How to review your own game

Playing a lot is not enough. If you do not review your games, you will repeat the same mistakes. There is no static state: there is always either development or decay. With every game you either raise your level (even by hundredths of a percent, depending on your drive and ability to learn) or slowly degrade. In the second scenario concentration suffers, the quality of decisions gets worse, influence over people weakens, and stock ways of determining colour turn into weaknesses that attentive black players exploit.

Two main enemies of growth

The author of "Mafia in the Style of Zen" says that one can degrade quickly and with taste, it is enough to set yourself one of two goals.

Playing only for fun or to kill time

Positive emotions reinforce the wish to have fun: you want it again and again, and to think and reflect less and less. A couple of dozen games in a comedy format put an end to concentration, conscious actions and sound conclusions. If your style leans strongly towards entertainment and a lack of logic, it is worth trying another kind of Mafia, because the essence of the "classic" is different. Relaxing now and then is no sin, but constant play with the accent on entertainment harms thinking. If you must have fun, do it until the middle of round zero, at the opening stage. The game itself, spontaneity and pleasure matter, but in the long run it is the accent on entertainment that does the harm.

Boredom

This is the second terrible enemy. Boredom is evidence of lost goals and interest. Every player affects those around him by his presence, whether he realises it or not. With their sour faces, bored, listless, tired people spoil the atmosphere at the game table and put out the interest of others. (The author separately stresses that general reasoning of this kind is his personal opinion.)

What helps you grow

Growth is helped by involvement, enthusiasm and fighting for your card. The most effective way to improve your game is to work on mistakes after the game. And its effectiveness can be multiplied if you run the review by levels.

A three-level review

Suppose you are player No. 1 and the game is lost. In the break between games ask yourself the following questions.

First level: yourself

1. What mistakes did I make? At which moments could I have played better?
2. Why did I assign the wrong colour to a player?
3. By which signs is it better to assign colour to this particular player in the next game?

Second level: the neighbouring slot

1. What mistakes did player No. 2 make?
2. At which moments did No. 2 play better than me?
3. What position would I have given in slot No. 2? How would he have handed out colours in my place? (This is also memory training.)

Third to tenth levels

For all the other slots repeat the questions of the second level. If the game was short, you can limit yourself to those who played particularly brightly or particularly weakly.

By replaying games you develop skills of communicating with people and learn to influence their decisions. By reviewing games you find and neutralise weak spots in your inferences and analysis, picking up other people's good techniques along the way.

Reactive growth

If one of the players worked out the colour of some person or team and you did not, ask him: "How did you understand that he was black (red)?" Write the answer down. This is the fastest way to steal someone else's technique. A player who does this regularly grows noticeably faster than the rest, because he learns not only from his own experience but from the experience of every neighbour.

How to review as mafia

A review as the blacks is built in the same way, but with different questions:

1. What was my plan for victory? Did it come true?
2. In which round did I lose control: speech, votes, the night shot?
3. Whose vote could I have bought and did not?
4. What in my behaviour could the civilians take for "black"?

Example

The game was lost by the reds. Player No. 6 writes after it: "Mistake: at nine I supported No. 3 because he sounded confident. Sign: confidence without specifics. Next time I ask what the confidence rests on." Second level: "No. 8 counted the votes from the first round and was first to notice the spread of hands; next time I will repeat this technique." Third: asked No. 8 how he understood that No. 2 was black and wrote down the answer in two signs.

Speed of growth

Speed is different for everyone. If it equals 20 percent, in five games you will play twice as well (this is the author's illustration, not a measurement). Think about what your speed is and how to raise it in other ways, not only by reviewing games. Give four examples.

Questions for self-check

1. What can be learned by watching weak players?
2. How do you review a game from the mafia's point of view?
3. How do first-level and second-level review questions differ?
4. When is it appropriate to have fun at the table, and when not?

Practice

1. Start a notebook of games. After each one write: role, main mistake, main successful decision, one question for a neighbour.
2. After ten games reread the notes and find the repeating mistake. That is your main task for the next month.

Typical mistakes

• Reviewing only lost games. Won games must be reviewed too, otherwise you will not understand what exactly worked.
• Looking for the guilty among the neighbours. First level first, then the rest.
• Playing one game after another with no breaks for review: fatigue eats concentration.
• Mixing fun and boredom: entertainment is acceptable in the opening but not in critical rounds.

Source of the idea. The chapters "Killers of growth in the level of play", "Reviewing a game" and "Reactive growth" of Dmitry Novik's book "Mafia in the Style of Zen" (2020). The example, the extra questions and the practice were written for the Academy.