Introduction

• How To Play Mao Card Game
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Cork Zone is raising funds for MAO Puzzle Card Game on Kickstarter! Card for TalkingLike, Share, Comment, Subscribe for more. Ending the game: A player who only holds one card in his hand must announce “Last card” as he plays his second-to-last card. Upon playing the last card held in his hand, the player must say 'Mao,' unless he plays a jack, in which case he has to say 'Mao Mao.' The first person to play all of his cards wins the game.

Mao: The Card Game Some Background Information As far as I know, Mao is a vreated to simulate Communist China and supposedly named after it's creator, Mao Zidong. Mao is a standard deck playing card game where the object is to get rid of all your cards, and this is the only thing that new players are told about this game. They are forced to figure out the rest of the rules by themselves. Every time a player breaks a rule, a penalty is called, and they must take it.

Mini Mao is a simple but rapidly-complicating card game for two or(ideally) more players, in which the winner of each round is allowed toadd a new rule to the game. All such rules are secret, and their effectsmust be deduced by the other players through observation andexperimentation.

Mini Mao is a cut-down version of Mao - it'sa lot friendlier to new players, without losing much of themystery, superstition, deduction or paranoia. The basic game idea isvery easy to remember, and you can teach a group to play in a couple ofminutes. (Concerned Mao veterans should be assured that this page doesnot give away any of the significant rules of Mao. I'll explain later.)

Setting up

To play Mini Mao, you'll need a regular deck of poker cards. Keep the jokers in if you've got them, but it's playable without.Decks with a couple of cards missing or bent arefine.

You can also play the game with a Tarot deck, a pile of Magic theGathering cards, some (varied) business cards, or any collection of distinctcards. If you're using something particularly unusual, agree amongyourselves on a few elements of the cards which will count during the game (eg. 'person'sname and the first city listed, on business cards'), and which should be ignored.

Basic Rules

To begin; shuffle the deck, and deal five cards to each player. Place the leftover cards face-down in the middle of the table - this is the draw pile.

Select a player to make up the secret rule for the first round. You can choose the person randomly, or go with the first player to think of one. (In a two player game, both players make up a secret rule.) Secret rules take the form of simple restrictions, side-effects or alterations to play.

Example rules

• 'You can't play a face card onto a face card.'
• 'Each card has to follow either the value or suit of the previous one.'
• 'Anyone playing a five must draw a card.'
• 'If someone plays an eight, everyone must pass their hand to the right.'
• 'Players can play ascending runs of consecutive number cards all in one go.'
• 'When playing a ten, start an additional discard pile with it at the top.'
• 'If you have four aces in your hand, reveal them to win instantly.'

When a secret rule has been invented, everyone picks their hands of cards up. The top card of the draw pile is flipped face-up onto the table, to form the discard pile.

Starting with the player on the rule inventor's left (or with a random player in a two-player game), players take turns one after another, proceeding clockwise, and each turn they must either:-

• Play a card - They choose a card from their hand and put it on top of the discard pile, face up.
• Pass - They draw one card from the top of the draw pile. (Usually you only pass if you can't play a card.)

If a player plays a card which breaks somebody's secret rule, thatrule's creator informs them that they have done so, but does notexplain the rule. The offender takes back their illegal play, and drawsa penalty card from the draw pile. (If they broke more than one ruleat once, they should be told this, but only get one penalty card in total.) This ends their turn.

If a rule has a trigger effect (eg. 'after playing a two, the nextplayer draws 2 cards' or 'after playing a four, move it to the bottom ofthe discard pile'), the rule creator should wait until the move is confirmed aslegal under everyone else's rules, and then step in and apply orannounce the effect without further explanation.(If two triggers clash, process them according to the clockwiseorder of their creators, from the active player.)

The first player to empty their hand wins the round. The deck isshuffled back together for a new round, and the winner gets to make up anew secret rule. This new rule operates in addition tothe secret rules from all previous rounds - the game gets more and morecomplicated as it progresses.

