Mau-Mau is a shedding game: empty your hand while keeping useful options. Families often use different special rules. Our examples therefore identify a study agreement. The playable 32-card browser edition has selectable house rules; Mau penalties and finishing cards are explicitly configured there.
In this guide
Our study agreement before dealing
We use two to four players and 32 French-suited cards, ranks 7 through ace, without jokers. Each player receives five cards. The remainder is a stock beside a discard pile starting with an ordinary nine. For this study setup we deliberately select a nine before shuffling the rest; this is not a universal dealing procedure.
Our diagrams use J for jack, Q for queen, K for king and A for ace. Suit symbols identify the suit. These labels do not change the rules.
Position as text
Top: hearts 9. Hand from left: diamonds king, clubs 9, hearts ace, spades jack. Legal: 2, 3, 4.
Suit means clubs, spades, hearts or diamonds
Without a pending penalty, play one card matching suit or rank. Hearts 9 accepts hearts king or clubs 9. Merely sharing a red ink colour is insufficient: diamonds king does not match hearts 9. Under our agreement, a jack is independently playable and selects the next suit.
After a jack, the named suit applies rather than its printed suit. Another jack remains legal here: we do not impose a no-jack-on-jack restriction. Your own table may choose differently, but should agree before play.
Specify sevens, eights and drawing
Our seven makes the next player draw two and lose the turn; this study ruleset does not allow passing the penalty on. An eight skips the next player, so with two players you act again after your eight. Other ranks apart from the wild jack have no special effect here.
With no matching card, draw exactly one. If it fits, you may play only that newly drawn card immediately; otherwise your turn ends. An exhausted stock is renewed from the shuffled discards except their top card. These are the agreed study conditions, not claims about every version of Mau-Mau.
Calling and ending a round
With one card remaining we call Mau, and on the final discard Mau-Mau. If a missed Mau is noticed before the next turn begins, our agreed penalty is two cards. Any card type may finish; a final seven still causes its two-card draw. Initially we count round wins only.