Mahjong

Objective

Be the first player to build a 14-tile hand that matches a pattern on the hand card, then declare Mahjong.

The word doing the work there is matches. A tidy-looking collection of runs and sets wins you nothing on its own — it has to be one of the specific hands the card lists. Until you've looked at the card, you don't really know what you're aiming at.

A session runs over several hands rather than one. Win a hand and the losers pay you — how many of them depends on how you finished, which the Declaring Mahjong section covers. The dealer's seat moves round the table between hands, except when the dealer wins or nobody does, in which case they deal again.

The Tiles

A set is 152 tiles, and most of them are numbers. Three suits — Dots, Bams and Craks — each run 1 to 9, with four copies of every tile. That accounts for 108.

The rest are the ones worth learning by sight. Four winds (East, South, West, North) and three dragons (Red, Green, White), four copies each. Eight flowers. And eight jokers, which are wild.

The groups you build from

Every pattern on the card is made of a few basic shapes. Learn these names now, because the rest of the game is written in them.

• Pung — three identical tiles.
• Kong — four identical tiles.
• Quint — five identical tiles. Only reachable with a joker, since only four of each exist.
• Run — three consecutive numbers in one suit, like 4-5-6 Bam.
• Pair — two identical tiles.

One restriction catches nearly everyone out at first. You can claim a tile someone discards to finish a pung, kong or quint, but never to finish a run. If you're sitting on 4-5-6 Bam waiting for the 7, you have to draw it yourself.

Diagram: The tile families

One hand, every family. A run in Dots, a pung in Bams, a run in Craks, then a wind, a dragon, a flower and a joker.

The Hand Card

The hand card is the list of every hand you're allowed to win with. Match one exactly and you can declare Mahjong. Build something that isn't on it, however neat, and it counts for nothing.

This is the part that surprises people arriving from other versions of mahjong, where any four sets and a pair will do.

You don't have to commit to a target upfront. Play whichever way your tiles push you, and when you declare, the game checks your 14 tiles against every pattern and scores you on whichever one you actually completed.

Reading the card

The card is on screen the whole time you play. On a wide screen it sits in a column beside the table; on a phone it's behind a tab at the bottom.

It has two views. One lists all 46 hands grouped by category, which is worth a browse before your first hand. The other is the one you'll use mid-game: the handful of patterns you currently hold the most tiles toward, each showing how many of the 14 you already have and which tiles are still missing.

Patterns are worth between 25 and 75 points. Most add 5 points if you finish without ever exposing a meld. One hand can only be won that way, and the four singles-and-pairs hands are worth more when you do.

Diagram: One tile from a match

Three finished runs of 1-2-3 Dot and a Red Dragon pair. The fourth run is missing its 3 Dot — draw or claim that one tile and this hand is complete.

The Charleston

Before anyone draws a tile, everybody passes three at a time. This is the Charleston, and it's unique to the American game.

The first Charleston is compulsory: three passes in a row, going right, then across, then left, three tiles each time.

Then there's a vote. If all four players want a second Charleston, you repeat those passes in reverse — left, across, right. A single no skips it.

Last is the courtesy pass, where you and the player sitting opposite can trade up to three more tiles. It only happens if you both offer the same number, so offering three when they offer one gets you nothing at all. That's another Playboard difference: the NMJL courtesy trades the smaller of the two offers, so a mismatch there still moves one tile each way.

What to pass

Pass what doesn't fit. That sounds obvious right up until you're holding one Red Dragon and one 9 Crak and have to choose.

A rule of thumb for your first few games: count your suits. If you're holding eight Dots and a scattering of everything else, you're probably heading somewhere Dot-shaped, so the strays can go. Lone honour tiles with no pair behind them are usually first out of the hand.

Never pass a joker.

Diagram: Choosing three to pass

Exactly three tiles, no more, no fewer. Selected tiles lift out of the hand so you can see what you've picked before committing.

Your Turn

Everyone is dealt 13 tiles, and once the passing is finished the dealer draws the 14th to open play. From there it moves round the table counter-clockwise.

A turn is two steps. Draw one tile from the wall, then discard one — either the tile you just drew or something already in your hand. You end every turn back at 13 tiles.

That's the whole middle of the game: that loop, plus the interruptions covered in the next section.

Reading the table

You sit at the bottom. Your tiles are the only ones face-up — everyone else's stay face-down all hand, so the only thing you learn about their hands is what they choose to expose.

The number in the middle is the wall: how many tiles are left to draw. When it reaches zero without anyone winning, the hand is over and nobody scores, so a low wall changes how much risk is worth taking.

Diagram: What you're looking at

Your hand, the opponents' face-down tiles, and the wall.

Choosing a discard

Early on, throw whatever serves no pattern you could plausibly reach — an isolated honour, a stray number in a suit you aren't collecting.

