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Why am I qualified to speak about this?
I've been playing mafia on and off for nine years, to some varying level of seriousness. I was nobody special or worth any particular mention for most of that time, only gaining any recognition around 2016, and only widespread recognition in 2018 or 2019. Considering that it's very rare for somebody to just happen across a level of improvement to warrant this type of response, there's likely other factors at play here.
I also study various other things, albeit more as a hobby than as a potential professional career. Notably, a lot of my theories about mafia have most of their grounding in other games (such as Chess and Go), psychology (predominantly criminal psychology), and mathematics. I believe this is one of the other advantages I possess that allows me to view the game in a different way than a lot of other players. However, I'm nothing special, and this isn't a set amount of steps that will make you suddenly a legend at the game overnight. There are other valid opinions out there, and true improvement is rarely fast. These are simply the guidelines I followed to shift my mindset towards attempting to improve at the game.
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1. The fundamental basis of good reads is learning how to simplify.
This is the absolute key that I believe a lot of people on a fundamental level miss about the game. Mafia, at its core, is extremely complex. Every single post made adds an extra layer of analysis in wording, tone, emotion, content, etc. Throughout a game that goes for perhaps 200 pages, why would you want to search through all of it?
Naturally analysis to this extent doesn't commonly happen regardless, but this same concept keeps carrying through. Every single player that I see have a reputation for town play on this site does this to a pretty significant extent, whether consciously or subconsciously. This is because when you boil it down to the basics, do you need to go through somebody's entire ISO when you can find one piece that is strongly more likely to come from one alignment or the other?
As for another example, one common trend I see across quite a few players is taking everything in the game into account to their read. This is entirely unnecessary and is actually far more likely to contribute to a very noncommital read when you otherwise would have had a good idea of their alignment if you simply didn't. A lot of this is because the majority of what somebody says is very likely to be something that can be attributed to both alignments. If you take everything into account with this in mind, then the most prevalent thought in your mind while doing the analysis is that you aren't sure, which makes whatever few nuggets you're able to find look a lot less usable in context.
It's simply better to find one or two strong reasons for a read and avoid trying to fit their entire play to a singular mindset. It's simply impossible to do partially because it's extremely rare for that criteria to be met in the first place since gamestate shifts are very common in games, and partially because it's simply not possible to have so good a grasp on what the scumteam are doing that you can make that sort of call without already knowing the entire team.
As another example for why this strategy is superior, it's much harder for scum to play against as well. Complex cases with lots of moving parts trend towards being much easier to counter, since each singular point is like a joint in a suit of armor. The metal itself can be tough, but the joints are weak spots that cause a lot of damage if they are pierced.
A subpoint to this is that you don't need to read every single slot at the same time. If there are players in the game you historically have trouble reading, then don't try to right away. Get reads on the people you can, and see if you can find anything out from the way you're viewing the game onto other player's alignments. Indirect reading can especially be strong against players that rely a lot on direct engagements to fool people as mafia.
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2. Develop your playstyle.
Everybody is different. Everybody's brain is different. What necessarily works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another person, and it rarely works well when you attempt to brute force your way into a playstyle that does not work for you. That's not necessarily a failure on your part if you view another player as stronger than you, yet you can't fathom how they play the game. That's likely a sign that you simply look at the game through a different lens intuitively, and working on that specifically is how you're going to improve in the long run. Even if you do copy other players who do get results from their methods of playing the game, what exactly does it give you? You don't know exactly why it works, you haven't done the work to develop that style yourself iteratively over many games, and you won't know how to adapt it to suit whatever specific circumstances you will come across. It's simply better to work on your own understanding of the game if you want longer term results.
Ultimately, you want to have a pretty solid idea of what you are looking for, and roughly what gives you the most accurate reads. After that, just play the game. After each game finishes, go through your posts and try to recall your reasons for having specific reads, making specific plays, what have you. It's important to analyze yourself to develop your own style in this way, because this is how you grow as a player by figuring out when what you're doing does and doesn't work. The exact same approach doesn't work in every single game. Sometimes you will have to adapt to play around other people, sometimes it's your time to step up and lead. Recognizing different situations and deciding what your best approach is and how to read what's going on and the players within the game for that scenario is a strong part of building adaptability to many different gamestates and consistency. This is a big reason I disapprove of blind sheeping so heavily; it does nothing to build yourself up as a player, and the game itself is more fun when everybody is trying their hardest regardless.
