What you need
Four players, a set of 144 tiles, two dice and a way to keep score. Chips work, so does a notepad. Each player sits at one side of a square table, and each seat is named after a wind: East, South, West and North. East deals first.
The tiles
A full set has three suits, two kinds of honor tiles, and eight bonus tiles. There are four copies of every suit and honor tile, which is why you will so often see three or four of the same face together.
Suits: dots, bamboo and characters
Each suit runs from 1 to 9. Dots are counted by their circles and bamboo by its sticks. On a character tile, the top symbol is the number and the red 萬 underneath means ten thousand. The 1 of bamboo is usually drawn as a bird; in Cantonese the game is called ma jeuk, “sparrow”.
Honors: winds and dragons
The four winds are East 東, South 南, West 西 and North 北. The three dragons are red 中, green 發 and white, which is a blank face or a framed rectangle depending on the set. Honor tiles have no numbers, so they can only be collected as matching sets, never as runs.
Bonus tiles: flowers and seasons
The eight bonus tiles are never part of a hand. When you draw one, you put it face up beside you and draw a replacement. In scoring games, a flower that matches your seat number is worth a little extra.
Plum, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo; spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Building the wall
Turn every tile face down and mix them on the table. Players call this washing the tiles. Each player then builds a row 18 tiles long and two tiles high in front of them, and the four rows are pushed together into a square: the wall.
East rolls the dice to decide where the wall is broken open. Counting from that gap, players take tiles in blocks of four until everyone has 12, then one more each. East takes a fourteenth tile. Anyone holding flowers or seasons sets them aside now and draws replacements from the far end of the wall.
Taking a turn
East begins by discarding, because East already holds fourteen tiles. After that, every turn follows the same four steps.
Take the next tile from the wall. If the previous player's discard completes a set for you, you may take that instead (see claiming discards).
- If the tile is a flower or season, place it face up beside you and draw a replacement.
Choose one tile to discard. Place it face up in the middle of the table and say its name, for example “three bamboo”.
- Play moves to the player on your right, which is counter-clockwise around the table.
You always end your turn with thirteen tiles. The hand ends when someone completes a winning hand, or when the wall runs out and nobody has won, which counts as a draw.
Pung, chow and kong
Most of the game is collecting sets. There are three kinds, and the rules for claiming a discard depend on which one you are making.
A pung is three identical tiles. You can claim any player's discard to finish a pung, even if it is not your turn. Call “pung”, take the tile, show the set face up, then discard.
A chow is a run of three numbers in the same suit, like 4, 5 and 6 of bamboo. You can only claim a discard for a chow from the player on your left, the one who played just before you.
A kong is all four copies of a tile. Because it uses an extra tile, you draw a replacement from the end of the wall before discarding.
If two players want the same discard, a winning claim beats everything, and a pung or kong beats a chow.
A winning hand
A complete hand has fourteen tiles: four sets and one pair. When the tile you draw, or a discard you claim, completes it, call “mahjong” and lay your hand face up.
Four sets and a pair. The East pung scores extra if East is your seat or the round's wind.
Most tables also accept a few special hands that break the four-sets pattern. The two you will meet first are seven pairs, and thirteen orphans: one of each 1 and 9, each wind and each dragon, plus one duplicate.
Scoring, briefly
Hong Kong scoring counts faan, points for features of the winning hand: all one suit, all pungs, a pung of dragons, winning on a tile you drew yourself, a flower that matches your seat. Many tables agree on a minimum, often three faan, before a hand is allowed to win.
For your first few games, skip the scoring entirely. Play to complete hands, count who won the most, and add scoring once the turn order feels natural.
Chinese, Hong Kong or American
The rules above are the shared core. Here is where the three most common styles part ways.
| Chinese Official | Hong Kong | American | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tiles | 144 | 144 | 152, including 8 jokers |
| Winning hand | Four sets and a pair, worth at least 8 points | Four sets and a pair; minimum set by the table | Must match a hand printed on that year's card |
| Chows | Allowed | Allowed | Not used |
| Before play | Nothing | Nothing | The Charleston: players pass tiles to each other |
| Scoring | 81 named scoring elements | Faan, with a table-agreed minimum | Each hand on the card has a fixed value |
American mah jongg uses a new card every spring from the National Mah Jongg League. You need your own copy to play, because the winning hands change each year.
Get to know the tiles firstMahjong solitaire is a calm way to learn all 42 faces before your first four-player game.
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