Learn how to play Mahjong

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How to play mahjong

Text Box: European Classical Mahjong Rules Mahjong is a Chinese game of skill, which involves four players. Although the game play in general is similar in all of the versions of mahjong, the game pieces and scoring, however, slightly differ depending on the regional variations. These rules are based on classical Chinese Mash Jong, which is no longer played in Asia, but is very popular in the European countries. Almost similar to gin rummy, the object of mahjong is to build sets, as well as get the highest point value. In order to do this, each player selects and discards tiles (the game pieces, bearing different designs) until an entire set of combinations has been made. So let’s start the ball rolling (in this case, the dice), and begin playing mahjong. The Mahjong set The basic Mahjong set has 136 pieces, which contains 36 distinct kinds of pieces (4 of each kind). There are three suits, which run from one to nine. There are three suits, which run from one to nine. 1) Bamboos 2) Characters 3) Dots Furthermore, there are four directional tiles (Winds or Feng), labeled as East, South, West, and North (4 pieces each) There are also three Cardinal tiles (Dragons or Special Honor Pieces), labeled as Red Dragon (matches with Character suit), Green Dragon (matches with Bamboos suit), and White Dragon (matches with Dots suit). There are 4 pieces of each Dragon. Lastly, there are eight optional Flowers & Seasons tiles, which consist of two sets of four tiles; each series marked 1, 2, 3, and 4. Mahjong Flowers The flower and season tiles differ in nature from the suit and honor tiles. There are only 4 flowers (1, 2, 3, and 4) and only 4 season tiles (1, 2, 3, and 4). When drawn, they are declared and a substitute tile is drawn. The flower(s) or season(s) corresponding with the winning player's wind may increase the score. The Flowers are represented by a plum, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo, and Seasons by a fisher, woodcutter, farmer and scholar. Flower Season/Occupation Number Corresponding Wind Plum Spring/Fisherman 1 East Lily/Orchid Summer/Woodcutter 2 South Chrysanthemum Autumn/Farmer 3 West Bamboo Winter/Scholar 4 North European Classical Mahjong Game Objective The objective of the game is to put together a complete set (or “hand”), which contains four sets of threes (either three of a kind of the same suit (or “pung”) or a sequence of the same suit (or “chow”)) and a pair, for total of 14 pieces. Each player starts with 13 tiles. With each turn, a player picks up a 14th tile, and then discards one tile face up in the center of the table. At this point, other players can choose to pass, take the tile to complete a set (pung, chow or kong – we’ll describe this later) or to declare a win (“mahjong”). The first player who completes the set of 14 tiles wins the hand. Let’s look at each steps of the game in more details. 1. Determining the Seats a. One of the players (or a jury in a tournament) mixes four wind tiles, one of each wind, face down on the table and arranges them in a row. See the example below: b. Each player picks blindly a wind tile to determine where he will be seated. According to the tiles they have drawn, all players take their places at the table. Here is an example: Dealing the tiles / Breaking the wall a. The 144 pieces, including flowers & seasons (or 136 without flowers & seasons) are mixed and then placed faced down on the table. Each player then selects 36 tiles (or 34 without flowers & seasons) and arranges them face down in a row of 18 pieces (or 17 pieces without flowers & seasons) and 2 tiles high. Then, these rows are pushed forward to form a hollow square in the middle of the table. Below is an example of an unbroken wall: b. To determine which side of the wall to be the starting point, East throws the two dice and counts counterclockwise round the walls, beginning with himself as one (accordingly, numbers 1, 5, 9 indicate East, numbers 2, 6, 10 indicates South, numbers 3, 7, 11 indicates West and numbers 4, 8, 12 indicates North). c. The player who sits at the starting point of the wall throws two dices again. Then, the numbers on both throws are added up. The player indicated then counts off along the tiles of his side of the wall, starting from the right end. Then, this player makes a break in the wall by pushing slightly the tiles to the left of the breaking point. The seven stacks of tiles to the right of the breaking point are known as Dead Wall (or Kong box); the remaining tiles, starting from the tiles to the left of the breaking point, constitute the Live Wall. The 14 tiles of the Dead Wall are reserved as replacement tiles for Kongs (and Flowers and Seasons, if they are used). The Dead Wall is replenishing so the used supplement tiles are replaced by reserving new tiles from the tail end of the live Wall (however, the supplement tiles are always taken from the left end of the Dead Wall). d. East starts the deal by taking the first two stacks of the tiles (i.e., four tiles) from the left of the break, then each of the other three players pick two stacks of tiles in order South, West and North. This is repeated twice so that each player has 12 tiles. East then draws the next stack of two tiles (top tile of the 1st and 3rd stacks), and South, East and North in turn take one tile each. Thus the dealer has 14 tiles and the other three players each 13 tiles.

learn to play mahjong for cash

More Mahjong Styles

More Mahjong Styles