Mahjong

• 1. Introduction

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  Mahjong begins with noise. By convention, every player shuffles the face-down tiles with both hands, moving them around the table rigorously and loudly for a lengthy period. The game behind that clatter was developed in 19th-century China and has spread across the world since the early 20th century. Four people usually sit at the table, though three-player versions turn up in parts of China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Southeast Asia. In turn, players draw and discard tiles, racing to assemble a complete hand. Like the Western card game rummy, it rewards skill, strategy and luck, and some people call it mahjong rummy to separate it from mahjong solitaire. Today it is played throughout the Sinosphere of East and Southeast Asia, has won fans in Western countries, and has grown into a widespread form of online entertainment.

  Why does a game of tiles carry the name of a bird? What do the symbols on those tiles mean, and how does a winning hand turn into a payment? And how can one game exist in more than forty versions, with players in many places insisting that the other versions are simply wrong?

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• 2. The Sparrow Name

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  The Chinese word 麻雀, pronounced máquè in Mandarin, means sparrow. That was the game's original name, and several Chinese languages, mostly in the south, still use it. Cantonese and Hokkien are two examples. One explanation is about sound. The clacking of tiles during shuffling is said to resemble the chattering of sparrows. Another suggestion is that the name evolved from an earlier card game called Madiao, whose cards were adapted into mahjong tiles.

  The bird left its mark on other vocabulary. In Chinese, 麻雀戰, máquè zhàn, means sparrow warfare. It is a colloquial name for a style of guerrilla tactics.

  Sichuanese, Shanghainese and Standard Mandarin now call the game 麻將, májiàng. This is a nasal erhua form of the original name. The name is similar in most other languages. Thai is the notable exception, where the game is ไพ่นกกระจอก, phai nok krachok. That is a calque meaning sparrow cards.

  The winning shout is not shared at all. No Asian version uses the word mahjong to announce a win, and each region has its own call. Only players speaking English usually cry out Mahjong!

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• 3. The Tile Set

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  The most common sets hold 144 tiles, and 108 of them are suited. They fall into three suits, bamboos, dots and characters, each numbered from 1 to 9 with four identical copies of every tile. Each suit has nicknames. Bamboo is also called sticks, strings or bams, and its first tile usually shows a bird instead of a single bamboo. The bird is traditionally a peacock or a sparrow. Dots go by wheels, circles, coins, stones, marbles or balls. Characters are also called myriads, cracks or numbers. The top character on each tile is a number, and the bottom one means ten thousand.

  The 28 honors tiles have no numerical sequence. The winds are east, south, west and north, starting with east. The dragons are red, green and white. The white dragon carries a blue or black frame, or in some sets it is entirely blank. Like the suited tiles, every honor comes in four identical copies.

  The last eight tiles are unique, with only one of each. Four are flowers: plum blossom, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo. Four are seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. A drawn flower or season never joins the hand. The player announces it, sets it aside for scoring and draws a replacement. The bamboo flower has no relation to the bamboo suit.

  The flowers echo the Four Gentlemen of Chinese culture, plants seen as emblems of the seasons. Traditionally the plum stood for winter and the orchid for spring. People now tend to link plum blossom with spring, orchid with summer, chrysanthemum with autumn and bamboo with winter.

  Players do not need to learn the Chinese characters on these tiles. Only the number matters, because each one is tied to a direction from East through North. That link becomes important once everyone at the table is given a wind of their own.

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• 4. Winds, Walls and Dice

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  Before any tile is drawn, someone must become East. Each player can roll the dice, giving East to the highest roll and South to the second highest. Alternatively, the four wind tiles are shuffled face down and each player picks one. Seats run counter-clockwise from East to South, West and North, and East is the first dealer.

  A match consists of four rounds, and each round has a prevailing wind, starting with East and then moving to South. Each round has at least four hands, so every player takes a turn as dealer. Nobody actually changes chairs; only the seat winds rotate. A dealer who wins keeps the deal, and a hand with no winner, called a goulash hand, also triggers an extra hand. A match of 16 hands can easily stretch to 20 or far more. Some tables cap it at three consecutive hands, and others pass the deal regardless.

