How to Play Mahjong

How to play mahjong A guide on playing Cantonese and Japanese mahjong Mahjong and Strategic Games Society University of Exeter Joshua Ma August 2020 Copyright ©2020 Joshua Ma. This guide can be copied, distributed, and/or modified under Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. More information can be found on here. Cover photo ©tomohiro0326 on photoAC, downloaded from this link This guide was typed and compiled with XƎLATEX (on Overleaf) with aid from various online resources, which are listed towards the end in ‘reference and resources’. There is no intention to violate copyright or licensing, but please contact the author if there is any issue in copyright (or just error or suggestion in general). About this guide This guide is written as a tutorial material for society activities in University of Exeter Mahjong and Strategic Games Society. This guide shall be used with other material, in-person taught through and game play during society sessions and events. This guide can be download from the society website linked below. The original source code can be viewed on here. About the society Mahjong and Strategic Games Society is a University of Exeter Students’ Guild affiliated society. It was founded in May 2019 with activities started since 2019/20 academic year, aiming to promote cultural exchange in the form of mahjong and other strategic games. Website www.exeterguild.org/societies/38425/ Instagram www.instagram.com/exeteruni_mahjongsoc/ Facebook page www.facebook.com/exeterunimahjong/ Facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/663539370736221/ Email [email protected] About the author Joshua Ma, BSc Mathematics student 2018-2021. Founding president (2019/20) and treasurer (2020/21) of the society. His email is [email protected] Contents Preface 4 I Basics 5 1 From zero to play a game 6 1.1 Mahjong tiles ..................................... 6 1.2 Game setup ...................................... 7 1.3 Playing the game ................................... 9 1.4 Winning the game .................................. 11 2 Preparation to score 13 2.1 Wind and round ................................... 13 2.2 Concealed hand .................................... 14 2.3 Self-draw ....................................... 15 2.4 N-sided wait ...................................... 15 2.5 Moving onwards: Which style to play? ....................... 16 II Cantonese style 17 3 Rules 18 3.1 Minimum winning requirement ........................... 18 3.2 Bonus tiles ...................................... 18 3.3 Winds ......................................... 19 3.4 Dragons ........................................ 19 3.5 Self-pick ........................................ 19 3.6 Common combinations ................................ 19 3.7 Scoring ........................................ 20 3.8 Multiple wins ..................................... 20 3.9 Liability to pay .................................... 20 4 List of combinations 22 4.1 One faan combinations ................................ 22 4.2 Two faan combinations ................................ 23 4.3 Three faan combinations ............................... 23 4.4 Five faan combinations ................................ 24 4.5 Seven faan combinations ............................... 24 4.6 Eight faan combinations ............................... 24 4.7 Ten faan combinations ................................ 24 4.8 Combined examples .................................. 26 4.9 Summary table .................................... 27 2 III Japanese style 28 5 Rules 29 5.1 Terminology ...................................... 29 5.2 Minimum winning requirement ........................... 29 5.3 Discarding tiles .................................... 29 5.4 Calling/Melding tiles ................................. 29 5.5 Dead wall ....................................... 30 5.6 Dora .......................................... 31 5.7 Kan .......................................... 31 5.8 Riichi ......................................... 32 5.9 Furiten ......................................... 34 5.10 Honba ......................................... 34 5.11 Draw .......................................... 35 5.12 Aborted hand ..................................... 35 5.13 Multiple wins ..................................... 36 6 Combinations 37 6.1 One han yaku ..................................... 37 6.2 Two han yaku ..................................... 39 6.3 Three han yaku .................................... 41 6.4 Six han yaku ..................................... 42 6.5 Thirteen han yaku (Yakuman) ............................ 42 6.6 Nagashi Mangan ................................... 44 6.7 Summary table .................................... 46 7 Scoring 47 7.1 Point sticks ...................................... 47 7.2 Han .......................................... 47 7.3 Fu ........................................... 47 7.4 Point calculation ................................... 49 7.5 Liability to pay (‘Pao’) ................................ 49 7.6 Point tables ...................................... 50 7.7 Scoring examples ................................... 51 Appendices 53 A Suggested manners 54 B Tournament rules 58 C References and additional resources 63 3 Preface Thank you for your interest in mahjong and the society. By picking up this guide you are one step closer to this fantastic game played by millions of people all around the world. In the first academic year (2019/20) some sort of tutorial for Cantonese style was offered. Aiming for greater inclusivity and clearer tutorial material this new complete guide was initiated and written over summer 2020 for our members. This guide will bring you through the (most played) rules of mahjong in Japanese style (as known as Riichi) and Cantonese style. This guide has a slightly different order compared to what can be find on the web or how other people were taught to play and also some contents are omitted and simplified deliberately, while necessary content is still included to guideyou through them so that the first chapter alone can get you start playing straight away with aset of simplified rule. This should make the game easier to handle at the start. Also, thismakesa same start for both styles then you can choose your specialism. Personal preference and experience to teach how to play caused some slight difference from other guides or what other people may say. Do check out other online resources and game for improving your skill and clearing ambiguity. I would also like to say a big thank you to the committee members who helped (and will be helping) me in operating the society in these two years and writing up this guide (and big thank you to many wonderful online resources). There are lots of other styles and localised rules played around the world too, so this guide is not an exhaustive list of rules to be quoted. It may be overwhelming with a long list of new rules but remember the most important thing: Have fun! Joshua Ma President (2019/20), Treasurer (2020/21) Exeter, August 2020 4 Part I Basics 5 Chapter 1 From zero to play a game Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and calculation and involves a degree of chance. It is usually played by four players. In turn players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand to win. 1.1 Mahjong tiles Figure 1.1: Mahjong tiles [8] (a) Cantonese style [2] (b) Japanese style [5] Figure 1.2: Mahjong set in different styles 6 This will be how tiles look like in this guide:[10] Suits 1-9 Dots/Circles yuiop[]as Bamboos/Sticks dfghjkl;' Characters 90-=qwert Honours Wind 1 2 3 4 Back of tile East South West North (or denote ’any tile’) 8 Dragon 7 6 5 Red Green White • A mahjong set has 4 copies of each of the 34 tiles from above, for a total of 136 tiles. • There will be some variation depends on which styles you play, which are discussed later – For Cantonese styles ‘bonus tiles’ are used. – For Japanese style sometimes ‘red fives’ are used. – There are also other styles using other tiles, like joker in American mahjong. 1.2 Game setup At the start of each game: • Face all the tiles down and shuffles tiles around the table • Each player builds in front of himself a wall of face-down tiles, 17 tiles long and 2 tiles high • All four walls are pushed together towards the middle to form a square shape • Determine the starting position of getting tiles (break) by: – A player rolls two dice * Each player will have a ‘seat wind’, where the dice-thrower will always be the East player, then counting anticlockwise are South, West and North * There will be a specific order for deciding the dice-thrower will be introduced later (as you may have guessed it just follows the order of seat wind), but for now just do it by any player. (more on this in section 2.1) – Counts that number of players anticlockwise, starting with himself/herself * 2/6/10 will be the player on the right of dice-thrower (south player) * 3/7/11 will be the player opposite to dice-thrower (west player) 7 * 4/8/12 will be the player on the left of dice-thrower (north player) * 5/9 will be the dice-thrower himself/herself (east player) – The player thus determined breaks the wall in front of him, by counting from the right the same number of stacks as indicated by the dice – After the last counted stack the wall is broken by pushing the two wall sections apart • Each players gets 13 tiles by: (Figure 1.3) – Each player pick 4 tiles (2 stacks) * Tiles are taken clockwise, while the players’ turns

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