Sanma
Sanma 「三麻」 is the three player variant to mahjong. Just like the regular four player game, all yaku and standard rules apply to the game. Likewise, any house rules may apply.
Rule modifications
Three player essentially plays like the regular four player game but with some changes.
- Chii disabled
- 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 tile dora (nukidora)
- The call of kita 「キタ」 is enabled. When holding a north tile, players may call kita, place the north tile into 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 north tile. This call invalidates ippatsu, tenhou/chiihou, double riichi, and the option for kyuushu kyuuhai.
- The kita tile is not considered part of the hand composition, so it will not invalidate yaku like tanyao.
- If west is the dora indicator, then kita is counted as two dora.
- If the player wins off of the dead wall draw from calling kita, they are awarded rinshan.
- A kita 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.
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 Kita calls. For each Kita 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 the hands, usually only calling on key tiles. Calling a hand that must make 3 calls is not much better than not.
- Chii is disabled in 3-player mahjong.
- 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.
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.
- Surpassing is more frequent. E.g. in all last, if a player is a mangan below the player above, the probability of that player surpassing the player above is 20%~30%.
- It is usually unwise to give up winning at the very beginning of a round. In 3-player mahjong, 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. Therefore, even if you are in a great lead, winning should usually be your goal.
Variants
One variant to sanma is called atama mahjong. The same mechanics to atama applies with an added feature: tile calls from single tiles to complete pairs is allowed.
External links
- Sanma in Japanese Wikipedia