  Then comes construction. Each player stacks a row of 18 tiles, two high, which makes 36 tiles. The four rows are pushed together into a square wall. Regular players often angle their stacks about 20 to 30 degrees counter-clockwise, which leaves a roomy space for tiles and an easy reach for drawing.

  The dealer then throws three dice onto the square wall. Counting counter-clockwise, with the dealer as 1, 5, 9, 13 or 17, the total picks whose wall is cut. The player of that wall counts stacks from right to left to find the cut. The dealer takes four tiles, and the others follow in counter-clockwise blocks of four until everyone holds 12. One last tile each brings every hand to 13.

  Things go wrong. Tiles can flip over during the deal, and tables settle in advance what happens. The unlucky player may lose points, the tile may be shuffled back into the wall, or the recipient may be forced to take it.

  The wall itself changes with the set. A 136-tile set uses 17 stacks per player, and a 152-tile set uses 19. At high-stakes games and tournaments, automatic dealing tables skip the building altogether. They shuffle one set of tiles while the players use another, and magnets in the tiles leave them face down in the walls.

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• 5. Seizing the Discard

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  Play moves counter-clockwise. On each turn a player draws a tile from the wall, then discards one into the centre of the table, optionally announcing it aloud. Between turns the hand stays at 13 tiles. Flowers, seasons and the fourth tile added to a kong do not count toward that total. A player seen holding too many or too few outside their turn is penalised.

  The discard is where the game turns dangerous. Any player who can use it to make a meld may seize it. A pung is three identical tiles, a kong is four, and a chow is three consecutive tiles of one suit. Seizing a tile has a price. The player must lay the meld face up for everyone to see, cannot change it afterward, and must discard at once. Play then continues from that player, so one or two people may lose their turn.

  When several players want the same tile, priority is strict. A player who needs it to win goes first. If several can win, the hand worth the most faan takes it, and a tie goes to the player nearest the discarder in turn order. Next comes a pung or kong, which may be taken from anyone. Because a set has only four of each tile, only one player can hold that claim. Last is the chow, which only the next player in line can take, unless the tile completes a winning hand.

  Some tables add a rhythm rule. A couple of seconds after each discard may be allowed as a window of opportunity. Once the next player draws from the wall, the previous discard is lost.

  A winning hand holds 14 tiles. It is four melds and a pair, called the eyes, apart from a small class of special hands. A player completes it either by drawing from the wall or by claiming a discard. Calling a win without a complete legal hand is a false win, and the penalty depends on the table. The offender may pay points to the others or play out the hand with tiles face up.

  The rarest interruption is robbing the kong. A player declares a kong by adding a fourth tile to a pung. If another player needs exactly that tile to win, they may steal it and take the hand.

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• 6. Doubling and Redoubling

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  A typical Hong Kong table agrees a minimum of 3 faan before play begins. Faan are the points a hand earns for its composition, the way it was won, bonus tiles and special patterns. In the old Hong Kong system, only the winner scores. The other three players simply pay.

  Flowers and seasons add bonus faan, but they do not count toward the minimum. A hand with two faan and a bonus point in a three-faan game is not yet a winner. A player scores a bonus for their own seat flower or season, and for holding all four of either kind. Holding no flowers or seasons at all earns one faan, and winning from the wall earns another. Holding all eight flowers and seasons is exceedingly rare and wins automatically, with maximum payment.

  Faan convert to base points on a progressive table. In the simplified Old Hong Kong version, 3 faan is worth 1 base point and 4 faan is worth 2. A 9-faan hand is worth 4, and 10 or more reaches the limit of 8.

  The doubling then begins. Winning from the wall doubles the base points. A discarder who hands over the winning tile pays double. If the winner is East, every loser doubles, and if East is a loser, East pays double. When two of these conditions meet, the payment doubles again.

