MAU MAU Rules

April 27, 2012  From MO, Father of SMO. Toe/OHO/Bro/Bra/Stoned/Dano/SMO (sorry if I missed some of your Mau-Mau names…) –

I taught a couple of my co-workers (Jello and Nardo) MAU-MAU about 15 years ago. Here are the rules (as I remember them)…. Deal 7 cards.  Dealer calls the direction of play (person to the right or left) and turns over first card in stack. To play you match suit or face value. You can play multiple cards of same face value in one turn as long as one of them matches the suit of the card on the stack. If you can’t play you pick one card from stack. If the card you pick allows you to play then you can play immediately, otherwise the next player is up. When you are down to 1 card left you have to call “last card”. Failure to do so and if someone calls you on it is a one card penalty. Special cards:

7 – next player picks up 2

8 – skip

J – wild

K – Reverse direction

You can play multiple cards of the same face value. Multiple 7s add 2 cards per 7. Multiple Ks re-reverse per K

Multiple 8s skip one per 8 played

When you play a J you call the suit you want the play to continue with. If someone plays a 7 on you and you have a 7 in your hand, you can play it and the next person has to pick up 4 cards (or 2xthe number of 7s played) and you don’t pick up any cards. Hand ends when someone plays all their cards. If you go out with a J everyone’s points double. Go out with multiple Js – everyone’s score doubles again per J

Scoring:

A – 1
2-10 – face value
J – 50 unless you didn’t have a chance to play it then it’s worth 20 (i. e. the game ended with someone playing one or more 7s on you or you pick a J up because you can’t play a card and someone goes out before you get a turn, etc. ). Q – 30
K – 40

The player who won the hands gets -10 points. Game goes to 200 unless SMO is behind, then we play until SMO wins…. Suit names:

Hearts – Hurts
Spades – Spuds
Diamonds – Mondos
Clubs – Puppy feet

Most important rule of all: If you don’t use someone’s Mau-Mau name and someone calls you on it then you have to pick up a card. That’s why Toe never won…among the other more obvious reasons…

Another important rule we added just for SMO (at the top of Mammoth Mountain Elev 11,000’) – If you are caught cheating then you pick up a card. If you notice in the Whitney Mau Mau picture below, SMO is trying to see what cards OHO is holding. Moe.
If anyone is interested here is a Wiki link for some History on Mau Mau. OHO