Gnomon's Guide

Mahjong (sometimes spelled Mah Jong or Mah-jongg) is a Chinese game for four players that is similar to the card game of Rummy. It is played with small pieces known as 'tiles' which were originally made of bamboo and bone, but now are usually plastic. There's no reason why it couldn't be played with a suitable pack of playing cards¹. The game appears to have originated in a small region of China (Ningbo, about 150km south of Shanghai) in the late 19th Century and became popular across the rest of China in the first decades of the 20th Century. It was then 'discovered' by the outside world, and new versions were produced in Japan, Britain and America, with slightly different rules from the original. Mahjong is so similar to Rummy that it seems likely one game developed from the other, but there is no evidence for this, and indeed it is not clear which game came from which.

This entry gives a general introduction to the Hong Kong version of the game, which is one of the most popular in China. It is relatively simple and makes a good fast-paced game with elements of both skill and luck. Scoring is far simpler than the Western version. There are a number of optional features, such as flower tiles and special hands, which can be added to the game to make it more complex.

There are a lot of special situations in Mahjong which score extra points. It is not the intention of this entry to record every single possible rule. Instead, it gives a rough idea of the game. If you like the sound of it, why not go out there and try it?

The Mahjong Tile Set

Mahjong tiles are white or cream with patterns engraved or stamped on them and inked in four colours, black, green, blue and red. (Some sets have a more restricted set of colours). Traditional tiles had a bone front and a bamboo-wood back. Modern plastic tiles may have a different coloured plastic back, or may be plain white throughout.

The tiles are rectangular. Chinese ones are thick enough that they can easily be stood on their ends - they would be more accurately described as 'bricks' rather than 'tiles'. Chinese Mahjong players normally stand their tiles directly on the table top and don't use wooden racks such as the ones in the game of Scrabble. American tiles are usually thinner so they can't be easily stood on their end; wooden racks are generally used. The tiles can be anything from about 1.5cm (miniature) to about 3.5cm (giant) in height.

• The basic Mahjong set used in almost every version of the game has 136 tiles.

• Chinese sets include eight extra tiles for a total of 144 tiles. The extra tiles are known as flower tiles.

• American sets have the flower tiles and also eight joker tiles, bringing the total up to 152.

• Japanese sets have eight extra tiles: four flower tiles and four 'red fives', which are all-red versions of standard tiles².

The basic 136-tile set includes four identical copies of each tile, there being 34 distinct tiles. These are divided up as follows:

• Suit of Stones: Tiles 1 to 9, showing 1 stone, 2 stones and so on. The stones are discs that look like engraved balls. Stone tiles are generally illustrated in blue but have some red on them.

• Suit of Bamboo: Tiles 1 to 9. The 1 has a bird on it, a sparrow³. The 2-9 show 2 bamboos, 3 bamboos and so on. The bamboo tiles have a general green appearance although often there are other colours on them as well.

• Suit of Characters: Tiles 1 to 9, showing a Chinese character signifying prosperity⁴ in red and a Chinese number from 1 to 9 above this in black or blue. Due to the size of the Chinese character, these tiles have a generally red appearance.

• Winds: Four tiles representing the four winds: North, South, East and West. The tiles each have a Chinese character in black representing the direction of the wind.

• Dragons: Three tiles known in English as dragons:

  • The Red Dragon has a simple red character meaning 'middle'.
  • The Green Dragon has an elaborate green character meaning 'wealth'.
  • The White Dragon has a white rectangle. (In Japanese sets this tile is usually completely blank.)

  The name 'dragon' is purely an English language one. In Chinese, these are nothing to do with dragons. Despite this, some American sets actually have a picture of a dragon of the appropriate colour on them.

The Flower Tiles

The standard Chinese set has eight extra tiles bringing the total number up to 144. These extra tiles are all distinct from each other, not being repeated four times like the others. They show eight flowers, divided into the four flowers known as the 'Four Gentlemen' (orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum and plum), normally depicted in blue, and four seasons, normally depicted in red. They are used to increase the random element in the game.

Western Tiles

Some sets have additional writing on the tiles in Western letters or numbers. For example, the Character tiles may have digits from 1 to 9 in the corner in addition to the Chinese numbers. The winds may have N, S, E and W on them. These don't change the game in any way but make it easier for Westerners not familiar with Chinese writing to play the game.

