How to Play American Mahjong

American mahjong is a game for four players, played with tiles and a card that changes every year. Here is the game in plain English, from the first wall to the last tile.

What you need

• A set of tiles. The game uses 152 tiles: three suits (bams, craks and dots, numbered 1 to 9, four of each), 16 winds, 12 dragons, 8 flowers and 8 jokers. Our sets have 160 tiles: most groups set the 2 extra jokers and the 6 blanks aside.
• Four racks with pushers, to hold your tiles and push the wall forward.
• The card of the year from the National Mah Jongg League. It lists every hand you are allowed to make. How to get it.
• Two dice, and a mat to quiet the table.

1. Build the wall

Turn all the tiles face down and shuffle. Each player builds a wall 19 tiles long and two tiles high in front of their rack. The four walls form a square.

2. Deal

East is the dealer. East rolls the dice to decide where the wall is broken, then the players take tiles in turn. East ends up with 14 tiles, everyone else with 13.

3. The Charleston

Before the game starts, players pass tiles to improve their hands. The first Charleston is required: pass three tiles to the right, three across, three to the left. The second Charleston is optional, and any player can stop it: three to the left, three across, three to the right. To finish, the players sitting across from each other may agree on a courtesy pass of up to three tiles. Jokers are never passed.

4. Play

East discards first. Play then moves counterclockwise: draw a tile from the wall, then discard one, naming it out loud. You may take a discard only to complete a group you show on your rack (three, four or five identical tiles) or to declare mahjong.

5. Jokers

A joker can stand in for any tile in a group of three or more identical tiles. It can never be used in a pair or as a single tile. On your turn, if a player has exposed a group with a joker and you hold the real tile, you may swap your tile for that joker.

6. Mahjong!

The first player to complete a hand from the card calls “mahjong” and shows the hand. Each hand on the card has a value. The player who discarded the winning tile pays double; if you drew the winning tile yourself, every player pays double. A hand with no jokers counts double.

If the wall runs out and nobody has won, the game is a draw: shuffle and play again.

Ready to play?

Start with a set your whole table can read: see our Easy-Read Classics.