Taiwanese · Rules

The table, the tiles and a turn

Mahjong is a race to complete a hand. Each player holds sixteen tiles and needs one more to finish: five sets and a pair, seventeen tiles in all. This page covers everything on the table before the first claim.

Sixteen tiles, one missing piece

A standard hand begins with sixteen tiles and needs five sets and a pair to finish: seventeen tiles in total. Gongs add physical tiles, and named special hands use different shapes.

On an ordinary turn, draw one tile and discard one. When a drawn tile or another player’s discard completes your hand, check its shape. If it is a complete winning hand, declare Mahjong and show the hand for scoring.

East alone begins with seventeen tiles. After replacing any flowers, East opens by discarding one without drawing again.

A complete hand: five sets and a pair. 2-3-4 Characters, three 5 Bamboo, 7-8-9 Circles, three East winds, three Red dragons and a pair of 1 Circles.

The table

Four players. Four walls of tiles. One dealer, East, who deals and opens. Seats are East, South, West and North in counter-clockwise order around the table, and play proceeds that way for turns and deals.

The wall is built eighteen tiles wide and two tiles high on each side, making 144 tiles in all. Dice break the wall, the deal walks from the break, and the far tail becomes the flower wall.

Flowers sit beside the rack and are replaced. A gong counts as one set; its fourth tile adds to the physical tile count, so you take a replacement.

Seat wind and round wind

Your seat wind is your position for this hand. East is the dealer, followed in turn order by South, West and North. Play passes counter-clockwise. Your seat can change when the deal moves.

The round wind names the current round. It starts at East, then advances to South, West and North after the deal has passed through all four seats. An East win keeps the deal, so a round can contain more than four hands.

A South player in an East round has South as the seat wind and East as the round wind. Those are two separate facts. A South pong can earn the seat bonus; an East pong can earn the round bonus.

For South in the East round: the South pong earns the seat wind bonus, the East pong earns the round wind bonus.

The words used here

Sheung: a sequence of three consecutive numbers in one suit.
Pong: three identical tiles.
Gong: four identical tiles declared as one set.
Eyes: the pair.
Points: the scoring unit.
Live wall: supplies ordinary draws. Flower wall: supplies replacements.
Exposed sets are already declared on the table. Concealed tiles remain in your rack.

Meet the tiles

There are 144 tiles: 108 numbered tiles, 16 winds, 12 dragons, and 8 unique flowers and seasons. Winds and dragons have four copies each.

The three numbered suits are Characters, Bamboo and Circles. Each runs from 1 through 9, with four copies of each number.

Characters 1 to 9. Read the number above the repeated character.

Bamboo 1 to 9. The 1 Bamboo often shows a bird; it is still the number 1, not a flower.

Circles 1 to 9. The large ring is 1 Circle. Read the dots or corner number.

Winds (East, South, West, North) and dragons (Red, Green, White): the honours. Honours never form sequences.

The White dragon is the tile with an empty or framed centre. It is a playing tile, not a spare blank. Three different dragons do not form a sheung.

Flowers and seasons

Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo, then Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Each family is numbered 1 to 4.

Eight bonus tiles. They never live in the hand as sets. Reveal a flower immediately, put it beside the rack, and draw a replacement from the flower wall. During play, if the replacement is another flower, repeat until you receive a playing tile. At the start of a hand, players replace in seat order: if your replacement is another flower, wait until your next turn to replace it. Flowers never count as one of the five sets or the pair.

Seat numbers are East 1, South 2, West 3 and North 4. A flower or season matching your seat number earns the seat flower bonus as well as its ordinary flower value.

Which tiles make which shapes

Characters, Bamboo and Circles can make sheungs, pongs, gongs and pairs. Winds and dragons can make pongs, gongs and pairs, but never sheungs. Flowers and seasons are bonus tiles; they are revealed and replaced.

Build sets

A standard finished hand is five sets and a pair. Sets come in three shapes: sheung, pong and gong.

Sheung: three consecutive numbers in the same suit. 2-3-4 Bamboo.

Pong: three identical tiles. Three Red dragons.

Gong: four identical tiles. Declare the gong and draw a replacement. Four East winds.

Pair: two identical tiles. A standard winning hand needs exactly one pair.

Exposed and concealed sets

A set claimed from a discard is exposed: place it face up beside the rack and keep its tiles together. Those tiles cannot be rearranged into another set later. A set you build from your own draws remains concealed until declared or shown at the win.

For a standard hand, count five sets and one pair. A declared gong is one set even though it holds four physical tiles. Each gong adds one tile to the physical total, so a winning hand with one gong has 18 playing tiles, not counting flowers.

Declaring a gong

After you declare a gong, draw a replacement from the flower wall.

Open gong. There are two ways to make one, both face up:

You hold three identical tiles and claim the fourth from a discard.
You already have an exposed pong and the fourth tile arrives at the moment you pick it, from the wall or as a flower or gong replacement. Promote the pong to a gong then. You may not dig the fourth tile out of your hand later and add it. If you pick the fourth and do not gong it at once, use it another way or discard it.

Concealed gong. You draw all four yourself. Declare it on your turn, before you discard, and set it aside face down. It stays concealed, scores more, and also collects an immediate payment from every opponent. See the scoring page for values.

A concealed gong can never be made from a discard. If you are dealt one, wait until every player has replaced their flowers, then declare it on your own turn to collect the payment.

Building the wall and the deal

Shuffle thoroughly. Each player builds a wall eighteen tiles long and two tiles high in front of them. Push the four walls together into a square. East rolls the dice to find the break.

From the break, each player takes four tiles at a time, four times around, in seat order: sixteen tiles each. East then takes one more tile from the wall as the opening tile, so East starts the hand with seventeen.

The far end of the wall, behind the break, becomes the flower wall: the tail that supplies every flower replacement and every gong replacement for the rest of the hand. The main wall shrinks from one end as players draw; the flower wall shrinks from the other.

Flowers are revealed and replaced as they are dealt. Once the deal and all replacements are complete, East opens by discarding the seventeenth tile. East does not draw again to open. There is no extra opening draw.

An ordinary turn

Draw from the live wall.
Declare any legal gong and take its replacement.
Discard one tile face up.
Other players may claim it.

From South’s first turn onward this loop repeats: draw, improve, discard, react. A player whose hand is one tile from winning can Close right after their discard.

The dealer

East wins, alone or with other winners: East keeps the deal and the dealer streak continues.
Another player wins alone: the deal passes to the next seat, who becomes East.
Several winners on one discard: East keeps the deal if East is among the winners. Otherwise the deal passes to the next seat.
Drawn hand (the live wall runs out): the deal passes. Each player puts 5 into the kitty for the next self-draw winner.