Planet Mahjong Library · Riichi
Riichi Mahjong Rule Book
Casual and Ranked tables
Riichi is Japanese mahjong: a 13-tile hand built from four groups and a pair, scored in han (multiplier) and fu (minipoints), with its own defensive game built around riichi, dora, and furiten. This page follows the international competition riichi ruleset — the same rules the engine is built and fixture-tested against.
- Yaku
- 29
- Yakuman
- 15
- Abortive draws
- 5
- Table presets
- 2
Riichi tables are in preview. Open the lobby to check availability.
Table types
Casual table vs. Ranked table
Every riichi table is one of two first-class presets, chosen at table creation — never a hidden default. A Ranked table is always hanchan and always feeds the leaderboard; a Casual table can be either length and is never ranked.
| Flag | Casual table | Ranked table |
|---|---|---|
| Length | Tonpuusen (East-only) or hanchan (East + South), your choice | Hanchan only |
| Starting points | 25,000 | 30,000 |
| Aka dora (red fives) | 3 in the wall — 1 per suit | None |
| Abortive draws | All five active (kyuushu kyuuhai, suufon renda, suucha riichi, suukaikan, sanchahou) | None — every trigger condition plays through instead |
| Multi-ron | Multi-pay, up to 2 winners — a 3rd simultaneous ron voids the hand (sanchahou) | Multi-pay, unlimited winners |
| Nagashi mangan | Scored — discard only terminals/honors, all uncalled, through an exhaustive draw | Not scored |
| Kiriage mangan | Off — 4 han/30 fu and 3 han/60 fu score their literal value | On — both round up to a full mangan |
| Riichi with tiles left in the wall | 4 or more tiles left | 1 or more tiles left |
| Bust ends the game (tobi) | Yes — the game ends the instant a score goes negative | No — a negative score is recorded and play continues |
| Sudden death / West round | Extends one round if nobody has reached 30,000 by the natural end | Never — the game ends after South-4, full stop |
| Leaderboard | Not ranked | Placement and uma/oka recorded from the first hand |
Scoring
The three-step method
1. Count han
Add up every yaku your hand qualifies for, plus every dora tile you hold. Dora is never a yaku on its own — a hand needs at least one qualifying yaku before dora can add to it. Five or more han skips fu entirely and goes straight to the limit table.
2. Figure out fu
Only needed at four han or fewer. Start at a base of 20 and add for your winning method, each meld, your pair, and your wait — then round up to the next 10.
3. Look up the score
Han and fu together give a base point value. The dealer scores 1.5x a non-dealer score; a tsumo splits the payment across the other three players; a ron is paid entirely by the discarder.
Han
Yaku — every named hand pattern
A hand needs at least one yaku to win at all. Filter by what you are holding, or search by name. Every worked hand below has been checked against the same scoring engine that settles a real table.
44 of 44 yaku
tsumo (menzen)
1 han · closed only
Closed only Timing
Self-draw win with a fully closed hand (calls of any kind disqualify it; ankan is fine).
Any fully closed self-draw win adds menzen tsumo — no other condition needed. riichi立直
1 han · closed only
Closed only Timing
Declared riichi on this hand — closed and tenpai, backed by the 1,000-point stick.
The hand itself is unremarkable — riichi was declared earlier in the hand, closed and tenpai. ippatsu一発
1 han · closed only
Closed only Timing
Won within the first uninterrupted go-around after declaring riichi. Stacks on top of riichi.
Won within the first uninterrupted go-around after declaring riichi. Ippatsu never appears alone — it stacks on the riichi it followed. chankan槍槓
1 han
Open OK Timing
Ron on a shouminkan's added tile — robbing the kan before it completes.
Ron on an opponent's shouminkan the instant before it completes — robbing the kan. rinshan kaihou嶺上開花
1 han
Open OK Timing
Self-draw win on the rinshan (kan-replacement) tile.
Self-draw win on the kan-replacement tile. This hand is closed, so menzen tsumo scores too; an open hand would score rinshan without it. haitei海底摸月
1 han
Open OK Timing
Self-draw win on the very last live-wall tile.
Self-draw win on the very last live-wall tile. This hand is closed, so menzen tsumo scores too; an open hand would score haitei without it. houtei河底撈魚
1 han
Open OK Timing
Ron on the discard right after the last live-wall tile.
Ron on the discard thrown right after the last live-wall tile was drawn. jikaze自風
1 han
Open OK Honour triplet
A completed triplet or kan of the player's own seat wind.