The Name

The name of the game was originally maque (mah-chooay) which means 'Sparrow'. This may be because the clacking sound when the tiles are shuffled sounds a bit like a flock of sparrows, which are notoriously noisy birds. This name seems to have been changed to mahjong by Babcock, an American who decided to introduce the game to America. He spelled it Mah-jongg to make it mysterious and eastern and trade-marked this spelling. The name stuck and the game is known as majiang in China, majan in Japan and Mahjong in most of the rest of the world. (The choice of name may have been influenced by the old Chinese card game of madiao.)

Building the Wall

Because tiles can't be easily shuffled and dealt like a pack of cards, the practice is to build a wall of face-down tiles at the start of each round. Players pick their own tiles from the wall rather than a dealer dealing them. The rules specify elaborate procedures for building the wall and deciding at what point to start picking from it. These are essentially just a way of shuffling the tiles that makes cheating more difficult.

In the Hong Kong game, the building of the wall is done as follows. All the tiles are turned face down and all the players swirl them around in circles to shuffle them, which is known as 'washing' the tiles. This process is a noisy one, with tiles clicking against each other, inspiring the picturesque description of the 'twittering of the sparrows'. It may be this which gave the game its original name of 'sparrows'. Chinese players spend a lot of time doing this shuffling process, apparently spending more time on it than actually playing the game. Each player then builds a wall 17 tiles long and two high in front of them (or 18 tiles long if flower tiles are being used). To increase the randomness, these walls are built by laying down six tiles side by side, adding a second level, adding three tiles on either side, bring these up to second level, adding three more on one side and two or three on the other, and finally bringing this up to two tiles high. If you have wooden tile racks, you can use these to straighten up the walls. The four walls are kept separate; there's no need to join them together.

The final element of randomness is introduced by throwing dice. The first throw decides which player breaks their wall. The second throw counts along the wall to mark a position to start drawing the tiles. The first two tiles are taken from this position. From then on, tiles are taken from the gap working around the table in a clockwise direction.

Play

A Mahjong game is divided into rounds. Each round starts with building the wall and selecting the initial hands. Play proceeds by players picking a tile and throwing down another until they have a winning hand at which point they win the round. Only one player can win the round. The score is calculated based on the winner's hand. The other players pay the winner. They may pay actual money, tokens, or somebody may keep a record of how much 'money' each player has. (Rarely play may proceed until there are no more tiles left without anyone producing a winning hand, in which case the round ends in a draw and nobody pays.)

There can be as many rounds as you like, and they are basically independent of each other. 16 rounds is a normal number for a game, but you can stop after any number of rounds.

At the start of the round, you should take a 'hand' of 13 tiles and stand them in front of you so that you can see the faces and nobody else can. It is usual to sort your tiles at the start into suits, winds and dragons.

Normal play for each player is to pick a tile, increasing the number of tiles in their hand to 14. If the player has a winning hand, they shout 'Mahjong' or 'Sic' and display their hand. This ends the round. If they have not got a winning hand, they discard one tile bringing their hand back down to 13 tiles. They place the discard face up in the middle of the table, and state the name of the tile, for example '5 Bamboo', '9 Character', '2 Stone', 'North Wind' etc. Some players use the abbreviations 'Dot', 'Bam' and 'Crak' instead of 'Stone', 'Bamboo' and 'Character', because they are easier to say. Others use the Chinese words 'Wan' for 'character' and 'Bing' for stones - this means literally 'mooncake' after the Chinese circular pastries.

Play normally proceeds in an anticlockwise direction around the table to the next player but there are some situations where a player can skip this order. We'll deal with these later.

Pungs and Chows

The object of the game is to collect groups of three tiles. These can be:

• A pung (sometimes spelled "pong"), made up of three identical tiles. They can be any type of tile. For example, 5 Bamboo, 5 Bamboo, 5 Bamboo.
• A chow, made from three tiles which form sequential numbers in a suit. For example, 1 Bamboo, 2 Bamboo, 3 Bamboo.

A winning hand consists of four pungs or chows in any combination plus a pair of identical tiles.

Picking a Tile

Normal play is for the player to pick their next tile from the wall. This is the equivalent of being dealt a card from the pack in normal card games. There are three situations where a player can do something different:

• If the player to your left discards a tile which you can use to complete a chow, you say 'Chow', pick up the discarded tile and place the chow face up in front of you. The chow is still part of your hand, but must remain there, visible, and can't be changed. You are only permitted to do this with the last tile discarded, and only if it completes the chow. For example, if you have a 4 Bamboo and a 5 Bamboo and the player before you discards a 3 Bamboo, you can take it. If they discard a 2 Bamboo, you can't pick it on the off-chance of getting a 3 Bamboo later on.

