How to play American Mah Jongg

American Mah Jongg is a four-player tile game played against a yearly card of winning hands. This is the whole shape of the game in about ten minutes, in the order you will meet it at a table.

The goal

Every player is racing to build a 14-tile hand that exactly matches one of the hands printed on the current card from the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL). Thirteen tiles live on your rack. The fourteenth is the tile you draw, or call from a discard, that completes the pattern. Finish first and you declare mah jongg.

That card is the thing that makes American Mah Jongg different from every other mahjong. There is no free-form "any four groups and a pair." The hand has to be on the card, and the card changes every spring.

The tiles

A full American set is 152 tiles. Knowing the count matters later, because it is the basis of working out what is still live.

• Three number suits, 1 through 9, four of each. Craks (Chinese characters, usually red), bams (bamboo sticks, green, with the 1 Bam often drawn as a bird) and dots (circles, blue). That is 108 tiles.
• Winds. North, East, West and South, four of each. They are honors: they carry no number and never join a run.
• Dragons. Red, Green and White, four of each. Each one belongs with a suit: Red with craks, Green with bams, and the White Dragon, called the soap, with dots. The soap also stands in for a zero in year hands.
• Flowers. Eight of them, and for card purposes they are all interchangeable.
• Jokers. Eight wild tiles with strict rules about where they can sit. More on that below.

Groups: the building blocks

Hands on the card are written as groups. Read a line and you are reading a list of groups.

• Pair: two identical tiles. Cannot hold a joker.
• Pung: three identical tiles. The smallest group you may call a discard to complete.
• Kong: four identical tiles.
• Quint: five identical tiles. Impossible without jokers, since only four of any tile exist.
• Single: one lone tile the hand requires. Like a pair, it must be the real tile.

The deal and the Charleston

Tiles are shuffled face down and built into walls. Each player takes 13 tiles; East, the dealer, takes 14 and will throw the first discard. Before anyone plays a turn, the Charleston happens: every player passes three unwanted tiles to a neighbor, three times (right, across, left), with an optional second round in the other direction and a final across-the-table courtesy pass. Jokers can never be passed.

The Charleston is how a random deal turns into a plan. Most new players find it the scariest part of the game, and it is also the part that rewards practice fastest. It has its own page: The Charleston, explained.

A turn

1. Draw a tile from the wall (or call the last discard, below).
2. Keep or throw. Keep the drawn tile and discard another, or discard the one you drew. Say the tile's name out loud as you throw it face up.

Play moves to the right (counter-clockwise). The game is a long sequence of keep-or-throw decisions, which is why Mahj Trainer drills that judgment so hard.

Calling a discard

When someone throws a tile you need to complete a pung, kong or quint, you may call it (say "call" or "take") before the next player draws. You then expose that whole group face up on top of your rack and discard. The exposure is public information for the rest of the hand.

Two limits: you cannot call for a pair or a single unless that tile completes your mah jongg, and a hand marked concealed on the card cannot call at all except for the winning tile. Once you have discarded after an exposure, the group is locked; the only change still allowed is someone swapping a real tile for a joker sitting in it.

Jokers

A joker stands in for any tile inside a pung, kong, quint or larger group. It can never be part of a pair or a single, never be passed in the Charleston, and a discarded joker is dead (nobody can call it). If an exposed group on any rack holds a joker and you have the real tile it stands for, you may swap on your turn and take the joker. Full rules: Jokers in American Mah Jongg.

Winning, scoring, and the wall

When your fourteenth tile completes a hand on the card, say mah jongg, then expose your whole rack. The other three players pay you the value printed beside the hand. Whoever threw your winning tile pays double; if you drew it yourself, everyone pays double; a hand with no jokers doubles again. If the wall runs out before anyone wins, it is a wall game: nobody pays, reshuffle, deal again. Details: Scoring and table rules.

What to practice first

In rough order of payoff for a new player:

1. Recognize every tile instantly, especially which dragon goes with which suit.
2. Learn the card's sections by shape, so you can look at 13 tiles and know which part of the card to read. See How to read the card.
3. Make a confident Charleston pass.
4. Make keep-or-throw calls, and learn which discards are safe.