This is a fictional example game of Mao, with commentary, to give people a rough idea of how a game is played.
Four players are playing:
- Anne is an experienced Mao player, and is the one who is getting the game started.
- Bob has played before, so he knows what to expect.
- Claire has never played Mao before and does not know anything about the game.
- David has also never played Mao before, and, like Claire, does not know the rules.
They are playing a fictional variant of Mao called "Toronto Mao".
Anne shuffles a deck of playing cards and places it face-down on the table at which all four players are sitting. This is the draw pile from which players will draw new cards during the game.
Everyone takes five cards from the draw pile.
Anne introduces the game with a standard preamble, during which she gives out a few basic rules for the benefit of the newcomers.
Anne takes a random card from the draw pile - the 5 of Diamonds - and lays it face-up to begin the game's play pile. This is where players will play cards to, if they are able to. The game has now started.
Anne plays the 3 of Diamonds - a valid play since you're allowed to play any card of the same rank or suit as the previous. This card has no special abilities and does not trigger any rules, so Anne's turn ends.
Bob's turn is next. He also knows which cards are valid to play, so he plays the Queen of Diamonds.
In this variant of Mao, players are not allowed to ask the rules, so Claire has immediately broken a rule by making this query. Under Mao rules, any player may now penalize Claire for the infraction, so Bob takes a card from the draw pile - a penalty card - and gives it to Claire.
Claire plays the 2 of Diamonds. This is a valid card, so her turn ends.
David's turn is next. He plays a 3 of Spades. This is not valid to play on a 2 of Diamonds (neither the suit nor rank match), so Anne gives him a penalty card from the draw pile. She also returns his invalid card to him, since he can't play it.
Bob believes that Anne just broke a rule by explaining that rule to David, as explaining the rules is also forbidden in this variant. He gives Anne a penalty card.
Anne, however, knows that she has not broken any rule here, since the rule she told David is one of the free rules that newbies are permitted to know (and which she gave at the start of the game). She therefore gives the penalty card to Bob, since this is a bad call.
Bob waits for a few moments. David has not yet played a card, since he doesn't know what to do; however, this delay soon causes him to run afoul of the rule that requires players to play within 10 seconds. Bob waits for this to happen, then gives another penalty card to David.
David picks up a card and takes it into his hand. This ends his turn.
The turn order has come back to Anne. She plays an Ace of Diamonds. The Ace makes the next player, in this case Bob, miss a turn. Bob knows this, so he does nothing.
It is therefore now Claire's turn, but Claire doesn't know what the Ace does and assumes Bob hasn't played yet.
Bob waits 10 seconds, at which point the "Failure to play within 10 seconds" rule triggers. He then gives Claire a penalty card.
In this variant of Mao, asking whose turn it is is also against the rules, so Bob gives Claire another penalty card.
Unfortunately, this statement breaks yet another rule - in this variant, players are not allowed to say things that are untrue. Bob gives Claire a third penalty card.
You can probably see at this point why some people hate Mao. It's probably best to stress to newbies that they're expected to learn by trial and error, and that they shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes.
Claire finally plays the Jack of Diamonds, which is valid since the previous card was a Diamond. The Jack allows any player to call out a suit, which will become the new valid suit. Claire doesn't know this of course, but Anne and Bob both do.
Bob had wanted to call Clubs, but Anne beat him to it. Claire and David don't know what just happened, although David has a suspicion. He tries playing the 3 of Spades again. This is now valid, since Anne called Spades to make that the new valid suit. However, there is also a rule that any player who plays a Spade has to say the name of the card, which David failed to do, so Bob gives him a penalty card.
In most versions of Mao, including this one, if you are required to say something, you are continually penalized until you do. David has not yet done so, so after a few moments Bob gives David another penalty card.
Anne plays a 4 of Spades, since David's turn ended when he played the 3 of Spades.
Bob feels a little unsure about the way Anne made that call. He gives Anne a penalty card.
Anne knows this is a bad call, so she returns Bob's penalty card and gives him a penalty instead. As a shortcut, Bob simply takes the penalty card he tried to give to Anne, instead of redrawing.
Unfortunately, this version of Mao has specific rules which cover this situation, and Anne knows them.
Notice that Anne avoided saying the name of the game (Mao) as this would result in a 3-card penalty for her if she did.
Since it has been Bob's turn while they were arguing the rules, Anne gets ready to give Bob a penalty card for not playing within 10 seconds. However, Bob was ready for that and quickly plays an 8 of Spades. The 8 has a special ability - it reverses the order of play, so it's now Anne's turn again. However, she first gives Bob a penalty card, because in his haste, he forgot a rule.
Claire doesn't realize the turn order has just been reversed, so she plays a card, believing it to be her turn. Players are not allowed to play cards out of turn, so Anne gives her a penalty card.
Anne plays an 8 of Hearts, which reverses the turn order again, so it's Bob's turn now. She also has only one card left, which requires her to say "Last card".
Bob plays a 9 of Hearts.
Claire's turn is next. Claire is now totally lost as to whose turn it is, but she guesses - correctly - that it's hers. She plays a Jack of Hearts, which, like before, allows a player to call out a suit.
Anne's call changes the valid suit to Diamonds. Since she also called Last card on her last turn, she only has one card left, so this means her last card is almost certainly a Diamond.
David's turn is next. He plays the King of Diamonds ''.
Anne's turn is next. She plays the 9 of Diamonds, and thus has no cards left, which means she must say "Mao" to win the round. However, the 9 of Diamonds also requires her to say "That's the badger". Importantly, this is a situation where the order of speech does matter - when saying "Mao", it must be the last thing said. Fortunately, Anne knows this.
Anne has won, so the round ends.
Bob puts down his cards.
Anne thinks of a new rule to add to the game. Since the new players haven't quite got the hang of playing cards yet, she goes for a simple one that doesn't alter gameplay too much: she changes the name of the Spades suit to "Shovels", such that players will now have to refer to those cards as Shovels whenever they are required to name that suit. The other players don't know this yet but will soon find out when Anne penalizes them for not saying it. Anne takes all the cards and shuffles them to start a new round.
The game continues as before, but Anne can now penalize people for breaking her new rule (and when other players figure it out, they too can enforce this new rule).