Seat wind is south here (round is still east) — a pon of south scores on the seat alone. bakaze場風
1 han
Open OK Honour triplet
A completed triplet or kan of the current round wind. A double-wind triplet (seat wind = round wind) scores both — 2 han total.
Round wind is east and the seat wind is south — a pon of east scores as the round wind, not the seat. yakuhai役牌
1 han
Open OK Honour triplet
A completed triplet or kan of any dragon tile.
One triplet of white dragons is the whole requirement. The rest of the hand is free. tanyao断幺九
1 han
Open OK Simples only
All 14 tiles are simples (2–8) — no terminals, no honors anywhere. Value never drops when open.
Every tile is a simple, 2 through 8. Open here, and still worth its full 1 han. iipeiko一盃口
1 han · closed only
Closed only Runs
Two identical sequences — same suit, same numbers. Closed hand only.
The same run, 1-2-3 of characters, appears twice. One han, closed hands only. pinfu平和
1 han · closed only
Closed only Runs
Four sequences, a non-value pair, and the winning tile completes a genuine two-sided wait. Closed only — the identical open shape is fixed 30 fu but claims no yaku.
Four runs, a north-wind pair that scores nothing on its own, and the 2-3s waiting on both ends. double riichi両立直
2 han · closed only
Closed only Timing
Riichi declared on the very first discard, before any calls. Replaces plain riichi, not additive.
Riichi declared on the very first discard, before any call interrupted the table. Replaces plain riichi rather than stacking with it. san kantsu三槓子
2 han
Open OK Triplets
Any three kans in the same hand, any tile kind.
Three kan calls — concealed or open, mixed here — are the whole requirement. The run and the pair are just filling out the hand. toitoi対々和
2 han
Open OK Triplets
All four groups are triplets or kans — no sequences.
Four triplets, zero runs — the pair and the wait shape do not matter, only that nothing is a sequence. san anko三暗刻
2 han
Open OK Triplets
Three concealed triplets or kans. The rest of the hand may be open.
Three concealed triplets, none of them touched by the winning tile — the run and the pair are just along for the ride. shousangen小三元
2 han
Open OK Honour tripletTriplets
Two dragon triplets plus the third dragon as the pair. The two triplets also separately score yakuhai on top.
Two dragon triplets plus the third dragon as the pair. Each triplet already scores its own yakuhai — shousangen stacks on top of those, not instead of them. honroutou混老頭
2 han
Open OK Terminals & honoursTriplets
Every tile is a terminal or honor. Stacks additively with whichever of toitoi/chiitoitsu also applies.
Only terminals and honours. This hand is built from triplets, so toitoi scores too; seven pairs of terminals and honours would score chiitoitsu instead. chiitoitsu七対子
2 han · closed only
Closed only Seven pairs
Seven distinct pairs, none duplicated. Fixed 25 fu.
Seven different pairs — never four groups. Drawing it yourself adds menzen tsumo on top. chanta混全帯幺九
2 han · 1 open
Open OK Terminals & honours
Every group and the pair holds a terminal or honor, with at least one sequence and at least one honor tile somewhere in the hand.
Every group — the three runs and the honour triplet — touches a terminal or an honour tile. The honour triplet is what makes this chanta rather than junchan. ittsu一気通貫
2 han · 1 open
Open OK Runs
1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9 all in the same suit.
1-through-9 in one suit, all three runs of it — two han closed, one open. sanshoku doujun三色同順
2 han · 1 open
Open OK Runs
The same three-tile run appears once in each of the three suits.
The same 4-5-6 run repeated in characters, circles and bamboo — two han closed, one open. sanshoku doukou三色同刻
2 han
Open OK Triplets
The same number triplet appears once in each of the three suits. No open discount.
The same triplet, 5-5-5, repeated in all three suits — two han, with no discount for being open. junchan純全帯幺九
3 han · 2 open
Open OK Terminals & honours
Like chanta, but no honors allowed anywhere — every group and the pair has a terminal.
Every group is anchored on a terminal, same as chanta — but there is no honour tile anywhere in the hand, which is what makes this junchan. honitsu混一色
3 han · 2 open
Open OK Suit purity
One suit plus honors only — no mixing suited tiles across suits.
One suit plus honours. Open, so 2 han instead of 3. ryanpeiko二盃口
3 han · closed only
Closed only Runs
Two iipeiko pairs — four sequences forming two matching pairs. Closed only.