• If any player discards a tile which you can use to complete a pung, you say 'Pung', pick up the discarded tile and place the pung face up in front of you. The pung is still part of your hand, but must remain there, visible, and can't be changed (with one exception, mentioned later).

• If any player discards a tile which enables you to complete a winning hand, you call 'Mahjong' (or 'Sic'), take the tile and display the winning hand in front of you.

There are a few precedence rules here:

• Any player calling pung takes precedence over another player calling chow.
• Any player calling mahjong takes precedence over any pungs or chows.
• In the unlikely event that two players call mahjong at the same time, the one closest to the person who discarded the tile in an anticlockwise direction wins the round.

The Winning Hand

The winning hand must consist of four groups which can be pungs or chows and a pair of extra identical tiles, sometimes called 'eyes'. You can use pungs or chows which you have got by discard, which will be displayed in front of you, or ones you've assembled by collecting tiles you picked from the wall, which you keep hidden in your hand until the winning hand is revealed.

Player Wind and Round Wind

Each round, one wind is nominated as the round wind (or 'prevailing wind'). It is the same for all players. This is used in calculating the score of pungs of winds. The prevailing wind is East at the start of the game. It normally stays the same for four rounds then changes, through South, West and North. For a really long game of more than 16 rounds, it would then go back to East.

Each round, one player is nominated as East and the others take the winds of South, West and North in an anticlockwise direction around the table. (Note that this is not the way directions are arranged on a compass.) The player who is East gets to start the round. In a winning hand, a pung of wind that matches the player's direction adds one level to the score. If the player who is east wins the round, the winds stay the same for the next round. Otherwise, the winds move around the table, the player who was south becoming the new east.

Scoring

Scoring is based entirely on the winning hand. If you don't win, the tiles in your hand have no relevance.

The level or fan of the winning hand is calculated and this determines the payout that each player pays to the winning player. Each additional level roughly doubles the payout. The exact details of this seem to be not entirely standard but they are roughly the same in all Hong Kong versions of the game. The one presented here is that used by the Hong Kong Style Mahjong smartphone app.

Kongs (which will be explained later) are treated as if they were pungs in all the scoring.

Dragons and Winds are referred to as 'Honours'.

The simplest winning hand wins the game and scores 0. It is has a mixture of pungs and chows, and has tiles from more than one suit. This is known as a "Chicken Hand".

You add fans to this based on various combinations:

• If there are four chows, add 1 fan.
• If there are four pungs, add 4 fans.
• If there is only one suit used, with some honour tiles, add 4 fans.
• If there is only one suit and no honours, add 7 fans.

• Add one fan for each of the following:

  • Each pung of dragons.
  • A pung of the wind assigned to the round.
  • A pung of the wind assigned to the player.
  • "Self-pick": If the player wins by picking a tile from the wall rather than a discard.
  • "Concealed Hand": If the player wins without having previously revealed any tiles (by calling chow or pung).
  • "Duc" - if the player's hand could only be completed by one particular tile and they got it. For example, if they had a 1 dot and 2 dot and needed a 3 dot to complete the hand.

There may be a maximum limit set in advance, such as 8 or 10, to prevent players from cleaning all the other players out with one lucky hand. Any score higher than this is treated as equal to the limit. The Hong Kong Style Mahjong program defaults to a limit of 8 but it can be set as high as 16. The Hong Kong Mahjong program has an unchangeable limit of 10.

Note: this predicts that the score for four pungs and a pair of all one suit is 11, but I have not verified this.

Payout

The basic payout is determined by the level. Up to level 4, the payout doubles for every extra fan. Above 4, it doubles for every 2 extra fans (Hong Kong Style Mahjong) or 3 extra fans (Hong Kong Mahjong).

Hong Kong Style Payout Table

For a win with a discarded tile, the player who discarded the tile pays the winner twice the basic payout and the other players each pay the basic payout.

For a win with a tile self-picked from the wall, each player plays the winner twice the basic payout.

Note that Self-pick rewards you twice - you get an extra level for it which doubles the payout, but the way the payout is calculated also increases the amount you will get by 50%, so you end up with 3 times as much.

Hong Kong Mahjong Payout Table

Strategy

You can see that high-scoring hands give a lot more payback than low-scoring ones because of the doubling nature of the payout, so it is worth trying to collect a hand that will score. You should look at the hand you start out with and decide what type of hand you're going to aim for. If the initial hand has many tiles of one suit, it might be worth aiming for a high-scoring 'all-one-suit' hand. If you have three or four pairs right from the start, you could aim for an 'all-pung' hand. If you have a hand with no great potential, you can try for a low-scoring chicken hand to prevent other players from getting a high-scoring hand.

