Mahjong, The Art and Science of

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Mahjong, The Art and Science of

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Mahjong. Supposedly created by Confucious 2500 years ago but more likely by bored Chinese gamblers in the 19th century. Known in the west as an intimidating game due to the weirdass bone tiles covered in Chinese characters that its played with, mahjong is actually an extremely simple and casual game that should come naturally to anyone that's played poker or rummy. This post will be exclusively about the Japanese variant of mahjong, but if you want to talk about some other kind of mahjong feel free, pretty much every variant agrees on the same basic rules:

Each player has a hand of 13 tiles and takes turns drawing and discarding in an attempt to build a winning hand of 4 melds (3 sequential numbers or sets of 3 or 4 of a kind) and a pair. If another player discards a tile that you need to make a meld or to win, you can call it up into your hand. That's it. That's mahjong. Easy.

The Tiles and Their Suits:
The one through nine of pin:

The one through nine of sou:

The one through nine of man:

The winds:

(east, south, west, north)

The dragons:

(white, green, red)
A lot of times the white dragon will be a blank white tile instead.

Here's an example of the standard winning mahjong hand, 4 melds and a pair:
(

)+(

)

Japanese Mahjong, also called Riichi Mahjong, introduces a bunch of complications to this formula that make the game more tactical and stable. Riichi is the Hold'em to Hong Kong Mahjong's 5 Card Draw (and American Mahjong's Mario Party). Most importantly, Riichi Mahjong introduces additional criteria to win called "yaku". There's a whole list of yaku, but essentially they fall into 2 categories: yaku based on certain actions happening in the game, and yaku that work similarly to poker hands, flushes, straights, etc. Here's a few of the yaku you'll see most often (complete list here):

Riichi - If you haven't made any calls (known as a closed hand) and are one tile away from winning, you may announce it to the table by declaring riichi. As long as you have the standard 4 melds and a pair, declaring riichi is enough to win.
Tsumo - If your hand is closed and you draw the last tile you need to win, that's a yaku in itself.
Tanyao - A hand that contains no 1s, 9s, winds, or dragons. Sometimes only allowed in closed hands, depending on house rules.
Yakuhai - A hand that has at least one set of dragons, the player's seat wind, or the round's prevailing wind, open or closed.

A winning hand must fulfill at least one yaku, and yaku can be combined for more points. I'm not going to get into the specifics of mahjong scoring because its not that important when you're starting out, but the value of a hand increases roughly exponentially for each yaku it has, and rarer/harder to get yaku are worth more than common yaku.

The other major addition in Riichi Mahjong are certain tiles that are worth additional points, "dora tiles". At the beginning of each hand a tile is flipped over on the dead wall indicating which tile will be the dora. Additional indicators get flipped for each quad called, and a player that wins by riichi also gets access to the "ura dora" hidden under the indicators. Suffice to say declaring riichi can be really important in Riichi Mahjong when up to 10 tiles can be in play as doras.

Other miscellaneous things to be aware of:

Clasically, mahjong games consist of (at least) 16 hands. One round of four hands for each of the four winds, and within each round the players do a full rotation of seat winds. Casual mahjong is usually abbreviated down to just the east wind round, or the east and south rounds. Pay attention to wind tiles that match the round's prevailing wind or your seat wind.
If you win via calling another player's discard (a "ron" call), that player pays the full value of your hand. If you win via tsumo then all the other players split the tab. The dealer, seated east, always pays a bigger share when they lose and earns more when they win.
If any player runs out of points, the game immediately ends. Strategically, you should avoid bankrupting players if you aren't in the lead or at the very least making a profit.
If all the tiles are drawn before any player declares victory, the hand is drawn. Any players that were one tile away from victory (known as a state of "tenpai") are paid a small penalty by players that were more than one tile away.
Some house rules include red tiles that are automatically counted as doras. Usually one or two of the 5s in each suit will be colored red.
The dreaded furiten rule. You can't win off of a called discard if that tile or any other tile you could use to win (your "waits") are in your discard pile. If you find yourself in furiten, you need to cut that meld and find a new set of waits.
Remember that with dora indicators, it is the next highest tile up that's being indicated as a dora. If say the 3 man is flipped up on the dead wall, it is actually the 4 man that will be worth extra points. When the indicator is a 9, it wraps back around to 1. Dragons and winds have a set order you will have to remember. The suits at the beginning of this post are in dora order.