The game continues until it locks up - eventually the secret rules willmesh in an unexpected way meaning that no card can be legally played ontop of the discard pile, or that it is clearly impossible for any player toever empty their hand. At this point, declare the game over.

Good Secret Rules

When inventing a secret rule, keep in mind that rules are always harderto guess than you'd expect them to be. As a benchmark, something as simple as 'can't playa heart onto a club' is about right to open a game with. An excessively complicated rule ('You can't play an even red card on anodd black one, unless the second-previous card was of the same suit, orthe turn number is prime') won't ever be guessed, and you'll slowthe game down having to carefully check everyplay. And a blatantly abusive rule ('The creator of this ruleautomatically wins every round! And everyone has to give themmoney!') just means that your friends won't want to play Mini Maowith you again.

It helps a lot if players come up with a piece of jargon to describe eachof their rules - a verb or a noun to use when the rule isbroken or invoked. ('You can't play a three, that's offside!') This is useful for clarifying which particular rulehas been broken, when a player has won several rounds and has more thanone rule in effect. This removes one advantage that allows leading playersto get even further ahead - if I've won my second round and youhaven't worked out my first rule, it's now much harder for you to deduceeither of them, because you don't know which rule a given play is breaking.

Jargon is also useful for keeping the game intact - you might call agronk by mistake, and a third player (who's also worked out what a gronkis, and doesn't think that was one) will be able to question that, rather than assuming that adifferent rule has been broken. Jargon can be chosen to give a hint ofthe clue's nature - perhaps playing face cards onto one another is 'intrigue' -or can be deliberately misleading.

Jargon also impresses or confuses an external audience. An evolving Mao game islargely indistinguishable from a mysterious, elaborate card game.

Example Game

Bull, Gogol and de Worms are playing a new game of Mini Mao. It has been decided that Gogol will invent the first rule. (And that whenever they speak in bold, it means they're playing a card.)

Gogol : [thinks] 'Okay, I've got one.'

[ Gogol flips the top card of the draw pile - it's the three of diamonds - and everyone picks up their hands. ]

De Worms : 'Right. The eight of hearts.'

Bull : 'King of spades.'

Gogol : 'Five of clubs.'

De Worms : 'Two of diamonds.'

Gogol : 'Sorry, that's a Pip, you can't do that.'

[ De Worms grumbles, takes back the two of diamonds, and draws a penalty card. The top card is 'five of clubs' again, and it's Bull's go. ]

Bull : [tentatively playing a card] 'Is the two of clubs alright?'

Gogol : 'Sorry, no.'

[ Bull takes back his card and draws a penalty. ]

Gogol : [pleased] 'Nine of spades.'

De Worms : 'Three of hearts?'

Gogol : [deciding to be generous and give de Worms a clue] 'No, too low, you're Pipping again.'

[ De Worms takes back the card and draws a penalty. ]

Bull : 'I think I've got it. Ten of hearts?'

Gogol : 'That's fine. King of hearts.'

De Worms : 'Eight of hearts...?'

Gogol : [silent nod]

Bull : [triumphant] 'Nine of clubs!'

Gogol : [despairing at his cards] 'I pass.'

Jokers and Aces

If your deck includes any cards which don't comfortably fit the usual criteria of other cards, you can refer to them as jokers (perhaps they are jokers) - they can be played as if they were a copy of any other card from the deck; the player calls a card when they play it. Jokers are very useful to have in the game,as they can save situations where only a handful of cards are legal plays, and may alreadybe buried in the discard pile.

If you're playing with a poker deck, be sure to agree whether aces are high or low; ideally before the game. You can make their highness or lowness part of the secret rules ('Number cards cannot be played onto higher number cards, and aces are low for the purposes of this rule.'), but it can get confusing if two rules treat them differently.

