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Player’s Guide
Four players, one hundred and fifty-two tiles, and a card that changes every year. American Mah Jongg looks intimidating from the outside and turns out to be one of the most sociable games ever devised. This guide covers everything you need for a first evening at the table.
01
One hundred and fifty-two tiles are used in play. They divide into five families, and once you can name them the rest of the game follows quickly.
Dots, Bams (bamboo) and Craks (characters). Each suit runs 1 through 9, with four copies of every number, so 108 tiles in all. Most hands ask you to collect within a suit rather than across suits, which is why players speak of a hand being “in Bams”.
Red, Green and White, four of each. Every Dragon belongs to a suit: Red to Craks, Green to Bams, White (the “Soap”) to Dots. That pairing matters constantly, because a hand written in one suit takes that suit’s Dragon.
North, East, West and South, four of each. Winds belong to no suit, so a hand built on Winds can be played whatever your tiles look like elsewhere.
Their artwork differs from set to set, from peonies to koi to beach portraits, but every Flower is interchangeable with every other in play. Many hands open with a run of Flowers.
Wild tiles. A Joker can stand in for any tile inside a Pung, Kong or Quint, meaning any grouping of three or more identical tiles. It can never be used as a Single or as half of a Pair. This one restriction shapes nearly every decision you will make.
Our sets ship with 160 tiles: the 152 above, ten Jokers rather than the usual eight, and six blanks kept as spares against a lost tile. The exact composition of each set is listed on its product page.
02
American Mah Jongg is played to a card published each spring by the National Mah Jongg League. The card is the game.
Unlike other forms of mahjong, you cannot win with any pleasing arrangement of tiles. You must match one of the roughly seventy hands printed on the current year’s card, exactly. The card groups those hands into sections: runs of consecutive numbers, hands built around a single number, Winds and Dragons, and so on.
Every line on the card shows a pattern of fourteen tiles and the points it pays. Two conventions do most of the work:
Cards are reissued every year and the hands change. A card is inexpensive and comes directly from the League, which also funds their charitable work. We do not sell them, and we would encourage you to buy from the source.
03
Five words cover every combination you will ever be asked to build. Only the last three accept a Joker.
One tile, on its own.
Two identical tiles.
Three identical tiles.
Four identical tiles.
Five identical tiles, so a Joker is always needed.
Flowers are the exception to the identical-tiles rule: any Flower matches any other, so three different Flowers still make a Pung.
04
Four players sit at a square table. Each builds a share of the wall, and the dice decide the rest.
05
Before anyone plays a tile, the table exchanges what it does not want. This is unique to the American game, and it is where hands are really chosen.
Three tiles at a time, in three passes. The first round is compulsory. Step through it here:
Seen from above, with you at the bottom of the table.
If all four players agree, a second Charleston follows in the other direction: left, across, right. Any one player may decline it and the table moves on. A final courtesy pass then lets players sitting opposite each other exchange up to three tiles, by mutual agreement on the number. It is optional and often declined.
Jokers are never passed during the Charleston. Neither is any tile you have received in the immediately preceding pass, except on the blind pass described above.
06
Play moves to the right. On your turn you take a tile and you discard a tile, so your rack always returns to thirteen.
East begins by discarding, face up, naming the tile aloud as it is placed. From there, each turn offers a choice.
| You may | What happens |
|---|---|
| Draw from the wall | Take the next tile, then discard one. The ordinary turn. |
| Call the discard | Claim the tile just discarded, if it completes a Pung, Kong or Quint you can show. Say “call” before the next player draws. |
| Call for Mah Jongg | Claim the discard because it completes your whole hand. Any player may call, in or out of turn. |
Exposing. When you call a discard for a grouping, you place that grouping face up on top of your rack, then discard. It stays there for the rest of the hand: you have told the table what you are building, and you have committed to it. The exposure cannot be broken up or rearranged afterwards.
Redeeming a Joker. If an exposure contains a Joker, yours or anyone else’s, and you hold the real tile it stands for, you may swap them on your turn and keep the Joker. A Joker sitting in a discard pile is dead and cannot be claimed by anyone.
If the wall runs out before anyone wins, the hand is a wall game. No one scores and the deal passes on.
07
Fourteen tiles matching one line on the current card, exactly. Nothing else wins.
Declare it by saying “Mah Jongg”, then lay your hand face up and name the line you have made so the table can check it. The hand is verified against the card before anything is paid, and a hand declared in error is dead, so it is worth being sure.
Payment follows the value printed beside the line. The player who discarded the winning tile pays double; the other two pay the printed value. If you won on a tile drawn from the wall, all three pay double.
The deal then passes to the right, a new card line is chosen, and the walls go up again.
08
The rules take an evening to learn. These take longer, and matter just as much.