Mahjong Lore

Mahjong scoring, tiles & hand calculators

For beginners

How to play mahjong: a guided first game

Mahjong is played by four people with 136 or 144 tiles. Each turn you draw a tile and discard one, aiming for a hand of four sets and a pair; a set is three in a row of one suit or three of a kind. You may also take another player's discard to finish a set, or to win. Roll the dice below to start a game, then follow the steps.

Break the wall

Once the four walls are built, East (the dealer) rolls the dice to decide where the wall is opened. The diagram shows the table from above with East at the bottom.

Then deal

  1. East takes the first two stacks (four tiles) clockwise from the break; South, West and North take the next four each.
  2. Repeat twice more, so everyone holds twelve tiles.
  3. East takes two more tiles, the tops of the first and third stacks; South, West and North take one each.
  4. East now has 14 tiles and discards first; everyone else has 13. With flowers, each player sets theirs aside and draws replacements from the tail, East first.

7West's wall breaks

Count 7 players counter-clockwise starting with East as 1: East 1, South 2, West 3, North 4, East 5, South 6, West 7. West counts 7 stacks from the right-hand end of their wall and pushes the wall apart there.

The seven stacks counter-clockwise from the break are the dead wall; turn over the top tile of the third stack from the break: that is the dora indicator. East then takes the first two stacks on the other side of the break, and the deal goes on clockwise.

East (dealer)SouthWestNorthdead wall (7 stacks)dora indicatorthe deal goes clockwise

The goal: four sets and a pair

A complete hand: 2-3-4 characters, 6-7-8 circles, three 5 bamboo, three red dragons and a pair of 9 characters.

Nearly every winning hand has fourteen tiles: four sets and one pair. A set is a chow (three in a row of one suit, such as 2-3-4 characters), a pung (three identical tiles) or a kong (four identical tiles, which earns an extra draw). Winds and dragons cannot make a chow, and the run does not wrap round from 9 to 1. Each variant also has a few special hands, such as seven pairs or thirteen orphans, and a rule for how much a hand must be worth before it may win.

Your first game, step by step

  1. Choose seats and the dealer. Shuffle one tile of each wind face down and let everyone draw one. Whoever draws East is the first dealer and picks a seat; South sits on East's right, West opposite and North on the left (EMA 2.3). Play always moves counter-clockwise, East, South, West, North.
  2. Shuffle and build the walls. Turn every tile face down, mix them well, and each build a wall two tiles high in front of you: 17 stacks long with a 136-tile set (EMA 2.4), 18 with 144 tiles (MCR 3.5). Push the four walls together into a square.
  3. Break the wall and deal. East rolls (two dice in riichi, three in the Hong Kong rulebook), and the dice decide whose wall opens and where. Use the roller above, then deal as its steps describe. East starts with 14 tiles, everyone else with 13.
  4. Take turns. East discards first. Then each player in turn draws one tile from the wall, clockwise from where the deal ended, and discards one face up in front of them, in neat rows of six so everyone can see who threw what.
  5. Call discards. Instead of drawing, you may take the tile just discarded: for a pung or kong from any player, but for a chow only from the player on your left. Say the call ("pung", "chow", "kong"), lay the set face up, then discard. Play continues from you, so players in between may lose their turn.
  6. Go out. When a drawn or discarded tile completes your hand, declare the win and lay your tiles face up for everyone to check. A call to win beats any other call on the same tile.
  7. Score, then pass the deal. The hand is scored and paid. The deal moves to the next player counter-clockwise, though the rules differ on when the dealer keeps it. If the wall runs out with no winner, the hand is a draw.
Chow: a run, from the player on your left only
Pung: three alike, from anyone
Kong: four alike, then draw a replacement
The three sets you can make by calling a discard: 3-4-5 bamboo, three south winds and four 8 circles.

How the variants differ

The moves above are shared by almost every kind of mahjong. What changes is the set, how a hand must be built to win and how it is scored. Pick one variant and stick to its rules for the whole game.

Four common variants compared
Japanese riichi (EMA 2025)Hong Kong (HKMA)Chinese Official (MCR 2006)American (NMJL)
Tiles136136, or 144 with flowers144, flowers included152, with 8 jokers
Dice to break the wall232, thrown twicesee the League's rules
ChowFrom the player on your leftFrom the player on your leftFrom the player on your leftsee the League's rules
Least a hand needs to winOne yaku (dora do not count)3 faan8 points, flowers not countedMust match a hand on this year's card
FlowersNot usedOptional; faan for your own seat's flowers1 point eachPart of the set; the card's hands say how they are used
ScoringHan and fu into points; the dealer wins and pays moreFaan into a points table; no dealer bonus81 kinds of fan; 8 points from each player, plus the hand's value from the discarder (from everyone on a self-draw)Played against the League's card of standard hands
AlsoDeclaring riichi, dora tiles, the dead wallLiability for feeding big handsOnly one player can win on a discardThe Charleston: passing three tiles before play; the card changes every year

Score riichi hands with the riichi score calculator and Hong Kong hands with the faan calculator. Not sure your set has everything? The tile guide checks it for each variant.

Teaching a table of beginners

Holidays are a natural time to bring out an old set. If you are teaching family over Thanksgiving (Thursday 26 November 2026) or the New Year weekend (New Year's Day is Friday 1 January 2027), a few habits make the first game smoother:

  • Play the first hand with tiles face up, talking through each discard, before playing for real.
  • Leave scoring for later: count only who went out, then add points once everyone knows the moves.
  • Choose one ruleset and print its key rules; mixing house rules from different families causes most arguments.
  • Keep a running score on paper, or let a calculator do the arithmetic.

If you are running a club night with several tables, Local Mingle builds round-robin rotations, and PuzzleBirch has printable puzzles for anyone waiting for a seat.

Beginner mistakes

  • Calling a chow from the wrong player. Only the discard of the player on your left can make a chow.
  • Forgetting the pair. Four sets without a pair is not a winning hand.
  • Discarding before drawing, or drawing from the wrong end of the wall. Draw clockwise from where the deal ended.
  • Declaring a win that is not worth enough. In riichi a hand with no yaku cannot win; under a three-faan minimum, a two-faan hand cannot either.

Questions from beginners

How many players do you need for mahjong?

Four. Each player sits at one side of the table and builds one of the four walls; the seats are named East, South, West and North.

How many tiles does each player start with?

Thirteen, except the dealer (East), who starts with fourteen and makes the first discard.

What is the difference between a pung, a chow and a kong?

A pung is three identical tiles, a kong is four identical tiles, and a chow is three tiles in a row of the same suit. You can call any player's discard for a pung or kong, but a chow only from the player on your left.

Who goes first in mahjong?

East, the dealer, who discards first without drawing because they already have fourteen tiles. Play then goes counter-clockwise: South, West, North.

What happens if nobody wins?

When the wall runs out the hand is a draw. In the EMA riichi rules players who are one tile from winning collect 3,000 points in total from those who are not (nothing changes hands if all or none are); in the Hong Kong rulebook no points change hands.

Sources

  1. European Mahjong Association, Riichi Rules for Japanese Mahjong, 2025 edition (August 2025): 2 Setup (seats, walls, breaking the wall, dead wall, dora indicator, the deal), 3.2-3.4 (winning hand, turns, calls, precedence, exhaustive draw). Copy hosted by Mahjong Danmark; the EMA's original file, archived.
  2. Hong Kong Mahjong Association, 香港麻雀總例 (© 2025): 數骰位 and 開門 (three dice, breaking the wall), 配牌 (the deal), 流局 (draws), 分數計算 (3-faan minimum); and the English edition Hong Kong Mahjong (Classical Mahjong) (17 May 2023), on chi from the left player.
  3. World Mahjong Organization, Mahjong Competition Rules (English edition, © 2006, as published by the EMA): building walls of 18 stacks, throwing the dice twice, exposures, 8-point minimum, payments and the 81 fan.
  4. National Mah Jongg League, The Game: the annual card, jokers and the Charleston; and Tom Sloper, Sloperama FAQ 7S, on 152-tile American sets.
  5. US Office of Personnel Management, Federal holidays: Thanksgiving Day, Thursday 26 November 2026; New Year's Day, Friday 1 January 2027.

Checked on 5 November 2026.