• Fanorona - board game played by the Malagasy of Madagascar
• Mū tōrere - board game played by the Māori of New Zealand

• Bell, R. C. (1983), "Konane", The Boardgame Book, Exeter Books, pp. 132–33, ISBN 0-671-06030-9
• Murray, H. J. R. (1978). A History of Board-Games other than Chess (Reissued ed.). Hacker Art Books Inc. p. 97. ISBN 0-87817-211-4.

• Konane: Hawaiian Checker game Gail Kaapuni, Waiakeawaena and Kalanianaole Elementary Schools, Hawaii
• Konane at BoardGameGeek
• Article about kōnane from Rolling Stone, September 20, 2025