Mau-Mau (card game)

Mau-Mau is a card game for two to five players that is popular in Germany, Austria, South Tyrol, the United States, Brazil, Greece, Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Netherlands. Mau-Mau is a member of the shedding family, to which the game Crazy Eights with the proprietary card game Uno belongs. Other similar games are Whot! or Switch. However, Mau-Mau is played with standard French or German-suited playing cards.
Mau-Mau surfaced in Germany shortly after the Second World War. In 1961, it was still "a very recent game" that had gained "astonishing popularity within just a few years".
Its rules were first published in 1958 and although "it appeared quite suddenly... anyone who has played it once will be enthralled by it... Its particular charm lies in its cheerful, light entertaining character and perfectly refined simplicity. Anyone can play it in five minutes".
The game is typically played with a 32-card pack, either a French-suited pack from which the Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives and Sixes have been removed or, especially in Europe, with a 32-card German pack. For more than five players, two packs of cards may be used.
The aim is to be first to get rid of all of one's cards. Most of the time, the winner will have to say something at this point, usually "Mau". If the winner fails to say this, they do not win and instead must take penalty cards. If a player's last card is a Jack, they must reply differently, usually saying "Mau Mau".
Before the start of the game, a player who is not the dealer cuts the deck four times. If the player cuts 1–3 significant cards, they’re allowed to keep them if they want. However, if four cards where the cards are cut are found to be power cards, the deck needs to be reshuffled and the cut is repeated. The players are each dealt a hand of cards (usually 5 or 6). The rest is placed face down as the stock or stack. At the beginning of the game the topmost card is revealed and placed face up on the table then the players take it in turns to play their cards.
A card can only be played if it corresponds to the suit or value of the face-up card. For example, if it is the 10 of spades, only another spade or another 10 can be played (but see below for Jacks). If a player is not able to do this, they draw one card from the stack; If they can play this card, they may do so; otherwise, they keep the drawn card and their turn ends. When the drawing stack is empty, the playing stack (except for the topmost card) is shuffled and turned over to serve as a new drawing stack.
The 7, 8, Jack, and Ace of all suits are significant cards:
In Austria and Bavaria, a variation is the 32-card game known as Neuner ("Nines"); in this variation, a Joker is added and the Nines are used as wild cards.
The most popular variant of this game in the Czech Republic is called Prší (raining in Czech). It is played with a deck of 32 German cards (four card suits, values from 7 to Ace) and has almost identical rules with several differences:
Some may play with less common modifications:
A player can play multiple cards at once if these requirements apply:
Playing multiple power cards at once is typically treated as playing a single one. The exception is sevens, where the number of cards for the next player to draw accumulates, so the next player has to draw 2 times the number of played sevens, or play another seven. (When playing the variation with ♥10 being a power card, rules differ from group to group.)
With certain combinations of homebrew rules and 5 or more players it is possible that somebody has to draw more cards than are available on the table. Solutions include adding more decks to the game or decreasing the penalties of power cards.
Players play cards face-down. The card's rank and suit is spoken by the player. If the next player believes the first one, the card is accepted as "canon" and game continues. If the next player doesn't believe the card is as specified by the first player, the card is revealed. If the first player told the truth, the next player is penalized: they must draw one or more cards, miss their turn, and so on (the details vary in different versions of the game). If the first player lied, the first player is penalized (he usually returns the card to their hand and miss their turn, draw one or more additional cards etc.)
The game known as هفت خبیث (Evil Seven in Persian) in Iran is a variation of Mau-Mau, sharing similar mechanics and utilizing Jacks and Sevens in the same manner. However, there are a few notable distinctions:
In the Netherlands Mau-Mau is mainly known as Pesten (meaning bullying). It is played with a deck of 54 or 55 cards (52 standard plus two or three jokers); multiple decks may be shuffled together if there are too many players to comfortably play with only one deck. The main differences with Mau-Mau are as follows, though there is typically some variation in the rules depending on the group of players.
In Portugal, a variation on this game is called Puque. The rules are almost the same, with the 2 replacing the 8 as the "skip turn" card. A player must say Puque when playing their next-to-last card, and doesn't have to say anything different from end with a Jack, still getting the double score.
Variants are called Чешский Дурак (Czech Fool), Фараон (Pharaoh), Крокодил (Crocodile) or 101. Usually played with 36-card, French pack. The rules are similar to Czech and Slovak rules.
In Slovakia, the game is called Faraón (Pharaoh). It is the same as in the Czech Republic with the following exceptions:
A Swiss version of the game called Tschau Sepp, played with 36 cards, has existed at least since the early 1960s.