The strength of the civilians: tasks and principles

Playing the reds cannot be considered apart from the black team: the mafia always strives to look like civilians and adjusts its behaviour to the town. And yet the differences between the teams are significant, and understanding the strong and weak sides of each is directly tied to your level and confidence at the table. In this lesson we look at what the red team's strength rests on, what three tasks the town solves over a whole game and by which signs a red move differs from a black one.

Where the civilians are strong and where weak

The reds have two strong sides. The first: there are more of them. The second: they have a leader, the sheriff, who learns colours. The weakness is also one, but a fundamental one: the reds do not know the colours of their comrades and opponents. The blacks, on the contrary, know each other, but there are few of them and they have to hide.

An important practical observation follows. If the town is disunited, if the players do not use techniques that block the blacks' influence and limit their freedom of action, the mafia often needs to do nothing at all: the town "eats itself". While the club, the table and the players have not grown in their understanding of the game, the mafia wins "indecently often", because the black team stays viable even after losing two of its members, and civilians who orient themselves poorly are capable of quarrelling with each other for a million reasons. According to statistics, in good and strong games the civilians win more than the mafia, and in weak ones the other way round. This means the level of the table changes the balance of forces within the game itself.

Three tasks of the red team

To realise their strong sides the reds must do three things.

1. Vote correctly. The numerical advantage is realised at the moment of choosing the candidate who leaves the table. The vote at nine is especially important: six reds against three blacks is a twofold advantage. There are always more civilian hands than black ones, and this must be used. "Correctly" means: on the basis of clear grounds, not by feeling.

2. Prolong the sheriff's life as long as possible. In round zero you must not give the leader of the opposite team information that you are not the sheriff: if the mafia has a dynamic agreement, you risk losing the reds' most valuable player already on the first night. So it is useful for a red to speak in a way that does not reveal who the sheriff is, and a non-sheriff must not "write himself off" from the suspects on his own initiative.

3. Unite into a team and find each other. This item compensates for the reds' weak side. In effect it is equivalent to working out the whole mafia: if the black trio is found, the civilians are determined by the dry remainder too.

What each red technique brings (the author's estimates)

As an illustration Novik gives several standard red techniques and how, in his estimate, they affect the town's chance of winning. He himself stipulates that the figures are "taken from the chambers of the author's mind", that is, they are personal estimates, not measurements:

• leaving the sheriffs and checks alive: around +12 percent to the civilians' victory;
• covering the only sheriff on a single line of play and dying for him, leaving the leader of the reds at the table: around +70 percent;
• voting together in the critical round: around +40 percent to the civilians not losing because of a scatter of hands.

Do not add these numbers. They show the order of importance: protecting the sheriff and unity of voting in the decisive round are worth more than "just a good day".

The blacks' chances in typical situations

The author also gives guideposts by situation. Some of them are personal observations (75 and 25 percent), the rest are derived mathematically:

• shooting the sheriff on the first night: around 75 percent in the mafia's favour;
• a guessing round where all three are unknown: 66 percent;
• one black among five without checks, with equal positions: 63 percent;
• wall against wall: 50 percent;
• one version and three checks for the sheriff: around 25 percent.

The practical conclusion: the mafia is strongest when the town has no checks and no single version. The reds' task is to build the game so that there are checks and the version is shared.

How to tell red play from black: three principles

Players judge colour by templates. "Cut the minute at the twenty-fifth second: mafia." "Split the table at nine: civilian." "Happy, so cunning, so mafia." Or positional ones: "the sixth played with five slots in a row, black." Each such template taken alone is merely a stereotype. It is important to tell significant signs from irrational ones: "he looked at me strangely", "spoke badly", "said pass, so not black, a black would not have drawn attention".

Besides, take into account that even the best speech in your view may be perceived not as you wanted: everyone sees the situation through his own prism. So it is useful to turn other people's templates to your advantage, and for the reds specifically to find the members of their own team.

How do you check that a template really works? The same way you check a red move: if the actions raise the probability of the town's victory and reveal one of the three concepts, the player behaves like a civilian.

