One of the most popular Russian party games is Mafia (or Werewolf). It is played by two teams: mafia(s) and the innocents. There is also a moderator who does not participate as a player, but explains all the rules, helps other players during the game and gives the cards to each person before the start. This game consists of 3 stages:

• beginning;
• main game;
• ending.

At the beginning the moderator explains the rules. First of all, he should name the players. The number of the players depends on the number of people who are playing mafia (if there are less than 6 people they will have only one mafia).

There are all the characters that can be in mafia game:

• detective – an innocent who may learn who is (are) mafia(s) every night;
• doctor — an innocent who may protect a player from being killed every night, but can only do so once in each game;
• putana (prostitute) – a girl who can save one person by sleeping with him(her) during the night.

The game consists of two time periods – a day and a night. In the night time everyone should close the eyes. The moderator will name the character one by one so they should close their eyes and do their job according to the roles (the innocents will not be awake).

In the day time the moderator names a person who was killed, who was cured, who was saved and etc. Then other players should guess who is(are) a mafia(s). The main thing is – everyone should be very careful and should know how to lie well!

These two time periods call the main game.

The game has two alternating phases: one, during which the mafia may covertly “murder” an innocent, and two, in which surviving players debate the identities of the mafia and vote to eliminate a suspect. The game continues until all of the mafia have been eliminated or until the mafia outnumber the innocents. This is going to be the end of the game.