Strategizing the Card Game Mafia

So I love the card game Mafia. I'm sure many of you have heard of it, even though it may be called something different. Mafia involves mafia members, a policeman/detective, a nurse/doctor/angel, and townspeople. The cards are distributed among the players and each card corresponds to a certain role in the game. Typically, aces count as mafia (there is typically at worst a 1 to 3 ratio of mafia to non-mafia), kings count as cops (typically only 1 cop), queens count as nurses (typically only 1 nurse), and everything else counts as a villager. The narrator makes everyone go to sleep, simulating night-time, where the special roles do what they have to do. The narrator will ask the mafia to wake up and choose someone to kill. When that decision is made, they will go to sleep and the narrator will ask the nurse to wake up, and ask that person to choose someone to save. If they save the person that the mafia chose to kill, then that person does not die. Then the nurse goes to sleep, and the narrator will ask the cop to wake up. The cop will accuse someone of being the mafia, and the narrator will allow the cop to know whether they are right or wrong. Then everyone will wake up and the narrator will allow everyone to know who died in the night or who was saved in the night. Then everyone has a chance to accuse someone of being the mafia. Mafia is an interesting game because it is really based on reading people's actions, most of the time. If you have played against people in mafia before, then it is easier to catch onto their tells. But there is a strategy that will ensure almost undoubted victory for the non-mafia members.

Once everyone gets their cards, the best thing for the non-mafia to do would be to have the cop reveal who he or she is. By having the cop reveal themselves, the mafia will undoubtedly try to kill the cop because the cop is the ultimate voice of reason in this game. Unfortunately for the mafia, the nurse should save the cop. This works best if this information is released before anyone dies because it makes it certain that the cop is actually the cop. If the cop reveals himself or herself later, then it could either be the cop telling the truth or the mafia taking a chance that the cop has already died. It is typically an unbeatable strategy, unless the mafia is lucky enough to kill the nurse or expose who the nurse is. The nurse's identity cannot be revealed in this strategy because it immediately puts a target on both the nurse and the cop because both have been exposed. The mafia has a 50/50 shot of killing either of these special characters once their identities are revealed. Then it is a crapshoot for both the mafia and the non-mafia. If enough games are played like this, then you probably would the same win percentage for playing the game when the cop does not come out. But this is a very rare scenario because the mafia will not know who the nurse is. By the time the nurse is dead, it is very likely that the cop would have discovered who the mafia is.

A lot of people dislike this idea because it takes away from the game. But it really does not, because though the mafia still will have a more difficult time to win, they still are not guaranteed to lose. It becomes a game where the mafia must strategize even more and the villagers must be ready for any given twist and turn. It also becomes more fun because it becomes a smarter game. Typically a mafia game is really just accusing people you know based on poor arguments. Now, the strategy forces people to use logic in order to save themselves rather than hunches to accuse whomever.