  Take West winning with 3 faan from the wall. East pays 4, South pays 2 and North pays 2, so West collects 8. Now take East winning with 10 faan on West's discard. South pays 16, North pays 16 and West pays 32, so East collects 64.

  Those numbers are why Hong Kong mahjong is described as a payment system of doubling and redoubling. The dealer is richly rewarded for winning and punished for losing. Concealed melds are barely rewarded, apart from a few special cases such as three concealed pungs.

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• 7. Limit Hands

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  Heavenly hand is the name for a winning hand dealt straight to the dealer at the start of the game. It is the most startling of the limit hands, exceptional combinations that score the table's maximum. A common cap is 64 points, which is the highest base value doubled twice. The winner collects it from every player without further doubling.

  The earthly hand is a near relative. A player finishes a winning hand on the dealer's very first discard. In most variants this applies only if the dealer did not draw a kong.

  Thirteen orphans needs the 1 and 9 of each suit, one of each wind, one of each dragon, and one extra tile matching any of those. It is also the hand that can wait on the most tiles in 13-tile mahjong, a full thirteen.

  The nine gates hand needs 1112345678999 in a single suit, and any extra tile of that suit completes it. Four concealed pungs, four kongs and a pung of each wind are also limit hands. The pure green hand uses only the green tiles: bamboos numbered 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8, plus the green dragon. Not every table recognises it. Seven pairs scores as a limit hand in some games and as only 4 faan in others.

  Lesser hands still pay well. Little dragons, two dragon pungs and a pair of the third, scores 5 faan. Little winds scores 6, a hand of one suit with no honors scores 7, and great dragons scores 8. Winning on the replacement tile after a second consecutive kong scores 9, and a hand made entirely of honors scores 10.

  Which of these hands exist at all is a matter of table rules. Some groups ban them, some require them to be concealed, and some pay half a limit for a semi-concealed win. That freedom is one reason mainland China alone has over thirty variants.

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• 8. A Game of Many Versions

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  Across the world there are over forty variations of mahjong, and many differ only in scoring. Players in one place often know only their own version. The regional Chinese forms alone are strikingly different.

  Wenzhou mahjong uses 16-tile hands, leaves out flowers and seasons, and draws a wild card called Caishen, meaning god of fortune, at the start of each hand. Wuhan mahjong has a tile called Laizi that can stand for anything, and a winning hand must include a two, a five and an eight. Sichuan mahjong forbids chows and uses only the suited tiles. Harbin mahjong uses just the 108 suited tiles and 4 red dragons. Xiangyang mahjong is played with three players. Tianjin mahjong normally uses seven jokers.

  Chinese classical mahjong is the oldest surviving form and the one introduced to America in the 1920s. In Western classical mahjong, a descendant of the version brought by Babcock, rules like the Wright-Patterson set used in the U.S. military remain close to Babcock's version. American mahjong later diverged completely. The National Mah Jongg League publishes a new card of legal hands every year, and players must buy it. The game uses jokers, a tile-passing ritual called the Charleston, and no chows. Its spelling, mahjongg, signals the difference.

  Elsewhere, Taiwanese mahjong uses 16-tile hands. In Singapore and Malaysia, bonus tiles show a cat, a mouse, a cockerel and a centipede. Vietnamese sets reach 160 tiles. Sailors of the Royal Australian Navy developed Pussers bones, which swaps East, South, West and North for Eddie, Sammy, Wally and Normie.

  Japanese mahjong helped make the game famous worldwide, partly through video games. Its signature rule is rīchi, a declaration that the player has a ready hand. After it, any drawn tile is discarded unless it wins. The variant also uses dora bonus tiles, and some sets replace certain fives with red tiles worth more.

  In July 1998, the All-China Sports Federation founded Mahjong Official Rules, known as MCR, an international standard now governed by the World Mahjong Organization. It is not very popular in China and Asia, yet it is one of the most popular variants in the Netherlands, France and Italy.

  At the experimental end sits Zung Jung, designed by statistician Alan Kwan. Its scoring is informed by statistical mathematics, and a slight modification of its ruleset was used in the World Series Of Mahjong tournament.

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