Mau Mau (game)
This article is about the card game. For the Kenyan anti-colonial rebellion, see Mau Mau Uprising.Mau Mau is a
card game for 2 - 5 players that is popular in
Germany,
Brazil and some other areas. Whoever gets rid of his cards first wins the game.
Mau Mau is very similar to the game
UNO, both belonging to the larger
Crazy Eights or
Shedding family of card games. However Mau Mau is played with a regular deck of playing cards.
The game is played with a regular deck of
playing cards. In Germany, most decks contain neither card values below 7 nor Jokers (as they are made for the national game of
Skat), however Mau Mau is playable with any deck.
The players are dealt each a hand of cards (usually 5). The rest is placed face down as drawing stack. At the beginning of the game the topmost card is revealed, then the players each get a turn to play cards.
You can play a card if it corresponds to the suit or value of the open card. E.g. on a 10 of spades, only other spades can be played or other 10s. If a player is not able to, he draws one card from the stack. If he can play this card, he may do so, otherwise he keeps the drawn card and passes his turn.
If the drawing stack is empty, the playing stack (except for the topmost card) is shuffled and turned over to serve as new drawing stack.
Some cards are special, because they affect the game directly -- a lot of variations exist in this matter:
* If a 7 is played, the next player must draw two cards at the beginning of his turn.
* If an ace (in few regions the 8) is played, the next player skips his turn.
* A Jack can be played regardless of the suit or value of the topmost card on the playing deck. Subsequently the player can decide freely the suit that has to be played next.
Rules for Mau Mau have existed at least since
1976.
As soon as a player plays his last card, he must say "mau" to win the game. If the last card is a Jack, he must say "mau mau" for double score. If a player forgets to say "mau", he must draw cards as penalty (usually 4) and hasn't won.
* Cards of the same value (not cards of the same suit, though!) can be played all together within one turn.
* If a 7 is played, the next player, who would have to draw two cards, can pass this penalty on to the subsequent player by playing a 7 too. This subsequent player must then draw 4 cards. He too could play a 7, requiring the next player to draw 6, etc.
* You may not play a Jack on another Jack.
* A popular variation is that a player must already say "mau" (or alternately "last card") as soon as he plays the next-to-last card and has just one card left in his hand. Failure to do so usually means the player has to draw 2 or 4 cards.
* A 9, a 10 or an
ace are sometimes used to reverse the direction of play (
clockwise and counterclockwise) or to let the player take another turn before reversing. A player who fails to notice that the direction was reversed usually has to draw some number of cards as a penalty.
* In some regions an ace is used instead of the 8 to let the next player skip his turn. Alternately, an ace lets all other players skip, so that whoever played it plays again right afterwards.
* You may not end the game with a card that enables you to take another turn: you must then draw a card. If you can play it, you have won, otherwise the game goes on.
* An interesting variation is that whenever a Queen is played, players have to try and grab one from a stack of objects (coins, matches, etc.) of which there are one less than the number of players. The player who fails to grab an object "didn't get a girl" and he must draw 2 or 4 cards.
* In some regions you may not play cards in the same turn that you had to draw cards. Hence a 7 would result in the next player both having to draw two cards and effectively skipping his turn.
* In one variation, after each hand is over the players except the one who won the hand count the points in their hands; the player with the most points is eliminated from the competition and play continues. Usually, kings are worth 50, queens and jacks are worth 20 each, aces are 1 each, and 2-10 have face value.
In
Austria and
Bavaria a variation on the game is known as
Neunerln.
In
Portugal, a variation on this game is called Puque (reads as Poock, in English). The rules are almost the same, with the 2 replacing the 8 as the "skip turn" card. One must say Puque when one plays his next-to-last card, and doesn't have to say anyhting different to end with a Jack, still getting the double score.
Switch
In the
UK, a variation on the game is known as
Switch. The common rule differences are that two rather than seven causes the following player to pick up two cards, playing a jack will "jack it back", forcing the player to take another go before reversing the turn order, and that aces change the suit and can be played during the turn regardless of the present suit - the player playing the ace may state any suit as the suit the next player must play to. When the player plays his next-to-last card, he must say "last card", or be forced to pick up seven cards. Generally, numerical effects can be stacked and passed along, as with the above mentioned variation regarding sevens in Mau Mau, though this rule also applies to eights, with the number of turns missed by the next player increasing by one for each eight played in succession. Other rules allow placing multiple cards of the same value or multiple cards of the same suit and subsequent value. e.g. on a ten of Spades, a player could play three sixes, provided that the one at the bottom of the group was the six of spades. Alternatively, the player could play the three, four and five of spades. Some variations include a "chaining" rule, where the player can link these rules together, and could play the three, four, five and six of spades, the six of hearts, and the six, seven and eight of diamonds. As Switch has generally higher pick up penalties than Mau Mau (some variants include a requirement to pick up five upon the play of a black king, which like a two can be increased and passed along with another black king, for a total of ten cards), this helps the game progress faster, especially if the deck is not shuffled when there are no more face-down cards.
David Parlett (in 'The Penguin Book of Card Games', 1978) describes a UK version of Switch where the above rule for the aces applies, but an ace can only be played if the player can play no other card. In this variation no other cards have a special purpose, which keeps it simple for children. Parlett points out that the game works fine for 6-8 players if 2 52-card packs are used.
*
Mao (game)*
UNO (game)
