Different versions of the game in different regions and periods may have used different implements and different rules, but the core technology — rubber ball, masonry court — was broadly consistent.

Ball courts appear at Chichén Itzá in several locations, with the Great Ball Court being the largest.

The carved relief panels on the walls of the Great Ball Court include scenes of players and, in the most discussed panels, a decapitation scene in which a kneeling player is shown with a stream of blood emerging from his severed neck, the blood transforming into serpents and flowering plants — a visual vocabulary of death as transformation that connects to both the sacrificial context of the game and to the broader Mesoamerican theme of death as productive and generative rather than merely terminal.

The ball game’s connection to the Hero Twin story, to sacrifice, to the underworld, and to the themes of death and rebirth that characterize Mesoamerican religious thought more broadly makes it relevant context for understanding the ritual environment of Chichén Itzá.