Two different runs, each duplicated — 1-2-3 of characters twice, 4-5-6 of circles twice. Ryanpeiko replaces iipeiko rather than stacking with it: three han, closed hands only. renhou人和
5 han · closed only
Closed only Timing
Ron before the winner's own first draw, uninterrupted by any call — Ranked-table only; Casual tables follow the book's ruleset, which does not award it.
Ron before your own first draw, uninterrupted by any call. Renhou is Ranked-table only — Casual tables score this same hand as plain pinfu instead — and where it applies it completely REPLACES every other yaku the shape would have scored, here a pinfu, not just adds to them. chinitsu清一色
6 han · 5 open
Open OK Suit purity
One suit only, no honors anywhere.
Every tile is bamboo, and nothing else. Six han closed, five if open. tenhou天和
Yakuman
Closed only Timing
Dealer only — a complete hand on the initial deal, before any discard.
The dealer's starting hand is already complete before their first discard. A yakuman — no other yaku is collected alongside it. chihou地和
Yakuman
Closed only Timing
Non-dealer self-draw win on the first uninterrupted draw, no calls yet.
A non-dealer's first self-drawn tile completes the hand before any call has interrupted the table. daisangen大三元
Yakuman
Open OK Honour triplet
All three dragon triplets or kans.
All three dragon triplets — white, green, and red. The run and the pair are just filler. su anko四暗刻
Yakuman
Closed only Triplets
Four concealed triplets or kans — ron only on a pair wait.
Four concealed triplets completed by self-draw. The same shape finished by ron on the triplet only scores sanankou — the last tile has to come from your own wall. su anko tanki四暗刻単騎
Yakuman
Closed only Triplets
Su anko completed specifically on the pair wait — the only way it can be ronned.
Four concealed triplets, waiting on a single tile to pair up. A pair-wait win keeps every triplet concealed even on a ron. tsuiisou字一色
Yakuman
Open OK Terminals & honours
Every tile is an honor — winds or dragons only.
Every tile is an honour — winds and dragons only, no numbered tile anywhere. ryuiisou緑一色
Yakuman
Open OK Suit purity
Every tile is green: 2/3/4/6/8 of bamboo plus the green dragon.
Nothing but the green tiles: 2/3/4/6/8 of bamboo, plus the green dragon. chinroutou清老頭
Yakuman
Open OK Terminals & honoursTriplets
Every tile is a terminal — 1 or 9, no honors, no simples.
Nothing but terminals — 1s and 9s — spread across all three suits. kokushi musou国士無双
Yakuman
Closed only Terminals & honours
All 13 terminal/honor kinds, one duplicated, waiting on any unpaired kind.
Twelve of the thirteen terminals and honours plus a spare, still waiting on the one kind not yet in hand. kokushi musou 13-wait国士無双13面
Yakuman
Closed only Terminals & honours
Kokushi completed on a genuine 13-sided wait.
All thirteen terminals and honours already in hand with none doubled — any of the thirteen completes it. daisuushii大四喜
Yakuman
Open OK Honour triplet
All four wind triplets or kans.
All four wind triplets — east, south, west, north. The pair can be anything. shousuushii小四喜
Yakuman
Open OK Honour triplet
Three wind triplets or kans plus the fourth wind as the pair.
Three wind triplets, and the fourth wind sitting as the pair. suukantsu四槓子
Yakuman
Open OK Triplets
All four groups are kans, any combination.
Four kan calls — three concealed, one open. The open kan is what keeps this from also being four concealed triplets. chuurenpoutou九蓮宝燈
Yakuman
Closed only Suit purity
A single-suit 1-1-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-9-9 shape plus one more tile of that suit.
Nine gates in one suit — 1112345678999 — with an extra tile thrown in. junsei chuurenpoutou純正九蓮宝燈
Yakuman
Closed only Suit purity
Chuurenpoutou completed on the genuine nine-sided wait.
The pure nine gates: exactly 1112345678999 of one suit, waiting on any of the nine kinds to complete it.
No yaku match those filters.
A yaku listed with a lower open value drops by exactly one han when the hand is open — it never falls below that listed value. A yaku marked "NA" for open cannot be claimed on an open hand at all.
Atozuke is allowed: a hand's yaku can become clear only on the winning tile itself, not locked in by the time of the first call. Kuitan is allowed too: tanyao scores on an open hand at full value, not just a lesser one.
Ordinary (non-yakuman) yaku stacking together, before dora, is theoretically capped at 11 han.
