Mao

The Game of Mao!

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Mao (rhymes with now) is perhaps unlike any card game you have ever played. It's perhaps best summed up by the delightfully self referential statement: "The only rule I can tell you is this one." In case you're not a mathematician, what this means is that the only rule I can tell you is that I can't tell you any of the rules*.

So what is Mao? I have no idea where it was developed, since it seems to be fairly widespread, but I was taught it by Duncan Mortimer, who learned it at the Australian Phyiscs Olympiad a few years ago. Supposedly, according to Wikpedia and this site, it may have been created around the idea of communist China (where, supposedly, no one knows all the rules, by you're still penalised if you break them) or perhaps a derivative a German game called Mau-Mau.

It's a game best played with four or more people, at a pinch with three and a stretch with ten. Optimal, I'd say, is about six or seven. You need multiple decks of cards, and it doesn't matter if they're not identical, with roughly one deck for every three or four people playing. (The more cards the better!)

Game play is relatively simply, at least initially, but it can sometimes be quite confusing if its the first time you've played. Everyone sits around the table, and each player is dealt 5 cards. Then the game begins! Unfortunately, I can't tell you what to do next, since I can't tell you the rules! But somehow, you need to get rid of all your cards. When you do so, you've escaped Mao. But here's what makes the game so much fun - now, you can deal yourself back in and make up your own rule which you don't tell anyone, but enforce just the same as any other rule! After a few rounds, the game gets deliciously complicated (* OK, so I just told you another rule, but that's just of necessity :)

So, you might ask, if I can't tell you the rules, then how can I learn to play? Following in the footsteps of Ka Wai Tam, I've written an example of how a game might play using our local variants. (Perhaps EBMao for Error Bar Mao?) Games can go for anywhere from 15 minutes to six hours or longer...we only went home one night because all public transport was finishing!)