Japanese mahjong: Difference between revisions

Mahjong as a whole is only a roughly 100 year old game. Originating in China, the game managed to spread across the country, East Asia, and even to the United States during the 1920s. The riichi variant itself only started emerging in Japan after World War 2. The modern riichi variant today began in the 1960's, while the addition of red 5's started appearing in the 1980's. It originated as a gambling game, though play for fun or sport are also common.

The object of riichi mahjong is to score the most points. At the start of each round, players draw and discard tiles, competing to be the first to get a winning hand. Then, the hand is scored based on its value. If the hand is won directly off another player's discard, the discarder must pay the winning payer. If a player draws their own winning tile, everyone else splits the payment. After a player wins, hands reset, and the next round starts. Once the final round ends, the game ends, and whoever has the most points wins first place.

*A hand must have at least one [[yaku]]. Yaku can be compared to "poker hands" - they are patterns/criteria that score points. For example, a "pair" in poker means having two of the same number. [[Toitoi]] ("All Triplets") is when the hand consists entirely of triplets (that is, having 4 triplets in total). In general, yaku that that are harder to get scores more [[han]], which calculates to more points.

The rules to the game is complex. Gameplay is generally similar to most Asia-originated variants of mahjong. For a more detailed overview, see the [[rules overview]] the page, or the rest of this article.

The game of mahjong itself has numerous variations across the world, including an attempted standardization of "World Mahjong". Virtually every country in East Asia and the United States has a form of mahjong. While they all have the same general principles, they each have very distinct rule variations.

*'''Pinzu''' (dots/circles)<!--Dots is used in most translations. Coins seems to be the best from a historical viewpoint and they do look like coins. But pinzu may actually mean circles in Japanese.--> - Look like coins/circles. The number of circles is the number of the tile.

*'''[[Kazehai]]''' (wind tiles) - labeled Ton (east), Nan (north), Xia (west), Pei (north).

Modern Japanese mahjong sets also come with four [[red five]] dora tiles. One number five character tile, two number five circle tiles, and one number five bamboo tile are replaced with their matching red tiles. These red dora tiles can replace the appropriate number of standard five-tiles. Usage of the red dora tiles is optional.

A winning hand is 14 tiles, however, in mahjong, you can only hold 13 tiles in your hand. Therefore, players must get to '''[[tenpai]]''' (ready hand) - a hand that is one tile away from winning - first. Once reaching tenpai, you can win the hand by either drawing a winning tile, or winning from an opponent's discard. With a normal hand structure, there are two ways to get to tenpai:

A hand that is one tile away from being complete is in tenpai. A hand that is one away from tenpai (two from winning) is 1-[[shanten]]. A hand that is two away from tenpai (three from winning) is 2-shanten, and so on. A hand with a high shanten count is far away from winning, and may be too slow to be worth winning.

*Kan: Call to complete a quad. See the [[kan]] page for the procedure.

Riichi is a huge part of the game's strategy. It is the single most common yaku. Even if you do not know any other yaku, you can always use riichi if you have a closed hand. However, it is not always a good idea to declare riichi. In addition, you should watch out when other players call riichi.

When ''any'' of the tiles you've discarded could've completed a winning hand, you become ''completely'' unable to win off of another player's discard. In other words, you cannot win by [[ron]]. It does not matter if the tile you discarded and the tile the opponent discarded are different, when you are in furiten, all tile types are affected. It does not matter if you could not actually win off the tile you discarded. It is still possible to win by drawing the tile yourself.

Typically, the game ends after the final hand of the last round, when at least one player has at least 30,000 points. This figure may differ (it depends on ruleset). However, the entire game may end prematurely. A game end may occur under the following conditions:

Once the game ends, points are tallied, and places get a rank from 1st to 4th.  

With the [[oka and uma]] systems, players get a bonus or penalty based on rank. 4th place pays 1st place some amount of points, and 3rd place pays second place some amount of points. This system was originally designed for gambling, but it can also be used for tournament or competitive play.