Game Rules

Objective of the Game

The objective of the game is to collect tiles to form a Mahjong hand. Players take turns picking one tile from the wall and discarding one tile. When a player picks up a tile that gives a valid Mahjong hand, the player wins.

Tiles

A full Mahjong tile set contains 144 tiles. There are three suits: Bamboo, Characters and Dots. Each suit has tiles numbered one to nine. There is four of each tile. There are also honour tiles: dragons and winds. The dragons are named Red, White and Green. The winds are East, South, West and North. There is four of each dragon type and four of each wind in the tile set.In many rule sets there are also four season tiles and four flower tiles.

The Game Flow

Players start with 13 tiles each. Each player is assigned a wind (East-South-West-North). East starts the game by picking a tile from the wall. Players then take counter-clockwise turns picking a tile from the wall and then discarding one tile from the hand. It is also possible to claim a tile discarded by another player under certain circumstances. In such cases, the player to the right of the claiming player becomes next in turn so some players may lose their turn in a go-around. Players shall always have a total of 13 tiles in hand and/or declared, until Mahjong is declared. (A Mahjong hand contains 14 tiles.)In games that consist of several hands, the concept of prevalent wind is used. The game will then consist of one to four rounds, each with a prevalent wind (starting with east). In a round, players switch winds after each hand (with some exceptions in some rule sets), i.e. the player who was east becomes south, south becomes west and so on until all players have played as east. When the round is finished, the prevalent wind is changed (from east to west, west to south, south to north) and a new round starts. The prevalent wind is shown in the middle of the table.

Claiming Tiles

• A player may claim a discarded tile from the player to his left (i.e. if the claiming player is next in turn) to declare a chow (a three-tile same-suit straight).
• A player may claim a discarded tile from any other player to declare a kong (four-of-a-kind) or pong (three-of-a-kind).
• A player may claim a discarded tile from any other player to declare Mahjong.

In case several players want to claim the same discard, the following priority list is used:

• Mahjong
• Kong
• Pong
• Chow

If two players want to claim a tile for the same reason, the player who is closest to being next in turn gets the tile.Note that it is not always wise to claim discarded tiles. For example, sets that have not been declared are worth more than declared sets when going Mahjong.

Mahjong Hands

A Mahjong hand normally consists of four sets of three or four tiles and one pair. A set is a same-suit triplet (pong), a same-suit quadruplet (kong) or a same-suit straight (chow). Each rule set also has a number of special hands that allow Mahjong or score better than usual. Also, many rule sets have additional requirements for actually going Mahjong (see below).

Scoring

The score for a hand is calculated in two steps. First, the sets and the pair give minipoints. Going Mahjong also usually gives minipoints. The amount of points and which sets and pairs that give minipoints vary with the game rules.Second, the hand is analysed for patterns that depend on the game rules. Fans (also called funs, or yakus) are awarded for the different patterns. Each fan doubles the minipoints once. The resulting score is the hand score.In some rule sets, the hand score is irrelevant and only the number of fans is counted.

Tournament Scoring
Table points are awarded according to the players’ score after each tournament round. The player with the highest score gets four table points, the runner-up gets two table points and the player that is second to last gets one table point.

Settlement

When a game is over, the money entered into the game is divided amongst the participants. The settlement type for a specific table is shown in the table information box in the game. The following settlement types are used:

Winner Takes All
In some games, the player with the highest score takes the entire pot. The pot is the sum of the buy-ins from all participants. A feeding penalty may also be present, which means that a player that discards the winning tile pays extra (the feeding penalty) and the players who did not discard the winning tile pays less (the feeding penalty divided by the number of non-feeding players).

Riichi House Rules
In games that use Riichi House Rules, the players split the pot proportionally to the number of hand points they have at the end of the game. So, if the winning player has 70.000 points at the end of the game and the three other players have 10.000 points each, the winner will get 70% of the pot and the other players will get 10% each. In addition, there is a placement bonus, where the player with the least points pays a specific amount of money to the winner, and the player ranked third pays a smaller amount of money to the runner-up.

Tournament
In tournaments, the pot (and any money added by the game operators) is divided amongst participants according to the table points accumulated by players and the payout structure defined for the tournament. The payout structure is usually dependent on the number of participants and is described in the tournament information box.