Background

Mini Mao began when I was killing time with some friends and a deckof poker cards in 2002, and, on the subject of games with hidden rules,I vaguely recalled Mao - but only that it was a Bartokvariant, with secret rules and no initial ones (not even suitprogression). We played a dozen or so games of it like that, starting anew batch of rules whenever we got bored, and it worked.

Checking for 'official' Mao rules online when I got back near acomputer, though, I found that they were actually quite elaborate -standard Mao can be regarded as an already-begun game of MiniMao, where the game so far has already been played for a dozen or sorounds by some Californians you don't know. It forces you to play acertain type of game, with suit progression and number-effects, anddoesn't encourage restarting when the game locks.

Mini Mao is just a crystallisation of the rule-making, rule-breakingand rule-meshing aspects, putting the initial rule-maker only one rungabove everyone else, and making the game a lot more personal for thoseplaying it. It's a much kinder game to introduce to new people,particularly if you're the only one who's played it before. The worldneeds more games that you can explain in three minutes and play forhours, with a single deck of any old cards.

How To Play Mao Card Game

Mao (or Mau) is a card game of the shedding family, in which the aim is to get rid of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain unspoken rules. The game is from a subset of the Stops family and is similar in structure to the card game Uno or Crazy Eights.

The game forbids its players from explaining the rules, and new players are often told only 'the only rule you may be told is this one'. The ultimate goal of the game is to be the first player to get rid of all the cards in their hand. Specifics are discovered through trial and error. A player who breaks a rule is penalized by being given an additional card from the deck. The person giving the penalty must state what the incorrect action was, without explaining the rule that was broken.

There are many variants of Mao in existence. While beginners sometimes assume that the dealer (sometimes called the 'Chairman', the 'Mao' or the 'Grand Master') and other experienced players are simply making up possibly inconsistent rules (as in the games Mornington Crescent or Fizbin), the rules of Mao are consistent within each game and can be followed correctly.

History

Mao is most likely descended from the German game Mau Mau. It may have influenced the game Eleusis, which was published in Martin Gardner's column in the Scientific American in June 1959. Both of these games share similar principles of inductive reasoning.

Other inductive games in which not all players know the rules include Penultima and Zendo; however, the secret rules in those games are made up at the start of play and disclosed at the end of each round, and the scope and subject matter of Eleusis, Penultima or Zendo rules may be more explicit and closely circumscribed.

The White People, a supernatural short story written in 1899 by Arthur Machen, mentions 'the Mao Games' in a list of imagined mysteries connected to a young girl's perception of witchcraft.

Rules of Mao

Part of the traditional experience of Mao is a new player being forced to learn some or all of the rules of the game through observation and trial and error. Thus new players are not presented with a list of rules, as part of the game is to discover the rules through gameplay.

Mao rules can vary widely between different groups with no individual set of rules being canonical. This is one representative version containing more common elements.

Public rules

The exact set of rules divulged to new players varies between groups of players: some groups will say 'the only rule I can tell you is this one', others will reveal the goal of eliminating cards, and some might outline the basic rules and, in most cases, no rules are revealed at all. However much information is revealed, the players will explain that they are not allowed to reveal any more, and that the new player must deduce the full rules during play.

Rules of play

Each player is dealt an initial hand of the same number of cards; the exact number of cards dealt varies, but is generally either three or seven. The size of the deck also varies; it is good to have approximately one 52-card deck for every two or three players, but missing or extra cards are not important to gameplay. Two or more combined decks is common; matching card backs is not important. Once the cards are dealt, the remaining cards are placed face down in a stack in the middle of the table, and the top card from the stack is turned over and placed next to it. The dealer may then say 'this game of Mao has officially begun,' 'the game of Mao begins now,' 'Mao is a game of rules,' or any variant thereof. Play commences with the player to the left of the dealer and proceeds clockwise. Many variants penalize players for touching their cards or looking at their cards before the game begins or before the dealer looks at his or her cards.

