Ryuukyoku

Ryuukyoku is also known as the "exhaustive draw". Sometimes, all the tiles aside from the dead wall are drawn, and no player manages to produce a winning hand. In this case, the hand ends in a draw. In this case, player(s) tenpai receive points from those in noten. A hand in tenpai is one that needs just one more tile, either by draw (tsumo) or discard (ron) to win. However, that needed tile was never claimed. Nearly 40% of professional games go to an exhaustive draw due to players immediately dropping out of the race when a player declares riichi.

Tenpai

Examples of tenpai hands:

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Examples of noten hands:

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Point exchanges

No matter what, the total exchange of 3,000 points are evenly split between among the tenpai players from the noten players. Any leftover riichi bets on the table are placed near the counters until collected by the winner of a hand.

Point exchanges are as follows:

• 0 players in tenpai: No points exchanged.
• 1 player in tenpai: All players in noten pays 1,000 points to the tenpai player.
• 2 players in tenpai: Each player in noten pays 1,500 points, each player in tenpai receives 1,500 points.
• 3 players in tenpai: The single player in noten plays 1,000 points to each player in tenpai.
• 4 players in tenpai: No points exchanged.

If the dealer is not in tenpai, then the dealer indicator moves to the right; and that player becomes the new dealer. If the dealer is in tenpai, then the dealer indicator remains. For both cases, the count for honba increases by 1.