Jokers in American Mah Jongg

Eight wild tiles with strict rules. Most beginner mistakes at the table are joker mistakes, and every one of them is avoidable.

What a joker can do

A joker stands in for any tile inside a group of three or more: a pung, a kong, a quint or bigger. A kong is often two natural tiles and two jokers. A quint needs at least one joker by definition, because only four of any tile exist.

That kong of 7 Dots is legal: three naturals and a joker.

What a joker can never do

• Sit in a pair. A pair is two real tiles. Always.
• Be a single. A hand that calls for a lone tile needs the real tile.
• Appear in a Singles and Pairs hand. Those hands have no groups of three, so there is nowhere a joker may sit. That is why they pay the most.
• Be passed in the Charleston or the courtesy pass.
• Be called after it is discarded. A thrown joker is dead for everyone.

Joker redemption (the swap)

If an exposed group on anyone's rack, including your own, contains a joker, and you hold the real tile it is standing for, you may exchange them on your turn: hand over the real tile, take the joker into your hand. It happens after you draw and before you discard. Once you have thrown, the window closes until your next turn.

This is why good players scan every exposure every turn. A joker sitting in someone else's kong of 5 Bams is yours for the price of a 5 Bam you did not need anyway.

The swap is also the one change an exposure can take after it is locked. Once its owner has discarded, an exposed pung never grows into a kong; the fourth tile stays on the rack or goes to the discards.

Counting jokers

There are eight. If you can see six on racks and in the discards, only two are left anywhere, and a quint hand is probably a wish. Counting jokers is the first real "reading the table" skill, and it is cheap: jokers are loud.

Should you ever discard a joker?

Almost never. A discarded joker is dead, so it is a safe throw in the narrow sense that nobody can call it, but you are giving up the most flexible tile in the set and telling the table you had one to spare. Throw one only when your hand is complete without it and nothing else is safe.