chinese mahjong

01Gather tiles and agree the table rules

Use 136 core tiles: four copies each of 1–9 in three suits, four winds and three dragons. Flowers/seasons add eight optional bonus tiles; no jokers or Charleston. For the first practice hand, agree zero minimum fan and record one point per valid win without payments. This is an explicitly simplified scoring exercise; a common regular minimum is three fan. Decide flower use, minimum, cap, special hands and who pays before a scored session.

Reference: Mahjong Time — HK tiles.

02Build and deal

Choose East by dice; South, West and North sit counterclockwise. Make four walls, two tiles high: 17 stacks each without flowers or 18 with them. In this reference dealing procedure East rolls three dice, counts players counterclockwise with East as one, then counts that total of stacks from the indicated wall’s right end to find the break. Reserve seven stacks at the tail for replacements, keeping 14 replacement tiles as play proceeds. Deal in counterclockwise packets of four until each has 12, then one each and an extra to East. East has 14; others 13. Expose flowers and replace them from the replacement end, repeating if another flower appears.

Reference: Mahjong Time — reference wall and deal.

03Build four groups and a pair

An ordinary winning shape has four groups plus two identical tiles. A chow is three consecutive numbers in one suit; a pung is three identical tiles; a kong is four identical tiles but counts as one group. Winds and dragons cannot make chows. Each declared kong adds one physical tile to the usual 14-tile winning total because its replacement preserves the rest of the hand.

Reference: Mahjong Time — hand structure.

04Take a turn or claim

East starts by discarding. Normally draw from the live wall, then discard; turns run counterclockwise. Claim the latest discard for a chow only from the player on your left, or for a pung/kong from anyone. Expose the completed group and discard; after a kong, draw a replacement first. A win outranks other claims; pung/kong outranks chow. For simultaneous wins this profile awards the tile to the nearest claimant in turn order. Claim a pair only to win. On your own turn after drawing, you may also declare four matching tiles held in your hand as a concealed kong and take a replacement. A drawn fourth tile can extend your exposed pung; another player may rob that added kong to win. A discard cannot extend an already exposed pung.

Reference: Mahjong Time — claims and play.

05Win, score and rotate

Declare mahjong when the hand is complete and meets the agreed minimum. If the live wall runs out first, it is a draw. East retains the deal after an East win or draw; otherwise it passes counterclockwise. In scored HKOS, all pungs give three fan; a dragon pung adds one; a seat-wind or round-wind pung adds one for each role. Patterns and payments vary: use the linked full sheet and agree how fan convert to points. The zero-minimum practice score above is not the full HKOS scoring system.

Reference: Mahjong Time — scoring profile.

06Example and mistakes

Three 2-dots, three 5-bamboo, three 7-characters, three red dragons and two east winds form four pungs and a pair. This earns the all-pungs pattern plus a dragon pung in the cited profile. Do not mix suits in a chow, keep a drawn flower in your hand, skip a kong replacement, or assume every 14-tile shape qualifies at a three-fan table.