The top tier
Yakuman
The highest scoring tier — its own named hand patterns, each paying the yakuman row outright. On a Ranked table, satisfying more than one yakuman pattern in the same hand still pays only a single yakuman; on a Casual table, each pattern you genuinely satisfy stacks and is summed.
All 15 yakuman patterns are in the catalog above —
Bonus han
Dora
Indicator-revealed bonus han. Not itself a yaku — cannot legalize a win alone. It never legalizes a win on its own — a hand needs a qualifying yaku first, dora only adds to a hand that already has one.
| Suited number indicator | The next number, same suit, wrapping 9 back to 1 |
|---|---|
| Wind indicator | East → South → West → North → East (wraps) |
| Dragon indicator | White → Green → Red → White (wraps) |
kan dora
An extra dora indicator revealed for each kan declared.
ura dora
Bonus dora from a hidden indicator, revealed only for a riichi win. Only the riichi winner sees it.
aka dora
An always-dora red five tile. Casual tables deal three (one per suit); Ranked tables deal none.
Minipoints
Fu
Only needed when the hand is under 5 han. Base is 20 fu for every standard hand.
Two fixed shapes — skip the calculation entirely
| Chiitoitsu | Always 25 fu — no rounding, the only exception to the round-up-to-10 rule |
|---|---|
| Pinfu, ron | Always exactly 30 fu |
| Pinfu, tsumo | Always exactly 20 fu |
| Open pinfu shape (open hand, all pinfu conditions, no pinfu yaku) | Fixed at exactly 30 fu |
Winning-method fu
| Tsumo (open or closed) | +2 — waived entirely if the hand has pinfu |
|---|---|
| Ron, closed hand | +10 |
| Ron, open hand | +0 |
Meld (group) fu
| Run (any) | 0 |
|---|---|
| Open triplet — simple / terminal-honor | 2 / 4 |
| Closed triplet — simple / terminal-honor | 4 / 8 |
| Open kan — simple / terminal-honor | 8 / 16 |
| Closed kan — simple / terminal-honor | 16 / 32 |
The tile that completes a triplet counts as concealed on a tsumo but open on a ron — even though the rest of the hand may be fully closed for yaku purposes.
Pair fu
| A pair of dragons, seat wind, or round wind | +2 |
|---|---|
| A pair that is both seat wind and round wind (dealer double-wind) | +2 on a Ranked table |
Wait fu
| Two-sided wait (ryanmen) | 0 |
|---|---|
| Shanpon (dual-pair wait) | 0 — fu instead comes from the triplet it completes |
| Closed wait (kanchan) | +2 |
| Edge wait (penchan) | +2 |
| Single wait (tanki) | +2 |
A stretched-single wait (e.g. 4-5-6-7 waiting on both ends) is a tanki variant, not a two-sided wait — it earns the tanki fu and cannot carry pinfu. When a shape allows more than one legal reading of the same win, the engine always uses whichever interpretation scores highest.
After the base and every bonus are summed, round up to the next 10 — 32 becomes 40, 42 becomes 50. Chiitoitsu’s fixed 25 is the sole exception and is never rounded.
Score tiers
Five han and above
A Ranked table caps a stacked (non-yakuman-pattern) 13+ han hand at the sanbaiman row rather than paying it as a yakuman; a Casual table pays it out at the yakuman row.
| Han | Name | Ron, non-dealer | Ron, dealer | Tsumo, non-dealer | Tsumo, dealer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | mangan | 8,000 | 12,000 | 2,000-4,000 | 4,000-all |
| 6–7 | haneman | 12,000 | 18,000 | 3,000-6,000 | 6,000-all |
| 8–10 | baiman | 16,000 | 24,000 | 4,000-8,000 | 8,000-all |
| 11–12 | sanbaiman | 24,000 | 36,000 | 6,000-12,000 | 12,000-all |
| 13+ | yakuman | 32,000 | 48,000 | 8,000-16,000 | 16,000-all |
The defensive game
Riichi, furiten, and kan
Declaring riichi
To declare riichi, a hand must be fully closed and already tenpai. The stick sits on the table until someone wins the pot — the eventual winner (or, on multi-ron, whoever sits closest to the discarder) collects every outstanding stick, including their own.
Say "riichi" out loud before discarding, so the table knows before the tile lands.
Discard the riichi tile turned 90° sideways in the discard row.
If nobody rons that discard, place the 1,000-point riichi stick.
From here the hand is frozen: every drawn tile is discarded untouched unless it wins, or unless a legal wait-preserving concealed kan is available.