But as play progresses, things can change. There's no point in aiming for an all-bamboo hand if you don't get dealt any bamboo tiles. Try and keep a hand that can adapt to whatever you get. For example, if you have 1 1 2 of bamboo, you can grab a 1 if it comes up to make a pung, or you can grab a 3 from the player on your left to make a chow. If you have a 2 3 4 5 6 of a suit, then a 1, a 4 or a 7 will make this into two chows.

At the start you will probably have some honour tiles. If you have a pair of any of them, it is worth holding on to it and waiting for the third tile to make a pung. If you only have one of the honour tile, it's not worth holding on to it unless the pung you produce with it will score you points. A single dragon might be worth holding on to, depending on what else you've got, but a single wind which won't score you anything is not worth holding onto. If you decide to discard these tiles, it is best to do so early in the game. This makes it less likely that another player will already have a pair of them and will take your discard.

Always consider the value of what you are throwing away as well as what you are keeping. You don't want someone else claiming your discarded tile, particularly if they win using it. It's safe to throw away a dragon or wind if there are already two of that tile displayed, as it can't be used to make a pung. (It could be used to make a pair to complete a winning hand, but so could any other tile.) If there is already one of those tiles displayed, it is still reasonably safe. Discarding a tile in a suit, you also want to consider can it be made into a chow. 1s and 9s are harder to make into chows, so it is safer to throw them away than other tiles in the suit.

Kongs

Although kongs are part of the basic game, they are a complication so we've left them until now to explain. Beginners could by agreement play a game without kongs, although this is not normal in Chinese Mahjong.

The kong is a peculiarity. It is a group of four identical tiles but is treated as if it were a pung with three tiles. A winning hand with a kong in it will have 15 tiles. If it has three kongs in it, it will have 17 tiles. Don't worry about this - treat each kong as if it were a pung.

You can create a kong in one of the following ways:

• If you have three identical tiles hidden in your hand (not displayed in front of you as a pung), and someone discards the matching fourth tile, you may call "Kong", take the discarded tile and display the four tiles in front of you as a kong. They must remain there and cannot be changed. Since you now have one tile too few to make up a winning hand, you pick an extra tile from the wall. You now continue as normal, discarding a tile of your choice.

• If you have three identical tiles hidden in your hand (not displayed in front of you as a pung), and you pick the matching fourth tile from the wall, you may call "Kong" and display the four tiles in front of you as a kong. They must remain there and cannot be changed. Again you pick an extra tile from the wall and continue as normal, discarding a tile of your choice.

• If you have a pung displayed in front of you, and during your turn you pick the matching fourth tile from the wall, you may choose to call "Kong", and place the tile on display with the other three to form a kong. Again you get to pick another tile from the wall and discard as normal.

• If you pick the fourth matching tile from the wall and choose not to declare a kong, you can hold onto it and proceed as normal. Later you can declare the kong in any subsequent turn as long as you haven't used the fourth tile for something else, ie used in a chow. Again you get to pick another tile and discard.

Kongs don't score any more than pungs, except in the special case where you get four kongs, so why would you bother with them? Declaring a kong can be a way of making it your turn if it is someone else's turn, or of getting rid of a piece you don't really want, with another pick to give you the chance to get one you do want.

One other oddity of the kong is that just after it is played, the fourth tile of a Kong can be taken by another player to complete a winning hand - this is known as 'eating' the kong.

Some Optional Features of the Game

Banning Chicken Hands

Because chicken hands (level 0 hands) immediately end the round but score very little, they can be very irritating if you have spent a lot of time collecting a good hand. Experienced players frequently outlaw them, insisting on a minimum of level 1 or even higher before the player is allowed to declare a win. This alters the strategy somewhat and makes the game more interesting.

Playing with Flower Tiles

The flower tiles are the only tiles that are not repeated four times each. They are used optionally to add an extra element of chance to the game. There are eight flower tiles, divided into four seasons, generally marked in red, and four flowers generally marked in blue. They're all called flower tiles, though. The exact design of flower tiles depends very much on the individual set.

In general, each flower or season tile corresponds to a particular wind. The flower tiles may be marked with a 1, 2, 3 or 4 in red or blue, or the equivalent Chinese numerals. These correspond to winds E, S, W and N. If there are no such markings, you'll have to decide and agree on a correspondence with the other players.