It gets harder later, because the tile that's useless to you may be the exact one an opponent is waiting for. Watch what they've exposed. If someone already has two Green Dragons face-up, think hard before you release the third.

Never discard a joker. It's wild in almost every group on the card, and in the discard pile it's worth nothing to anyone, including you.

Diagram: Fourteen tiles, one to go

You've drawn, so you're holding 14. The lone South Wind is picked out to discard — everything else is already doing a job.

Calling Tiles

Every time someone discards, the other three players get a moment to claim it.

You can call a discard to complete a pung, a kong or a quint — three, four or five of the same tile. You need to already hold the rest of the group, though jokers can cover the gaps.

You can't call to finish a run. Worth repeating, because most other versions of mahjong let you, and it's the single rule new players trip over most.

What calling costs you

Claiming a tile isn't free.

The finished group goes face-up on the table where it stays for the rest of the hand. Everyone can now see three tiles' worth of what you're building, and a decent opponent will start withholding anything that looks useful to you.

It also jumps the turn order. You become the current player and discard straight away, which means every player sitting between you and the discarder loses their turn. There's no replacement draw, not even for a kong.

If two players call the same tile, the larger group wins — a kong beats a pung. Same size, and it goes to whoever sits nearer the discarder in turn order. A claim to win the hand outranks all of them: if someone can declare Mahjong on that tile, they get it whatever anyone else called.

Diagram: A tile you could claim

The 7 Bam has just been discarded and sits in the middle of the table. Nothing on screen tells you whether it's worth taking — that depends entirely on what's in your hand.

Jokers

A joker stands in for any tile in a group of three or more — a run, a pung, a kong, a quint, or a set of winds or dragons.

Runs included, and that's a Playboard difference: the NMJL card doesn't let a joker into a run, only into groups of identical tiles. Here it can go anywhere a group of three or more can.

What it can't do is fill a pair, a single or a flower. Those need real tiles every time, no matter how many the pattern asks for. It's why the singles-and-pairs hands look like the easiest on the card and aren't: you have to draw all fourteen tiles honestly, with no help.

Taking a joker back

Jokers on the table aren't safe. On your turn, as long as no discard is sitting there waiting to be claimed, you can swap a real tile for a joker in anyone's exposed meld — including your own. Hand over the tile the joker is standing in for, and the joker goes into your hand.

So an exposed joker is a weaker hold than the real tile. It's yours only until somebody decides to buy it back.

Diagram: A joker doing a tile's job

Two real 5 Dots and a joker, exposed as a pung. It counts as a complete group, and anyone holding the third 5 Dot can trade for that joker on their turn.

Declaring Mahjong

There are two ways to finish. Draw the tile you need yourself, or claim it from someone else's discard. Either way the hand has to be exactly 14 tiles matching a pattern on the card.

Drawing it yourself pays far better. Every other player pays you the pattern's full value, so you collect it three times over. Win off a discard and only the player who threw it pays, once.

That gap should change how you play the last few turns. One tile away from a common tile that gets discarded often? Take it when it comes. One away from something rare, with plenty of wall left? Waiting to draw it yourself is worth real points.

Claiming that last tile doesn't cost you the concealed bonus. What counts as concealed is never having exposed a meld — the winning tile goes straight into your hand rather than face-up on the table, so a hand you never called a meld with is still concealed however it finishes. The one hand on the card that must be concealed can be won off a discard too, on the same rule.

If the wall empties before anyone declares, the hand is a draw. Nobody scores and the same player deals again.

Diagram: A completed hand

Four runs of 1-2-3 Dot and a Red Dragon pair — 30 points for the pattern, plus 5 for never having exposed a meld. All four runs being Dots is what earns the 30: the same shape in a suit of your choosing pays 25.

Scoring and Strategy

Every pattern has a fixed value between 25 and 75 points, set by the card. Most add 5 points if you finish without ever exposing a meld. The concealed-only scores are the exception — the one hand that can't be won any other way, and the higher concealed value on each singles-and-pairs hand — because being concealed is already what they're paid for.

The dealer keeps the seat by winning the hand or by nobody winning it; otherwise it passes along. A session runs a set number of hands and ends early if any player's total falls below zero.

Playing better

Stay uncommitted. You're scored on what your final hand matches, not what you meant to build. Keeping two or three patterns live beats locking onto one early, and the card's "closest to your hand" view exists to show you which ones genuinely still are.

Read what's face-up. Every exposed meld is free information. Two exposed pungs in the same suit tell you roughly what that player needs — and roughly what you can safely throw.

Count what's gone. If all four 5 Bams have been discarded, any pattern you're chasing that needs a 5 Bam pung is dead, and no amount of patience will revive it. Spotting that early leaves you turns to switch. Spotting it at tile ten leaves you nothing.

Beyond that, the fastest way to improve is to open the card during a hand and look at what you're actually close to, rather than what you decided to build during the Charleston. Beginners lose most often by chasing a pattern that stopped being reachable ten turns ago.