The board used to play Anywoli has two rows of twelve holes each. Anuak call these holes "oto" (pl.: "udi"), meaning "house". At game setup, four seeds are placed in each hole. Seeds are called "nyibaré", meaning "children (sons) of the board game".
Players take turns; each owns one of the rows.
At his or her turn, the player takes all the seeds from one of his/her holes and relay sows them counterclockwise. The sowing ends when the last seed falls in an empty hole or when a capture occurs.
Capture occurs whenever, during play, a hole holds exactly four seeds: those seeds are removed from the game, and taken by the player who owns the hole. In the special case where the last seed of a sowing is placed in a hole holding three seeds (thus forming a four-seed hole), the captured seeds are taken by the player who is moving, independent of who owns the hole. This also ends the player's turn.
When only 8 seeds are left on a board, the player who moved first at the beginning of the game captures them and the game ends. The winner is the player who captured most seeds.