Introduction

Author: Vitaly - mr. Koteo (Brisbane Mafia Club)

Sports Mafia is one of the cleanest and most elegant mind games in the world.

It looks simple from the outside — talk, think, vote — but the moment you sit at the table, you realise there is so much more happening. Logic, pressure, psychology, probability, speed, intuition… everything mixes into one dynamic decision-making storm. And that storm starts the moment you put the mask on.

I still remember my very first Sports Mafia game. I even remember the exact day — the Day of Cosmonautics. Maybe that is symbolic: I was about to launch myself into a completely new universe.

I came from a “city-mafia” background and I am a very technical and logical person by nature. So finding a game that is based on structure, logic, rules, but still allows intuition to breathe… that was something special. But I won’t lie — I was overwhelmed in that first game.

There were sign gestures I had never seen, a surprising amount of rules, a lot of information flying across the table, and a table full of players who seemed to know exactly what they were doing while I tried to understand what was happening at all. And still — it was great. I was hooked instantly. The more games I played afterwards, the more fun it started bringing.

Two years later, I found myself playing at the Brisbane Mafia Club, taking the game seriously for the first time. Today I am a finalist of the 2025 season, and as the finals approach, I am hoping for good results. But most importantly, I have discovered something else: Mafia is not just a game. It is a place where people open themselves honestly, where friendships are built, and where your mind learns to operate under pressure in ways you did not expect.

And yet… despite the popularity of the game, I noticed a very strange problem.

There is almost no good beginner-friendly material anywhere.

Most books and videos jump straight into advanced topics, abbreviations, professional terms, and deep meta-games. Almost all existing resources are in Russian. And even those books assume readers already know the basics — the opposite of what a beginner actually needs. FIIM rules are crucial, but reading them for the first time is like reading a technical standard: you understand the words, but not the meaning behind them.

At some point, I realised:

Sports Mafia needs a simple, structured, English-language guide.

Not an advanced strategy encyclopedia. Not a rules dump. Not a psychological lecture.

A proper entry point. Something clear, friendly, easy to follow. Something that explains not only what to do, but why.

Something that could help a complete beginner reach an intermediate level quickly, without feeling lost.

That is exactly why I decided to write this book.

I want this to be your “cookbook” — a place where you can always come back and find the information you need. A bridge between you and the official FIIM rules. A clean explanation of how the game actually works. A simple, structured path from your first game to your first confident victories.

This book is written for complete beginners first of all, but also for anyone who wants all information in one place. By the end of it, you will understand how to think in the game, how to listen, how to vote, how to analyse, how to survive pressure, and how to use logic and probabilities in a game that many people mistakenly think is “about reading faces.”

(Quick spoiler: Mafia is about 90% math and logic and only 10% intuition. And yes, we will go through the math together — don’t worry, nothing scary.)

And most importantly, I want you to know something now, before we go any further:

It is completely normal to feel lost at first. It is completely normal to feel slow at first. It is completely normal to feel overwhelmed.

Everyone starts like that. Everyone improves by playing. And if you use this book to analyse your games and your progress, you will become a statistically above-average player — faster than you expect.

Welcome to your first step into Sports Mafia. Let’s start the journey.