Rules overview

Japanese mahjong is quite complex with its many rules and special cases. This section provides an overview of the game, but a beginner will not be ready to play after reading just this. For more detailed documentation on the rules, see Japanese mahjong, as well as other articles covering various game topics.

This article is a brief and quick layout to the most basic rules of the game, just to get new players started.

Tiles and suits

Mahjong is played by four players
These tiles work similar to playing cards
All in all, there are 34 tile types, and there are 4 copies each
In total, there are 136 tiles
The following are the three main suits, plus a class of "honor" tiles:

	36 tiles in the man suit
	36 tiles in the pin suit
	36 tiles in the sou suit
	28 honor tiles

Setup

After tiles are shuffled, the players build walls of face-down tiles
Each wall is 17 tiles long, double stacked
The four walls serve as a stockpile to draw tiles from
Each player starts with 25000 points

One 10,000 point stick
Two 5,000 point sticks
Four 1,000 point sticks
Ten 100 point sticks

Starting the deal

At the start of each hand after the walls are built, players are dealt 13 tiles each
One player throughout the game is designated as the dealer, marked by an indicator
The dealer is begins by rolling the dice, to determine the wall break

Dealing the tiles

The dealer is always seated East
Player to the right of the dealer is South
Player across the dealer is West
Player to left of the dealer is North
Regular turn order: East, South, West, North
Per the turn order, each player gets 4 tiles per turn, until each has 12 tiles
Finish the deal process by drawing one tile each, for 13 tiles in the hand
Dealer always gets first draw and discard

Objective

Players take turns to draw and discard tiles to build complete hands (if possible)
Develop ready hands and hopefully complete them by draw or discard
Avoid playing into other player's hands, or else lose points

Ron: Players who win by tile discard scores points off the discarder
Tsumo: Players who win by tile draw scores points off of the other three players

Hands and yaku

Winning hands of 14 tiles contain four melds, plus a pair

Melds are specific groups of 3 tiles:
The pair consists of any two identical tiles
Melds and pairs cannot be of mixed suits

Two exceptions to this pattern: kokushi musou and Chii toitsu

A complete hand example:

Yaku

A winning hand must have at least one yaku (see the list for pattern examples)
A yaku is a special condition under which the win occurs, or a distinguished pattern within the hand's tiles
These patterns may be viewed like poker hands
Hands may have a combination of different yaku
Hand value is primarily based off of your yaku patterns

Strategy

There are many ways to build a winning hand, some being more difficult and higher-scoring than others. Choosing which type of hand to go for, therefore what to discard each turn. takes judgment. Calling tiles from opponents may speed up the hand, but may make it worth less.

Discarding an opponent's winning tile is costly, because the entire value of the hand must be payed by the discarder. To defend against this, players can try to discard only safe tiles, thus destroying their own hands. Other times, players may decide to ignore their opponents and keep on building their own hands.

Learning to play

Youtube playlist by HanaYoriUta, a very well presented tutorial and rules reference with over 3 hours runtime
Mahjong for Dummies, an entire website for learning the game

After learning the rules, you can play online or join an offline group.

Specific rulesets

The core rules allows for some variation in the finer details. Before playing, one has to be familiar with the specific ruleset used.

|Rules used on Tenhou.net
EMA Riichi Competition Rules are commonly used at tournaments in Europe.
USPML rules are common in the United States.