A player may play any card from their hand matching the value or the suit of the card currently lying face-up on the table. The card played must be placed on top of this card, and the next player will have to play a card that matches the new one. If the player has no cards they can play, they must instead draw a new card from the top of the stack and, in some variants, say something such as 'pass', 'penalty card' or knock on the table to indicate inability to play a card. In some versions, when a player has one card remaining, they must say 'last card', in a manner similar to Uno, and when their final card is played, they must say 'Mao'.

Rules vary widely between variants. Some common rules include:

• A face value reverses order of play when played (commonly eight, sometimes two).
• Aces cause the next player to skip his turn.
• Jacks are wild, allowing any player to call out a new suit when a jack is played.
• Spade cards must be named when played (e.g., playing an ace of spades requires the player to say 'ace of spades').
• A seven forces the next player to draw a penalty card and requires the person who played it to announce 'have a nice day'. If the next player also plays a seven, he or she announces 'have a very nice day' and the player after that draws two penalty cards. The number of 'very's and penalty cards can increase as long as sevens can be played.

Variant rules

As might be expected in a game where the rules are unknown to many of the players, a wide variety of rulesets have developed.

The rules are typically changed between games, either at the beginning or with each successive game. Many times, this is simply that the winner of the last game is allowed to construct their own rule. This new rule is made known to the dealer or not, depending on the game, though in many varieties it is required for the dealer to know the rule in order to confirm its use and to enforce it. Often the winner of the last game is also made the new dealer.

In another variant, players abandon all normal rules and have each player make up a rule of his own at the very beginning of the game. This variant is known as 'Dutch Mao', or 'The People's Democratic Dictatorship', and probably several other names. It has no restrictions on what cards to play (other than those made by the players) and can get very confusing when rules conflict.

Speaking rules

Many of the rules of Mao involve speech. Mostly this means that the right thing must be said at the right time. Saying the wrong thing, or speaking at the wrong time, will usually incur a penalty.

No talking. In most variants of Mao, no unnecessary speech is allowed, and one may only speak when required to do so by the rules. For example, if one plays a 6 of spades (with the declaring spades rule active), one is required to say 'six of spades' and will be penalized for not doing so. But if one says, 'six of spades, I didn't forget this time' one will be penalized for the additional unnecessary speech. A different but common way to say this is 'obsessive verbosity'.

Point of order. Any player (or, in some variations, only the dealer) may at any time announce 'point of order' (could also be 'court of law', 'point of information', 'point of interest', 'pevis', or 'coffee break'), which is a signal for all players to put down their cards, while discussion takes place. A common abbreviation is 'P of O'. This time period basically is an intermission to game play and often comes with its own set of rules. Some versions penalize for abbreviating 'point of order' to 'P of O', which often confuses new players into thinking only the dealer or chairman is permitted to call a point of order.

The objective of a point of order is to clarify uncertain aspects of gameplay: particularly to allow disputes over penalties to be resolved. A point of order may also be used to accommodate out-of-game necessities such as eating, shuffling the discard pile to form a new draw pile, etc. Some variants may impose restrictions or penalties on a player's activities during a point of order:

• Players have to talk in the third person.
• Players are not allowed to say the phrase 'point of order' during a point of order (this may or may not be circumvented by saying abbreviations such as: 'point of O', 'P of order', 'P of O', 'point order', 'POO', 'P-Vo', 'Piffo', etc.).

The point of order ends when any player (or, depending on local rules, only the dealer, or only the player that called point of order) announces 'end point of order', 'point taken', 'point of disorder', or 'pick your cards up', at which point the cards are picked back up and play resumes.

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Thank you. It may be required to thank the dealer for each penalty card. Usually a player is given a reasonable amount of time to say 'thank you' before being penalized. Failure to say 'thank you' after a penalty card will usually result in another penalty card. One 'thank you' will usually cover for all occurrences where it was required.

Last card. Some variants require the player to announce when he only has one card left in his hand. This can be with the statement of 'last card', 'zin', 'one card left' or 'Mao' itself (similar to Uno).

