Why THERE IT IS?
We do not necessarily have to calculate relationships between numbers before we can begin to recognize them. They can already be apparent in the way the numbers are arranged – much as we recognize relationships and regularities in what we see around us. The brain draws on previous experience, anticipates, completes, and continuously checks whether the whole it recognizes is consistent with its parts.
THERE = in the arrangement of what is in front of you.
IT = the relationship that can be recognized.
IS = it is already present and can be discovered.
Abaku brings this natural way of recognizing patterns into the world of numbers. Numbers are arranged so that valid arithmetic relationships emerge between them. These relationships can be recognized and verified without following a single predetermined procedure.
What a person can do depends on the relationships they are able to recognize. The game environment of the Abaku method brings these relationships into view repeatedly. Familiar relationships become reinforced and their recognition increasingly automatic. Experience then makes it possible to anticipate patterns from partial information, and to recognize and discover new relationships.
From pencil and paper to online play
Abaku requires no special environment. Write a few digits on a piece of paper or a board and start looking for relationships between them.
The same principle can be used on a worksheet, explored with physical tiles, or played online. Sometimes one person works with the numbers; at other times it is a pair, a class, or players in different places.
The environment changes. The principle remains the same.
From preschool to university
The first version of Abaku was created more than twenty years ago. Since then, it has made its way into classrooms, teacher education, universities, mathematics and mathematics education conferences, and public online play.
During the 2025/26 school year, approximately 1.7 million valid arithmetic expressions were created in Abaku’s online school environment. Over seventeen years of online play, players have created approximately 190 million.
Since 2013, schools have competed in the nationwide Abaku League. Its thirteenth season concluded with the final at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University.
Abaku is also the subject of teacher seminars and training, university collaboration, teacher education, and academic work. It is used from preschool to university – and played outside education as well.
In 2012, Abaku received an award in the Topic of the Year: Mathematics category of the Czech 100 Best programme, organized by Comenius.
Academics’ Choice recognized Abaku with the 2022 Brain Toy Award for Mind-Building Excellence.
Atlas World Records certified Abaku as the Longest-running publicly available online multiplayer arithmetic game with a shared game state. Its documented public online history began on 18 May 2009.
The method has public educational records in MERLOT, OER Commons and Zenodo, its own DOI, and a dedicated article on the English-language Wikipedia.
How to start
The simplest way is to write a few digits on a board – for example, 123 – and try to find a relationship between them.
If you want to continue systematically, the website provides freely available rules, methodology, worksheets, templates, guides and videos. You can stay with pencil and paper, add physical tools, or move into the online environment.
For educators, we provide webinars, seminars and training. The online game is open to everyone.
The people around Abaku
Abaku was not created from a ready-made brief, nor did it emerge from a single discipline. Over more than twenty years, it has brought together people who might otherwise never have met: teachers and mathematicians, programmers and mathematics educators, students, players, and people who gave the project their time, experience, money or trust.
Some have spent years with Abaku; others made a difference at a single important moment. Together, they have helped it become what it is today: a method, a game, a school environment and a long-term open project.
And it still comes back to the same simple situation:
a few digits in front of you — and a relationship that is already there. Simply 112.
Count on us :)
