Free lesson · Level 1 of 10 · Beginner
Who is actually sitting there
Seven of the ten play for the town and three play against it, while exactly two players in the room have a question to ask at night.
So walk the ten seats. Six are ordinary town players with no ability whatever, and you will hold that card more often than all the others put together. The seventh is the sheriff: from the second night, the sheriff points to one player and learns which side that player is on. On the first night the sheriff only signals their role to the host.
Now look at the three on the other side. They were shown to each other before anybody spoke, so they never have to look for partners, and their leader, the don, spends the nights on one question that never changes: is this the sheriff? The arithmetic stops being comfortable once you notice who is left over. Eight of the ten sit through every night with nothing to ask, and six of those eight have no ability at all. Say you draw an ordinary card tonight, which happens six times in ten. In the morning somebody announces that they checked seat four, and you have no way on earth to know whether that is true.
Seven and three stops being true the moment a club deals an extra card, so ask which cards are in tonight before you count anything.
Then count the table in your head before the first speech: seven, three, and one private question on each side. Do it silently, because saying it aloud outside your own minute is a foul. Most games are won and lost from the six with nothing to do. So tonight, find your own seat in that count.
In the school: one idea per lesson, its questions, and a table or a puzzle to try it on.
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Source: The rules of Mafia (Russian, 1 February 2026), §1.1 and §4.2.3 — ten cards: seven red, one of them the sheriff, and three black, one of them the don; on the first night the sheriff only signals their role · our rules page