Principle one: informativeness

The more arguments, conclusions, observations and nuances a player voices, the more of a civilian he is. The vaguer the speech, the more he looks like the mafia. The explanation is simple: in an abundance of data from every participant one can find what a mafia player simply cannot invent, and the black is caught on inconsistencies in logic and speeches.

It is appropriate here to say something about the balance. The balance is a technique: remove two players from different teams in turn so that the game does not end with a mafia victory for certain. Does it help to win? Ambiguously. The price of a red player's life is higher than a black's: to win, the blacks need to remove two reds, the civilians three blacks. So the balance in itself favours the mafia, and the town goes for it only for information: so that by the round vote at nine the layout becomes clearer. Consequently nothing prevents giving a lot of information in the early rounds already.

Principle two: structuring the information

The mafia benefits from the town's vague speeches and stories on the first slots "about grandmothers, funny events and Uncle Fyodor because of whom the civilians lost a couple of games ago". Chaos and uncertainty increase stress and paranoia: hands fall on random numbers, the count is hard. The more and the better the information at the table is laid out, the calmer the game and the more often the civilians win. Structure is given by a reasoned position, a clear giving of colours, specifics, conclusions on speeches, clarifications and generalisations: "If #? is black, then ... right?", "I am red. Without me is there a black trio?".

Principle three: uniting the players

To win with a red card means with a majority of red hands to remove a black three times. A scattered town is a sure sign of an approaching mafia victory. The principle has two components:

1. Taking players with a hard colour into the team. In the town's eyes it is always redder than a blurred position: players who command the count will find out by the remainder who is mafia. It also keeps the blacks from sitting out of conflicts.
2. Building the black trio. The earlier it is determined, the better. The game comes to a point where the mafia wins in no more than half of cases, because everything depends on the decision of a particular civilian who chooses between two versions in the critical round. That is much better than the uncertainty and quarrels of two reds while the mafia sits aside.

If a player behaves like a civilian, acts in accordance with the goals of the card, speaks well and relies on these three principles, his card is red in the maximum percentage of cases, but not in a hundred.

How the sheriff is covered in practice

• Do not reveal without need.
• In round zero speak calmly and do not "write yourself off" from the suspects.
• Play composed: the don looks for the sheriff by seating, and a constrained player is more likely the leader. It is useful for an ordinary red to sit equally composed, to cover the real sheriff.
• In the critical round, do not hinder the red check and the sheriff.

For the black

The blacks use the reds' ignorance of colours: they set reds against each other, give checks to inconvenient players, shoot leaders. If the reds vote together, the blacks lose their main weapon. So it is important for the reds to notice where the mafia team breaks the unity.

Example

Red no. 5 hears from two players that the sheriff may be no. 3. He is the sheriff himself and knows that no. 3 is not. The right move: neither confirm nor correct, but play so that the suspicion of no. 3 is resolved by a shot. Then the real sheriff lives longer.

Self-check questions

1. What is the mafia's weakness that the chapter title speaks of?
2. What does "vote correctly" mean and on what basis?
3. How can you tell from a round-zero speech that a player is not the sheriff?
4. Name five techniques that lower the blacks' chance of winning and explain by how much, in your estimate.
5. When is the balance favourable for the reds and what does it depend on?
6. How does the balance differ from the counterweight?

Practice

For three recordings of games, note: who defended the sheriff, who unwittingly revealed him, how many rounds the sheriff lived, how many reds voted against the common line in the critical round.

Typical mistakes

• Giving yourself out as a non-sheriff for the sake of honesty.
• Breaking the common line on principle.
• Treating the author's estimates as an exact law.
• Playing vaguely, thinking it is safer.

Source of the idea. The sections "The strength of the civilians, the weakness of the mafia" and "Concepts of the civilian's play" from Dmitry Novik's book "Mafia in the Style of Zen" (2020), the data on chances from "50 Shades of Red" (2021). All percentages belong to the author as his estimates.