Hordes

**The 1 of this suit is a bird. The other tiles are green lines, the number of lines is the number of the tile.

**These tiles are labelled in the Chinese characters for the 4 cardinal directions. In order, they are East, South, West, North. Knowing the direction of the wind tiles *is* important. Like the character tiles, the winds can be labelled E S W N in the top right corner if the website allows.

 

The simplest yaku is [[riichi]]. So long as you have not called an opponent's discarded tile (you haven't done "[[chii]]", "[[pon]]", and haven't pressed "[[kan]]" when it's not your turn), you may declare riichi when you have a ready hand. Riichi comes with a few stipulations:

* Calling riichi costs 1000 points. The first player to win will claim these 1000 points (if you win with your own riichi, you get the 1000 points back).

* Once you declare riichi, you cannot change your hand. You must discard what you draw, unless you draw your winning tile.

'''The most common way to enter furiten is when you previously discarded a tile that you can now complete a winning shape with.''' For example:

Say you discarded the {{#mjt:2p}} in the past. You cannot win off ''any'' tile because you could've won with the discarded 2. If an opponent discards {{#mjt:8p}}, you cannot win. You did not discard the {{#mjt:8p}}, but you discarded a tile you could've won with - therefore, you cannot win with any tile discarded by others.

While furiten may be an annoying mechanic, it helps players defend against others. ''Because of the furiten rule, any tile another player discarded is 100% safe against that specific player.''

Players will often get into furiten if they do not have a yaku, or have a yaku that was not guaranteed. Therefore, knowledge of the yaku is important.

* If you decline to take the first possible win after declaring [[riichi]], you enter furiten permanently.

 

*Open kan - You have 3 tiles of the same type, then any opponent needs to discard another tile of that type. Works like pon does, including the fact that it opens your hand.

After calling kan, like chii and pon, you may not change or retrieve the tiles used for the quad after declaring kan.

When a non-East player wins, the winds rotate in reverse player order. The East player becomes North. South becomes East. West becomes South. North becomes West. (The player left of you always remains left of you; the player right of you always remains right of you.)

A "[[hanchan]]" (half game; South game) is the most common game length in riichi mahjong. In a hanchan the game lasts for 2 winds - East and South. After the South wind ends (South 4; 8 rounds minimum), the game ends.

At the start of each round, a [[dora]] indicator is revealed. The tile ''after'' the revealed dora indicator is the dora tile. For every dora tile in your hand, you gain extra points (+1 han/tile).

In most modern riichi mahjong websites, red fives are used. There is one red five in each suit (a red 5 of characters, a red 5 of bamboo, a red 5 in dots).

Having the red five in your hand is worth extra points, just like a dora tile. Unlike dora, having the red five in your hand gives you value. (I.e. a red five in your hand does not make a 6 more valuable.)

The scoring system is very complex. New players should not worry about the scoring table, instead focusing on making a winning hands. When playing online, the computer will score hands for you, so there's no need to worry about scoring as an absolute beginner.

**Han: Each [[yaku]] has a specified amount of han. A hand can gain han for multiple different types of yaku. Also, for every dora in the hand, the hand gains +1 han. Add up the han from yaku and dora to get the total han value.