Sanma

Sannin mahjong 「三人麻雀」 (lit. three-person mahjong), often abbreviated as sanma 「三麻」, is the three-player variant to mahjong.

Rule modifications

All rules, rule variations, and house rules that apply to the four-player game apply to sanma, with the following changes:

• Chii disabled

Players cannot make the tile call of chii. Players can still call pon or kan for claiming discards.

• Removal of one suit

Typically, the manzu tiles from 2-man to 8-man are removed. The terminals (1-man and 9-man) are kept to allow the possibility of kokushi musou and chinroutou. However, sanshoku doujun is no longer possible. (When 1-man is the dora indicator, 9-man is the dora.)

• The dead wall

The dead wall is arranged differently. The dead wall accommodates 8 rinshan draws rather than four. Thus, the dora indicator is the 5th tile from the wall break.

• North tiles

As there is no fourth player, North tiles may be treated differently, usually as nukidora and/or yakuhai for all players.

• Nukidora (Pei nuki / Kita)

The call of nukidora may be enabled with North, flower or other tiles. When holding a nukidora tile, players may call it, place the tile unto the side of the board, and it would be counted as dora. Afterwards, the player is allowed an extra draw from the dead wall to replace the tile. This call invalidates ippatsu, tenhou/chiihou, double riichi, and the option for kyuushu kyuuhai. The call for the North tile nukidora is pei nuki 「北抜き」 or pei 「北」 for short. It is commonly called kita on English-localized mahjong platforms.

The nukidora tile is not considered part of the hand composition, so it will not invalidate yaku like tanyao.

If North is nukidora and West is the dora indicator, then a North claimed as nukidora is counted as two dora.

If the player wins off of the dead wall draw from calling a nukidora tile, they are awarded rinshan.

A pei nuki call can be ronned, but this does not award chankan.

• Scoring

For scoring, the same scoring table is used; both ron and tsumo values remain the same. However, for tsumo, no change is used to account and adjust for the missing player. Therefore, the total points for tsumo is less than that of the ron total.

If the ruleset uses abortive draws, the abortive draws of four discarded winds, four riichi, and triple ron are usually disabled (without any substitute).

Game setup

Sanma setup features 108 tiles, with the 2-8 tiles in one suit (typically the Manzu) removed. The 3 players each build a wall 18 tiles long, 2 tiles high. Automatic mahjong tables build 4 walls of 13-14-13-14 length instead.

The dead wall is still 7 tiles long, 2 tiles high, but the dora indicator is flipped on the 5th tile to accommodate Pei nuki (Kita) calls. For each Pei nuki or Kan call, the Haiteihai is moved to the dead wall to accommodate additional dora flips from Kan calls.

Starting point value is typically 35,000.

The North seat is entirely removed, so seats rotate between East, South, and West.

Play differences

There is a relative increase in the amount of terminal and honor tiles. Due to the increase in terminals/honors, as well as the lack of chii, tanyao becomes less common. Since there are only 2 number suits, honitsu becomes more common. The most common open yaku are yakuhai and honitsu.

1-man and 9-man are equivalent to guest winds, except that they cannot be used in a honitsu of another suit.

Due to one less suit and fewer tiles, hands develop much faster. This means:

• Players prefer to keep their hands closed rather than open them, usually only calling on key tiles. Opening a hand that must make 3+ calls is not much better than not.
  • Chii is disabled in sanma.
  • Calling cannot significantly increase the hand's speed like in 4-player mahjong.
• Riichi is more likely to be chased. This is because it is easier to draw the wanted tiles and iishanten hands are easier to get to tenpai than in 4-player mahjong.
  • Therefore, having a good wait is more important because bad waits are easier to be killed by chased riichi. If you have a bad wait and there are many ways to improve it to a good wait, consider dama or rejecting the tenpai.

And because of nuki dora, hand values are often inflated - mangan or higher hands become more frequent, nearly 60%. This means:

• Damaten is more frequent.
  • In both 3-player and 4-player, mangan+ hands should consider dama, due to how the scoring table works. In sanma, mangan+ hands are more common, so dama becomes more common as a result.
  • A win by ron is comparatively more valuable than tsumo, so dama's ability to ron an unsuspecting player is stronger.
• The push/fold decision changes radically. E.g. having a mangan iishanten isn't as powerful as it is in 4 player. In general, each tile is more likely to deal in, and hands are more valuable.
  • Specifically, don't be too greedy for noten payment. Discarding dangerous tiles near exhaustive draw should be avoided. The noten payment in sanma is very little.
• Surpassing becomes easier. E.g. in all last, a player mangan below you has a 20%~30% chance to surpass you.
  • Therefore, it is usually unwise to give up winning at the very beginning of a round. In sanma, if you gave up winning, there would be only 2 players left. Then, it would not be uncommon for the dealer to win many hands and surpass you. Even if you are in a great lead, winning should usually be your first goal.

Variants

• Atama mahjong: Uses the same mechanics as "regular" sanma, but allows calling in order to turn single tiles into pairs.
• Toutenkou: Alternate version mainly popular in the Kanto region; includes 159-man, all manzu and North are nukidora, and the point system is adjusted, among other changes.

See also

• Futari mahjong (nima) - 2-player variants of mahjong
• Gonin mahjong (goma) - 5-player variants of mahjong

External links

• 三人麻雀

Sanma in Japanese Wikipedia

• 北抜き

Pei nuki (kita) in Japanese Wikipedia