Buy-in

The buy-in is composed of a fee and a beet. The fee goes to the house while the bet is put into a pot that is won by the participants of the game. Usually, only tournaments have a fee.Buy-in to tables is shown as "buy-in"/"maximum loss". The maximum loss is also equal to the greatest possible winnings and is the amount that is reserved from a player’s account when entering the game. In many cases the maximum amount is not lost. In particular, it is very rare to lose the maximum amount in Riichi east only and full games.In single hand games, the buy-in plus the feeding penalty is reserved from the player’s account when entering a game. Only if the player discards the winning tile will the full reserved amount be lost.In games using House Settlement Rules, the buy-in plus the maximum placement bonus (if applicable) is reserved. The full reserved sum can only be lost by the player who finishes last in the game and not even that player will always lose the full reserve.Tournaments have a buy-in equal to the bet plus the fee. Fees are much more common in tournaments than in other game types.

Terms

Riichi

Basic Premises

• Flower and season tiles are not used.
• Wind rotation after each hand except if East wins or is Tenpai.
• It is possible to declare Riichi on any hidden hand that only needs one more tile to be a winning hand. 1000 points will be placed, as an extra bet by the player declaring Riichi and the game will play itself until somebody wins or there is a draw. The player who has declared Riichi may expand a pong to a kong if the right tile is drawn. If a player who has declared Riichi declines to go mahjong on a tile is still Riichi, but may then only declare Mahjong on a drawn (not discarded) tile.
The winner of the hand takes the extra 1000 points. In case of a draw, the points will be transferred to the next hand.
• A player will become Furiten if he or she needs a tile that he or she has already discarded to go Mahjong. A player who is Furiten may only declare Mahjong on a self-drawn tile. A player will stop being Furiten if he or she discards tile(s) so that the tile needed for Mahjong is no longer one that he or she has already discarded.
• The game ends if a player goes below 0 points.
• A player will be Tenpai if nobody wins and the player is only one tile away from a Mahjong hand.
• Dora, Kan Dora and Ura Dora are used (see the Special Hands section for details).
• Washout happens if:
  • There are no tiles left in the live wall;
  • All players discard the same wind in the first go-around;
  • Four kongs are declared and nobody robs the last kong and the kongs are not declared by the same player;
  • All players declare Riichi (but see Kansai below).

Variations

We offer Japanese Riichi, EMA Riichi and Kansai style Riichi. EMA and Kansai differ from the standard Riichi rule set as per below.

EMA Riichi

• All Simples (Tanyao) hand must be closed (i.e. a concealed hand).
• Blessing of Man (going Mahjong on a discard in the first round) is allowed and is a yakuman.
• Multiple Ron is allowed.

Kansai Style Three Player Riichi

• Players are East, South, West – never North.
• Tiles 2-8 in the characters suit are not in the tile set.
• A pong of North scores 1 yaku, open or concealed.
• Players are not allowed to claim discarded tiles to complete a chow, except when going Mahjong.
• Some yakus, such as Mixed Triple Chow cannot be achieved due to the lack of Character tiles.
• All Riichi washout is not used – the game continues even if all players have declared Riichi.
• In the case of a self-drawn win, the points that would be paid by the missing player are omitted. For example, if a non-dealer self-drew a 2000/4000 hand, he would only get 6000 points in total.

Going Mahjong

At least one yaku (fan) is required to go mahjong. See Special Hands below.Note that losses are limited; a player cannot go below 0 points.

Special Hands

The following special hands score one or more yakus.

Yaku Patterns

Yakuman Patterns

Yakuman hands are all treated as 13+ yakus in terms of scoring.

Dora, Kan Dora and Ura Dora

The face-up tile in the wall is the Dora indicator. The next tile in sequence is the Dora. So if the Dora indicator is Bamboo 2, the Dora is Bamboo 3, if the indicator is Character 9, the Dora is Character 1. If the Dora indicator is a dragon or a wind, the following sequences are used: the dragon sequence is Red, White, Green; the wind sequence is East, South, West, North.

For each Dora tile a player has in a winning hand, one additional yaku is awarded. Only having a Dora tile in ones hand does not make the hand qualify for Mahjong, however. If a Kan is declared, another tile is turned face up, indicating another Dora tile (a Kan Dora). If a player has declared Riichi and goes Mahjong, the tile beneath each Dora indicator is exposed. The newly exposed tile(s) indicate Ura Dora(s) which work just like Dora tiles.

Scoring

The final score of a hand is complicated to calculate by hand, so it is presented in the form of tables here. If the winner has less than 5 yaku, minipoints need to be calculated first.

Based on the number of minipoints and yakus in the player’s hand, losers shall pay the points to the winner according to the below tables:

If the winner has more than 5 yaku, losers pay as follows: