Mahjong

Players and equipment

Four players, each for themselves, and a set of 144 tiles. Three suits run from one to nine — bamboos, circles and characters — with four copies of every tile. Then the honours: four of each wind (East, South, West, North) and four of each dragon (red, green and white). Last come eight bonus tiles, four flowers and four seasons, each numbered one to four: one belongs to East, two to South, three to West and four to North. Some sets add jokers or blank tiles; put them back in the box, because this game does not use them. You also want two dice.

A hand is fourteen tiles made into four sets and a pair. There are three kinds of set:

Chow

Only suit tiles; honours cannot run

Three in a row in one suit

Pung

Any tile

Three the same

Kong

Counts as a set of three, and earns a replacement tile

Four the same

The deal

Each seat takes a wind, and East deals first. Shuffle the tiles face down and build four walls, one in front of each player, eighteen tiles long and two high, pushed together into a square. East rolls the two dice and counts round the table to choose a wall, then counts along it by the same number to break it open. Tiles are taken from the break clockwise, the wall shrinking from that end.

Each player takes thirteen tiles, in blocks of four and then one, and East takes a fourteenth. Keep your tiles standing so only you can see them. A flower or season is set face up in front of you the moment it arrives and replaced with a tile from the far end of the wall; it scores, but it is never part of the hand.

Play

East discards first. Turns then pass to the right — anticlockwise — and on your turn you draw a tile from the wall and discard one face up into the middle, saying what it is. The wall is only ever drawn from its open end; the replacement tiles for flowers and kongs come from the other.

Instead of drawing, you may claim the tile just discarded, but only to complete a set, which you then lay face up in front of you:

Chow

Only the player next in turn may claim for a chow

Pung

Anybody may claim, and it beats a chow

Kong

Anybody may claim; then draw a replacement from the far end

Mahjong

Anybody may claim to win, and it beats every other claim

Claiming takes the turn: whoever claims then discards, and play carries on to their right, so the players in between lose their go. A claimed set is exposed and stays as it is. A kong you build from your own draws is declared on your turn, laid down with the end tiles face down, and also earns a replacement.

You win by completing the hand — four sets and a pair — either on a tile you draw, called self-drawn, or on somebody's discard. Say "mahjong", lay the hand face up and count it. If the wall runs out before anybody wins, the hand is a draw.

Scoring

Only the winner scores. Count the faan in the winning hand, turn the total into points, and write those points in the winner's column. Most tables will not let a hand win with fewer than three faan. This is a common table, and houses differ over the values more than anything else in the game, so agree them before the first discard:

Self-drawn

1

Winning on a tile you drew yourself

Concealed

1

Nothing claimed, winning on a discard

All chows

1

Four chows and a pair that scores nothing

Dragon pung

1

Each pung or kong of dragons

Seat wind

1

A pung or kong of your own wind

Round wind

1

A pung or kong of the wind of the round

Your flower

1

The flower or season matching your seat, each

No bonus tiles

1

Winning with no flower or season at all

All pungs

3

Four pungs or kongs and a pair

Mixed one suit

3

One suit with winds or dragons

Little three dragons

5

Two dragon pungs and a dragon pair

Pure one suit

7

One suit and nothing else

Great three dragons

8

A pung of all three dragons

Limit hands

10

Thirteen orphans, all honours, great four winds

A pung of your own wind in a round of the same wind scores both: sitting East in the East round, a pung of East is two faan.

Then turn the faan into points:

3 faan

8

The usual minimum to win

4 faan

16

Double the minimum

5 faan

24

Half again

6 faan

32

Double four faan

7 faan

48

Half again

8 faan

64

Double six faan

9 faan

96

Half again

10 faan

128

The limit; no hand scores more

A worked hand

Alice wins by drawing her own last tile. Her hand is bamboos with a pung of East wind — her seat wind, in the East round — and a pung of red dragons, with a pair of bamboos.

Mixed one suit

3

Bamboos, a wind and a dragon

Seat wind

1

East is Alice's wind

Round wind

1

The round is East too

Dragon pung

1

Red dragons

Self-drawn

1

She drew the winning tile

Alice scores

48

7 faan

On the next hand Ben wins on a discard with an all-chows hand, nothing claimed, and his own flower: three faan, so 8 points. Two hands in, the sheet reads Alice 48, Ben 8, and Cara and Dev nothing yet.

Ending

A dealer who wins keeps the deal, and so does a dealer whose hand is drawn; otherwise the deal passes to the right and the new dealer is East. When every player has dealt once, the round wind moves on, East to South to West to North, and a full game is all four rounds — sixteen hands at the least. The highest total at the end wins.

On SquareScores a hand is a row: write the winner's points in their column, and for a drawn hand type 0 in every column so the hand is on the sheet. There is no finishing line to set, so tap End match when the North round is over, and the leaderboard counts games won across the session.

Choose a direction early

Look at your first fourteen tiles and decide what the hand wants to become: one suit, all pungs, or a quick hand of chows. A hand that tries everything wins nothing. Honours and lone ones and nines that fit no plan are the first discards; the tiles that fit your plan stay, even if they look ugly now.

Claim with care

Every claim exposes a set and shows the table what you are building, and it costs you the concealed faan. Claim freely for a pung of dragons or your own wind, which score anyway, and when you are one set from winning. Early in a hand, a chow claimed only to tidy up is usually worth less than the information it gives away.

Read the discards

The discards are face up for a reason. A tile three players have already thrown is safe to throw again. If somebody has exposed two sets of circles and has stopped discarding circles, they are building one suit, and every circle you throw may be their winning tile. Count what is showing: when three of a tile are in view, nobody can pung the fourth.

Know when to stop trying

Late in a hand, with the wall running short and somebody plainly close, the tiles you keep matter less than the tiles you throw. Break up your own hand and throw only safe tiles. A hand you do not win costs you nothing on the sheet; a discard somebody wins on hands them the game.

Chinese Classical

The old Western way of playing, and the rules in many older sets' booklets. Every player counts their hand, not only the winner, with points for each pung and kong and doublings on top, and it is quite possible to lose the hand and score more than the player who went out. Tables keeping a written tally simply enter every player's count each hand; tables that settle the differences between players do it in tokens on the table.

Riichi

The Japanese game: a hand needs at least one yaku, a scoring pattern, to win at all; a concealed player may declare riichi, one tile from winning, and stake a thousand points on it; and a player may never win on a tile they themselves discarded earlier. Everybody starts on 25,000 points in sticks, which change hands every hand. The sticks are the ledger, so keep them on the table and enter each player's final count as one row at the end.

American

Played from a card issued each year by the National Mah Jongg League, which lists the only hands that may win and what each is worth. It uses eight jokers and opens every hand with the Charleston, three rounds of passing three tiles. Enter the value the card gives for the winning hand in the winner's column.

Three players

Take the North seat out and play without chows. Many three-player tables also remove the two to eight of one suit, usually characters, to keep the hands moving.

A shorter game

Play the East round only: one deal each, four hands at the least, which is an evening's worth for most tables. End the match when it is done.

How many tiles are in a mahjong set?

144: three suits of one to nine, four of each tile, sixteen winds, twelve dragons and eight flowers and seasons. American sets add eight jokers and some sets add blank spares; the Hong Kong game does not use either.

Which way does play go?

Anticlockwise. The deal passes from East to South, the player on East's right, and every turn passes to the right.

What is the difference between a chow and a pung?

A chow is three tiles in a row in one suit, such as the three, four and five of bamboos; a pung is three of the same tile. A chow can only be claimed by the player whose turn comes next, and a pung by anybody.

What happens if two players claim the same discard?

A claim to win beats everything. Otherwise a pung or kong beats a chow. If two players both claim to win, most tables give it to the one whose turn would come first after the discarder.

What happens if the wall runs out?

The hand is a draw and nobody scores. The dealer keeps the deal, and the tiles are shuffled for the next hand.

Can three people play mahjong?

Yes. Take the North seat out, play without chows, and many tables remove some of one suit to speed things up. Two players is possible but plays as a much slower game.

Is this the same as Mahjong Solitaire?

No. Mahjong Solitaire, the tile-matching puzzle on computers, uses the same tiles and nothing else of the game. This is the four-player game the tiles were made for.

Why does only the winner score here?

Because it is the number every settling method starts from. Most Hong Kong tables settle with payments — everybody pays the winner, and whoever threw the winning tile pays extra — and a payments ledger means three players losing points every hand. The sheet keeps the points won, which is enough to see who is ahead; a table playing for payments can keep tokens on the table beside it.