Table law: settlements, streaks and penalties

Chasing

Chasing pays when all four identical copies of a tile are discarded consecutively: four in a row in the discard flow, with no other tile between them.

Who pays. The first player who discarded that tile pays every opponent: 5 points when the chased tile is an honour, 10 points when it is a suit tile.

The West wind exception

Discarding all four West winds in a row is considered unlucky. If three Wests have been discarded in a row and you hold the fourth, show it to the table, keep it, and discard a different tile. The chase still counts: the player who discarded the first West pays 5 points to each player who took part. Discard your West in the next round of turns.

Dice triples

A triple of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 pays 5; a triple 6 pays 10. These are immediate table settlements.

Dealer streak and the die

When East wins, alone or with other winners, East deals again and the streak continues. The streak bonus is 3, 5, 7, 9 and so on: 2n + 1 for streak count n, with no cap.

A streak die tracks escalating payments when East wins, or when East discards the winning tile, during a streak. While the die is active, the separate 1 point rows for East winning and for East giving the winning discard are off.

East places or turns the die on the flower wall after the deal. If East forgets before discarding the first tile, the hand is played without it: an East win that hand earns no streak bonus, but if East gives the winning tile, East still pays the full bonus. The streak itself is not lost; set the die to the right number next hand.

Drawn hands and the end of the wall

If the live wall is exhausted without a win, the deal passes and every player puts 5 into a kitty. The next self-draw winner collects it. Flower wall tiles are not ordinary live draws.

A win on a discard does not take the kitty. The self-draw winner must collect it before the next dice roll; if they forget, it stays on the table for the next self-draw winner.

Robbing the gong

A player draws a tile from the wall and adds it to their exposed pong to make a gong. If another player wins on that same tile, they rob the gong: the winning hand scores Robbing the Gong 10, and the player who declared the gong pays the robber an extra 10 points.

The chance to rob closes once the gong player has placed their replacement tile into their row.

False Mahjong

False Mahjong means declaring a hand that is invalid, incomplete, or has too many or too few tiles. The declarer pays 25 points to each of the other three players: 75 in total. The hand is void and dealt again with the same dealer, and any streak die stays as it was.

Placing your winning tile into your concealed tiles before declaring is also a false Mahjong, and so is declaring 7 flowers without first drawing the replacement tile.

Too many or too few tiles

If you find mid-hand that you hold too many or too few tiles, keep playing: draw and discard in turn until someone else wins. You may not declare Mahjong, claim or declare any set (including a concealed gong), or collect flower or gong money. You still pay flower money, dice triples and chasing as normal. This is not a false Mahjong as long as you do not declare a win.

Unshown concealed gong

Declare a concealed gong at the correct time and show it according to table procedure. An unshown concealed gong costs a 10 point payment to each opponent, once East discards the first tile of the next hand. This penalty is separate from the 5 point immediate payment a correctly declared concealed gong earns.

Immediate payments and the final hand score

Keep two records. Bouquets, declared concealed gong payments, chasing and dice triples are settled when they occur. Pattern points and the base are counted when the hand wins. Never charge the same immediate event again as part of the final hand.