End game. Upon playing his last card, a player must call out 'Mao', 'game over' or some other similar phrase to win. Should he forget to say 'Mao', or call it incorrectly, he is penalized. Stacking penalties at this point can cause much grief to a player who has gleefully placed his last card down and proclaimed 'Mao', only to discover that he has broken some rule.

Swearing. Many variants prohibit swearing.

Hail to the chairman. In some variants, playing a king requires the player to say 'hail to the chairman' or 'all hail the chief', and playing a queen requires the player to say 'hail to the chairwoman', 'hail the chairman's wife', 'all hail the chair lady', or 'all hail her Mighty Majesty the Queen of Spades'. Then the other players are sometimes required to say 'all hail'.

Have a nice day. Some versions of the game will require a player to tell the next player 'have a nice day' upon playing a seven. If the next person was John, the player would say 'have a nice day John'. Not doing so would result in a penalty card.

Special card names. In some variants, specific cards are given a name that is to be said instead of the real name of the card. For example, if one plays the nine of diamonds or a joker, he might say 'that's the badger!' Failure to say this would result in a penalty card.

Penalties

The normal penalty for any offence in Mao is one card per offence, though as previously stated, offences are consecutively applied, making some offences harsher than others.

There is usually a time limit of approximately 5 to 10 seconds for each turn. If exceeded, the player gets a penalty card for delay of game or late play and either loses his turn or gets another penalty every five seconds thereafter to either comply with any violated rules, or play a card. Ruthless players who are familiar with the rules sometimes exploit this rule to confuse new players who are unfamiliar with game mechanics that change the order of play: for example, players might look expectantly at a particular player other than the one whose turn it is as if waiting for him to play, then penalizing that player for playing out of turn if he plays, then immediately penalizing the player whose turn it actually is for delay of game.

For each penalty, unless the rules have been changed appropriately, the penalty card is given with the declaration of the rule violated.

In most cases where a penalty is called, one card is given to the offender. If the call was incorrect, the caller of a penalty can be given the card back with a reason of 'bad call' or 'frivolous card-giving'.

Adding rules

In many variants an additional rule is silently and secretly added to the game with each round. It is customary for a player (often the winner of the previous round, sometimes the next person to deal) to add one new rule to the game. In a game with only one round, players who have gotten rid of all their cards may make a rule for those still in the game. Sometimes a new rule is explained to one other player (sometimes the dealer, sometimes a runner-up winner of the round), both to ensure consistency of the rule and consistency of its enforcement.

There may also be additional rules that are already in effect at the beginning of the game, just to get things moving, and these rules may be known to all players, or perhaps only to the dealer. After many rounds, many new rules will accumulate. Naturally, only the person who created the rule will initially know what it is. The rules will vary from group to group, and from game to game, but most rules fall under one of the following four categories.

• When an event occurs, a player must perform an action (such as speaking a phrase or knocking on the table)
• When an event occurs, something about the game changes
• An action must always, or must never, be performed by players (such as holding cards in the left hand, or straightening the pile)
• Something fundamental about the gameplay changes (eg. all kings are treated as if they were jacks for all game purposes)

The triggering events in the example above can be anything. They might include playing a specific card (the ace of spades) or a specific type of card (any red three), but triggering conditions can become as complicated as their creator wishes, such as when someone plays the fourth card of the same suit or playing an odd-numbered card on top of an even-numbered card.

To create a rule, one could pick a triggering condition, and then an action and/or game effect. The spirit of the rule is generally something in good fun; while rules that unfairly sway the game in favor of one player or to the detriment of one specific player are quite easy to concoct ('Every time James plays a ten, he gets a penalty of ten cards'), they are also generally frowned upon as unsportsmanlike. Rarely do rules have a penalty of more than one card, but certain rules have a large penalty attached to them, usually the result of a cumulative rule.

Read more:

• Bartok (game), in which new rules are announced to all players when they are added
• Nomic, a game in which all rules are subject to change
• Calvinball, a fictitious game in which the rules change each time