Furiten — three forms
Discard furiten
If any tile in your own discard pile could complete your current wait, you can't ron on any tile in that wait — not just the matching one. It clears only when your wait itself changes, which a riichi hand can never do.
Temporary furiten
Declining to ron a winning tile — even one that would give no yaku — puts you in furiten until your own next draw or call clears it.
Riichi furiten
The same trigger as temporary furiten, but for a riichi hand it does not clear — it lasts the rest of the hand, since the wait can never change.
Kan — three forms
Any of the three kan forms reveals a kan-dora indicator immediately and draws a replacement tile from the dead wall. A shouminkan can be robbed for chankan before it completes; an ankan normally cannot be robbed at all — the one exception is a kokushi musou win.
ankan
A concealed kan, declared from tiles already in hand.
shouminkan
A kan formed by adding a drawn tile to a player's own existing open triplet.
daiminkan
A kan claimed directly from another player's discard.
Casual table only
The five abortive draws
Five hands can void themselves outright, with no winner and no noten penalty — active on a Casual table, never on a Ranked one.
| Draw | Trigger | Mandatory? |
|---|---|---|
| kyuushu kyuuhai九種九牌 | A hand holds nine or more distinct terminal/honor kinds on its very first, uninterrupted turn. | Optional — the only one of the five that is a player’s own choice. |
| suufon renda四風連打 | All four players’ very first discards are the same wind tile. | Automatic — a kan call anywhere in the window cancels it. |
| suucha riichi四家立直 | All four players declare riichi in the same go-around. | Automatic, unless the fourth declarer’s discard is itself ronned. |
| suukaikan四開槓 | Four kans made across two or more different players. | Automatic — four kans by a single player never aborts. |
| sanchahou三家和 | Three players call ron on the same discard at once. | Only where multi-ron isn’t otherwise resolved. |
When a hand ends
Exhaustive draw, honba, and final settlement
Noten penalty
At an exhaustive draw (ryuukyoku), every player declares tenpai or noten in turn order from the dealer. The total penalty pool is always 3,000 points; the table above shows exactly how it splits.
| Players tenpai | Each noten player pays | Each tenpai player receives |
|---|---|---|
| 0 (nobody tenpai) | — | — |
| 1 | 1,000 | 3,000 |
| 2 | 1,500 | 1,500 |
| 3 | 3,000 | 1,000 |
| 4 (everyone tenpai) | — | — |
Honba and riichi sticks
A honba stick is added after every hand East wins or that ends in a draw, and clears the instant a non-East player wins. Each honba adds 300 points to the winner’s payment — paid entirely by the discarder on a ron, or 100 from each opponent on a tsumo. Riichi sticks carry over hand to hand until someone wins the pot.
Final placement — uma
The end-game placement bonus or penalty adjustment. A tie for a placement simply splits that placement's (and any tied neighbors') value evenly among the tied players.
| Place | Uma |
|---|---|
| 1st | +15,000 |
| 2nd | +5,000 |
| 3rd | −5,000 |
| 4th | −15,000 |
Romaji-first
Glossary
Every table on this page uses these terms. First use on any Planet Mahjong riichi surface always carries this same gloss.
- tenpai
- Ready — the hand completes with exactly one more tile.
- noten
- Not ready — the opposite of tenpai.
- shanten
- The number of tile exchanges still needed to reach tenpai.
- furiten
- Barred from claiming ron on a tile in one's own wait set or discard history.
- damaten
- A ready hand kept hidden — tenpai without a riichi declaration.
- tsumo
- Winning by drawing the winning tile yourself.
- ron
- Winning by claiming another player's discard.
- pon
- Claiming a discard to complete a triplet.
- chii
- Claiming a discard from the player to your left to complete a run.
- kan
- A quad — four identical tiles, declared concealed or open.
- doraドラ
- Indicator-revealed bonus han. Not itself a yaku — cannot legalize a win alone.
- mangan
- The 5-han named score tier.
- haneman
- The 6-to-7-han named score tier.
- baiman
- The 8-to-10-han named score tier.
- sanbaiman
- The 11-to-12-han named score tier.
- tonpuusen
- An East-only game.
- hanchan
- A half-game — an East round followed by a South round.
- tobi
- Bust — the game ends immediately once a score drops below zero.
- ryuukyoku
- An exhaustive draw — the wall runs out with no winner.
- atamahane
- Head bump — only the closest winner is paid on a multi-way ron.