When a player picks a flower tile, they don't add it to their hand but place it face up in front of them. They immediately pick another tile. At the end of the round, the presence or absence of flowers is used in calculating the score of the winning hand. Here's a typical scoring system:

• Having no flowers scores 1 level
• Having a flower that matches the player's wind scores 1 level
• Having all four flowers or all four seasons scores 1 level (in addition to the level already scored for having the flower matching the wind)

It is thus possible to score up to an extra 4 levels by a good set of flower tiles. Since this is totally beyond the player's control, it adds an element of chance to the game.

Nine Piece Penalty

If a player lays down three pungs or chows all in the same suit, and later they win with a hand of all one suit by picking up a discard, the person who discarded the winning tile pays the 'nine-piece penalty'. This means that they have to pay the other two losing player's payments to the winner. That is, they pay four times the basic payout and the other two losing players pay nothing.

To warn against this possibility, when a player puts down their third pung or chow of the one suit, they should call out 'Nine Pieces'. Other players should then be careful not to discard tiles from this suit.

Dead Wall

As an option, part of the wall can be nominated as a dead wall - no tiles can be drawn from it, so the tiles in it are never used in the round. In this case, the last 14??? tiles are usually set aside as the dead wall.

Blind Play

Normally discards are placed in the centre of the table face up. Although only the last tile discarded is available to make chows and pungs, every player can see all the discards that have taken place so far in the game. This is useful in determining which tiles are safe to discard. In the 'Blind Play' option, discards are placed face down, so that each player must attempt to remember all the previous discards in determining what is safe to discard and what is not.

Special Hands

Special hands are an optional feature which can be used to add a bit of fun into the game. Winning with a special hand gets you lots of extra points. Exactly which special hands are allowed should be agreed in advance (in computerised games they can be turned on as an option).

Some special hands are legal winning hands by the normal rules with some extra feature added. For example, an all-pung hand featuring only bamboo tiles (which are basically green) and green dragons is a special hand and gets extra points. It is known as a 'Jade Game'.

Other special hands are not legal winning hands by the normal rules. For example, a set of 7 pairs does not follow the normal 3, 3, 3, 3 and 2 pattern but is allowed as a special hand..

Most special hands score maximum points (Level 8 in the above system). Many of them have special names as well. Here are some of them:

• Thirteen Orphans - 1 and 9 of each suit, one of each dragon, one of each wind, one other tile.
• Heavenly Hand - first player makes a winning hand with their first pick
• Earthly Hand - any player makes a winning hand with the first tile discarded
• Little Three Dragons - Two Dragon Pungs and a pair of the third dragon
• Big Three Dragons - Three Dragon Pungs
• Four Closed Kongs - four kongs and a pair, all achieved by picking from wall without picking up a discard
• Nine Gates - the following tiles all in one suit: 1 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 9 9 plus one other tile in that suit. No matter what that tile is, this will make a valid winning hand.
• Jade Game - green dragon pung, three pungs of bamboo and pair of bamboo
• Ruby Game - red dragon pung, three pungs of character and pair of character
• Pearl Game - white dragon pung, three pungs of stone and pair of stone
• Honour tiles only
• Seven Pairs of Honour

Playing Hong Kong Mahjong on a Computer

There are two good computerised versions. They differ slightly in their scoring systems, but not enough to affect the way the game is played.

• Nine Dragons Software produce a PC game called 'Hong Kong Mahjong'. It runs in Windows (every version since Windows Vista). It allows you to choose computerised opponents from 12 different characters, each with different skills, so as you progress in ability you can choose more capable opponents.

• 'Hong Kong Style Mahjong' is an app for android smartphones. It is free, getting its funding from ads. It does not allow you to change the ability of your opponents.

The Origins of Mahjong

Although the origins of Mahjong are lost in the mists of time, they're not very far back in the mists of time. The game is first recorded in the late 19th century. At that time, there was a lot of trade between the West and China and a mix of Western and Chinese cultures around the ports, so it is conceivable that Mahjong was a Chinese adaptation of the Western card game of Rummy. It is also possible that rummy-type games were the original type of card game in China and that Western rummy-type games came from China originally. It's certainly true that Western playing cards came originally from China by way of Mamluk Egypt.

One thing that is known about Mahjong is that the cards are all based on money.

• The tiles which are known as dots or stones originally represented coins.

• The things that are now drawn as bamboos were originally strings with coins threaded onto them - Chinese coins had a hole in the middle to allow this as a form of storage. Each "bamboo" was a string of 100 coins.

• The symbol on the "character/crack" tiles is "wan" which means 10,000 (sometimes translated into the rare English word myriad meaning the same thing)⁵. So each of the character tiles represented a multiple of 10,000 coins.

The "green dragon" meant "good fortune" - very appropriate for a game involving lots of money.

Further research needed here....