MEET
The women
Meet Assel Daliyeva: 12-time Togyzqumalaq World Champion & 2 times Oware Nomad Champion
Assel Daliyeva, born in 1989 in Kazakhstan, is a Togyzqumalaq legend. She has been Togqyzqumalaq World Champion 12 times, Nomad Champion in Oware and Togyzqumalaq and in her office she holds countless shelves full of medals, tropheys, certificates…and books, written by herself.
As an athlete in Togzyqumalaq she has achieved the greatest title of those available for Togzyqumalaq: Honorary Masters of Sports; in oware, she holds the title of Master. Beyond her career as an athlete, she has written 12 books on Togyzqumalaq, translated to 5 languages. She has plans for at least other 3, and currently combines her athlete career with training future and current togyzqumalaq champions, as Honorary Coach of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Assel plays togyzqumalaq and oware professionaly, but she is also familiar with other mancala and abstract games which she plays from time to time, like bestemshe, mangala or chess.
But her path to become a legend has not been easy. In the interview, we talked about her story and how she started to play Togyzqumalaq back in 1996:
“My mother met a team of togyzqumalaq in a train journey, as they were going to competition. She found the game very interesting and after that she bought a board for me and my brother. The togyzqumalaq athletes showed her how to play, and she tuaght us when we arrived home”.
She recalls fondly that her mother did not know well the rules so when she and her brother started to play at home they did not play according to the rules. Soon after that, Assel’s mother signed her into the local togyzqumalaq club, where the legend began.
In 2007 she travelled to the Czech Republic, where she discovered many other abstract games and discovered a new world of board games, that she also learned. She learned Oware back in the Czech Republic and fell in love with it: “I understood the game and developed a great interest in it”. Since 2015, she started to improve her Oware skills, definitely understood the game and became bronze medallist in a tournament in Switzerland the same year.
Her love for togyzqumalaq does not come from competition; far from it. She is a legend but her passion is about the people she meets. As she told me: “I think about what is I love most about togyzqumalaq as I get older. For me the important thing is the people. In togzyqumalaq there are very beautiful people. I love them.”
As for other women in mancala, the reason behind the passion for Togyzqumalaq for Daliyeva comes from pain. Her parents died when she was very young, so she and her brother had to grow up before it was their time, living by themselves. In the interview, she wondered:
“Why did I not grow up a bad girl? I could have been. I grew up free with no adults taking care of me. The reason is that Togyzqumalaq and the people on it saved me. Instead of smoking and drinking they read books and trained. I did the same. My togyzqumalaq teachers and friends taught me, helped me, lokked after me. Togyzqumalaq saved me”.
Her first competition was in 1999, the Kazkahstan National Championship. She was a talent and won the competition. That gave her the opportunity to become an international athlete: “Togyzqumalaq was the way to see the world. Otherwise I would have not had the chance to meet other people, to know other cultures”. Her last obtained medal is a bronze medal in the VII Asian Championship held in Almaty (November 2025), in the category of blitz
The rest is history. Her career as an athlete is impecable. Now she tries to do the same for her students, for her friends in the abstract game world. As a curious person, Assel is always learning. She told me she loved to learn from the eyes of the people she meets: “you see things in another way. You learn about everyone. We become a family”.
As Togyzqumalaq is Kazak national intellectual sport, Assel tells me “competition is fierce”. And the reason? “the prizes for winners are no joke: money, cars…but mostly glory”. Her nickname in the togzyqumalaq world used to be “buffalo”, which describes her the best way possible: powerful, corageous and fearless; a nickname that has been earned as she has been glorious tn the game since she was 18.
Asked about women participation and recogniction of women achievements in intellectual sports in Kazakhstan, Daliyeva states that is hard for women to have the recognition that they deserve, as cultural and religious beliefs sometimes get in the way to see women as equals. In this regard, her advice to girls and women in mancala is “to enjoy every game, to laugh, togyzqumalaq is both a beuatifuland a very useful game. Do not be nervous, just enjoy”.
From my perspective, Togyzqumalaq in Kazakhstan seems like a very good opportunity for those women who want to gain economic independence. In this regard, Toguzqumalaq may also offer women choice.
