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You will need

1. For the first stage, take it in turns to put a piece of your colour onto one of the nine circles on the board. Each circle can hold only one piece.
2. When both players have placed all their pieces, the game moves to the second stage. Players take it in turns to slide one of their pieces along a line onto the empty circle. You can only move one piece, and you can’t jump over other pieces. If you can’t move any of your pieces, skip your go.
3. Keep playing until someone gets three in a row!

What’s happening?

Achi is a game from Ghana, a country in West Africa. It’s a fun game – a bit like noughts and crosses or tic-tac-toe. In fact, the first few moves are essentially the same as noughts and crosses, but there’s a twist at the end.

Once all the pieces are placed, there’s only one space to move to. Often, that means you only have one possible move on your turn. It happens to your opponent too. This can be really useful – maybe you can force them to move out of the way and let you make a line!

If you want to get better at Achi, see if you can imagine what the board will look like after your move. Then, see if you can work out what your opponent will do in response. This is called ‘looking ahead’ or ‘thinking ahead’ and it’s really important to play some games well. Good chess players can look four or five moves ahead, and chess is a lot more complicated than Achi is!