San Hako Mahjong

San Hako Mahjong, also known as Couples Mahjong, is a two-player variant of Japanese Mahjong devised by Reddit and BoardGameGeek user MansterSoft.

The full rules can be found here on the San Hako Mahjong website.

Overview

The main features of San Hako Mahjong are:

• Unlike in three-player mahjong (sanma), the full set of 136 tiles is used and chii calls are permitted.
• A dummy player is introduced, which is only used to simulate payments by the two missing players.
• When a player has 4 full rows of 6 tiles in their discard pile, the hand either ends in ryuukyoku on the opponent's next turn, or a sudden death state may be triggered if both players are in tenpai and they agree to invoke sudden death. Any player who called riichi is forced to agree. If sudden death is invoked, hands can no longer be changed, and players keep drawing until someone wins or the live wall is depleted.
• West and North wind tiles can be "quick discarded" in a separate discard pile, allowing the player to immediately draw a new tile. This is very similar to North nukidora that is common in three-player mahjong, except the wind tiles don't provide dora, and tile calls can still be made on them.

External links

• San Hako Mahjong - Riichi for 2 Players @ san-hako-mahjong.blogspot.com

See also

• Mahjong for Beginners, MansterSoft's simplified rulesets for teaching mahjong to beginners.