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3. Learn how to play as scum. And town.
This should hopefully be obvious, but learning how to play both alignments is very important to becoming good at either of them. If you don't understand how the mafia are going to approach a situation, how can you possibly try to determine whether someone is approaching the game from a mafia mindset as town? Similarly, how can you expect to properly fool a town if you've never been properly fooled by the mafia?
It's a simple thing, but it's one thing that I also find to be a bit ridiculous about this site. Too many players don't enjoy playing one or the other alignment, which is... fine, but playing a well fought game as either alignment feels very different than the other, and you're missing part of that experience both by only trying as one alignment as well as potentially preventing other players from experiencing it as well.
Playing either alignment is about heart. You cannot properly improve at either alignment unless you can throw yourself out there as that alignment. Your play as either alignment is a balancing act, as changing aspects of one will require changes to the other. Attempting to find the balance between the two is a neverending source of potential improvement that makes the game never quite masterable, and that's what is so fascinating about it in the first place.
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4. Be willing to make mistakes.
Being wrong is entirely fine. The measure of you as a player doesn't equate to how often you are right or wrong on your reads or your approach to the game, but how much you're willing to take those risks and step up to the plate when you are needed to. It's much easier to see where you've went wrong when you make that step and fail, rather than if you succeed in a safe game.
You can't learn how to be charismatic in a game if you don't try.
You can't learn how to improve your reads if you don't risk them being wrong.
It's just as much a skill being able to determine whether your pushes are likely correct enough to be worth pushing, but you won't ever be able to develop that skill if you don't try it first. This extends to every part of the game, including reading specific players, reading subsets of players, or even using PRs.
It's not stupid to be bold. It's only stupid if you don't learn from the experience.
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5. Be willing to put the ego aside. During the game, the team comes first.
I made an experiment around mid-2019, namely I played several games as my newest account at that time, Blake Belladonna. I would get whatever reads I could and ram them into the ground until they succeeded. It was a very enlightening experience, since it taught me several lessons that I still hold to heart to this day. Ultimately, the approach would prove chaotic, polarizing, and ultimately a very high risk, medium reward plan.
That was a strategy I would use for quite a few situations, namely most times I would get a scumread I was reasonably confident in. It CAN work, of course, but it's best used carefully and in situations where it's absolutely necessary or where the drawbacks won't matter.
It is, however, necessary to explain where I'm coming from with regards to ego. In this specific context, I'm referring to how it's used, rather than its presence. Having the confidence to push your reads is not necessarily ego. It becomes ego when you're creating a negative environment or otherwise putting up a wall in front of other players to prevent their word from having any impact in the discussion before they've even started.
Mafia is, at its core, a team game. Playing solo is always going to be an impediment outside of very specific circumstances because if town is fragmented beyond belief, all the scumteam have to do is not let any momentum build on any of their members and town will eat itself alive. A town that functions as a unit is any scumteam's worst nightmare, so maintaining goodwill with the rest of the playerlist is an important part of the game, regardless of whether you are content to follow or are looking to lead.
When in doubt, remember this. Town doesn't win until the last scum is dead.
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I think that we have barely scratched the surface on what mafia can be as a game. It's a fantastic method of discovering how you think and process problems, it's great for training critical thinking skills and ingenuity (at least, if you allow it to), and it's complex enough that it's entirely possible that you can play it forever without it getting stale. I've been looking to study this game for the past two years, and it's very difficult to do so with the site in it's current state.
I hope that this helps at least a little bit in improving the overall skill level of the site. I'm excited for what has yet to be discovered and I want to see how far we can push mafia as a competitive pasttime and as a study into the human mind.
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This was haphazardly created in an afternoon and so might be rough around the edges. If I miss something (very likely) and somebody gets around to pointing it out/explaining it before I do, I will quote them here.
Thank you and good luck!
