Talk:AYO

Ayo is a Yoruba game native to Nigeria, it can be clasified as a mancala game but its rules are distinct and advanced game play can be complex
I begin this article with a section from a song that many sporting teams who have had the pleasure of playing against any nigerian team would have heard, it goes: "Ayo,ayo,ayo, ayo, ayo" I will submit a musical renditon at a later date for those who are yet to hear this victory chant, but for the purpose of this article use the space in between the words as a pause. It is the simplicity of the rules and the levels of complexity but more especially in the grand tradition of african flamboyance, style. Advanced Ayo players take pleasure in how they win, and for a game that is best learnt from observation of how such simple ground rules quickly produce complex and often perplexing patterns of play. So to round up that reference to Ayo word as a post game chant of victory which you could transcribe as "You've been played" with an embedded implication of cerebral superiority, such is the reverence given to expertise of the game, chanting can lead to word play such that it also can mean "satisfaction of the type obtained after eating" "Ayo" literally could be said to mean "we are full, or satisfied, or well fed". Strategic victory will often have native spectators of a native sport like gidigbo (a form of wrestling) instinctively shouting Ayo

Now you have been aquanted with a sense of Ayo as a revered game of rare skill, I will like to clarify or indeed challenge a view in common manifest that Ayo is proof of mathematics and mathematical thinking from antiquity in Yoruba land, dexterity in numerical sequences and mastery of logical patterns widespread in everyday folk nigerian. What distinguishes a master is predominantly the style of play, hence the game can be very entertaining for the spectator, with charactaristic dialogue that transforms the game play sequences into pseudo theatrical sketches

Comparing the Ghanian game called Owari to the Ayo native to Yoruba land is like saying baseball is an alias for cricket, though they share similarities, they are completely different games at the end of the day; mastery of one is not characteristically transferable to the other, so the Wikipedia entry is in dire need of overhaul. The very best article on the Yoruba Ayo game is to be found on the BBC website called Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy h2g2 by a Yoruba man of the name Seth Of Rabi. The rules of the game have been encapsulated in a command line game called Console Ayo Cnua (talk) 21:55, 29 August 2009 (UTC)