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:
        
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36 tiles in the man suit |
        
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36 tiles in the pin suit |
        
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36 tiles in the sou suit |
      
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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
- A wide variety of strategies are employed, regarding building winning hands and avoiding other player's hands
- Memorization of the yaku is key
- Yet, players may continue to play the game simply building hands, without or with limited knowledge of the yaku
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.