Links:

Wikipedia's list of yaku. You don't need to memorize all of these but it couldn't hurt to have it open in the background.
Gamedesign.jp's mahjong. A good place to practice mahjong against the computer, everything's in English and the man tiles are numbered.
Tenhou, the best and easiest way to play mahjong online. Unfortunately its in Japanese, but it really isn't that big a deal. For the most part its interface is very intuitive.

homeless snail fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Apr 3, 2014

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 22:21

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 05:22

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

How to play on Tenhou.net

Pretty straightforward, put your name in the field, it asks if you're male (男) or female (女) for some reason, click OK to continue. Alternatively you could click on the button on the far left to create a new account, for chatting, stat tracking, and replay recording purposes.

A bunch of buttons and Japanese text, for now just ignore everything but the bottom left. Each button represents a different kind of mahjong table you can sit at. Most people tend to play with open tanyao and red doras. You can queue for multiple game types at the same time.

The test play menu at the bottom will put you into a game with (really stupid) CPUs, probably not a bad idea to get used to the interface.

Here's what a game of mahjong looks like, with a few relevent areas labeled. Your hand is at the bottom, when its your turn click on the tile you want to cut. Occasionally other options will pop up either right above your hand or on top of the relevent tiles.

Here's the shortlist of words you need to be able to recognize:

Chii （チー） - A run of 3 sequential tiles, you may only call chiis off of the opponent to your immediate left.
Pon　（ポン） - A set of 3 of a kind.
Kan　（カン） - A set of 4 of a kind.
Ron　（ロン） - Calling up a discard to finish your hand.
Riichi (リーチ） - Ready hand.
Tsumo　（ツモ） - Drawing the tile you need to win on your own.
Pass　（パス） - This is English, dummy.
Kita　（キタ） - In 3 player mahjong, tiles of the unseated wind are worth additional points. Click kita to put them aside and replace them with new tiles.

Looking at the picture above, its asking whether I want to ron　（ロン） north's 2 sou, or pass （パス）.

Here's what potential calls look like. The tiles you can meld are highlighted and the type of meld is written above them. In this case someone discarded a 5 pin and its asking if I want to pon （ポン）. Click on the meld in your hand to make the call.

Click here to go to the private lobby we usually play in.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 22:21

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

lesbian baphomet posted:

I enjoy Mario Party and am curious to learn more of this so-called "American" mahjong.

Its really loving dumb. There's no standard hand and you have to spell out words or numbers with your tiles, something?? There's a reason why its only played by old women.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 22:27

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

gaping gape gaper posted:

I am peerless among this forum.

You should write some stuff about mahjong strategy itt, cause drat you are really good at mahjong, milky. If you don't I will, I guess.

homeless snail fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Apr 2, 2014

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 23:17

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Incarnate Dao posted:

I learned to play Mahjong from a Taiwanese friend, so the rules are a little different. I've been told it is similar to Filipino mahjong. Biggest difference is the hand is bigger, requiring 5 sets and a pair.

The only reason we're talking about Riichi is cause its the most popular form in video/computer games (and animes), if you wanna write a big effort post about Taiwanese mahjong you're more than welcome to. Or if you know any good places to play it online.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 23:31

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Lestaki posted:

I refuse to acknowledge any list of common yaku that excludes Pinfu. Of course, it doesn't help that Pinfu is a bastard to define.

I'll hang out in the lobby for a bit and see if anyone turns up.

I thought about putting it on the list because it is by far the easiest yaku to get, but I really really didn't want to get into how scoring works in Japanese mahjong in the OP. The OP is a friendly place.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 00:19

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

The Lord of Hats posted:

So I've been tooling around with that flash version, and the main thing I've learned is that I am bad at Mahjong. Constructing a good wait is easy enough, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to win once I've made a revealed group. Heck, when is it right to make a revealed group in the first place?

Opening your hand up too early is the first hurdle that beginners have to get over. Its substantially easier to win with a closed hand because it leaves so many more options available for scoring, like Lestaki was saying you really have to have a strategy in mind before you decide to open up. If its early enough that its likely I'll get another chance to call, I'll usually pass on the first couple cuts until I'm reasonably sure my hand is going to work out.

I'm no mahjong pro or anything but this is pretty much my basic strategy and it works reasonably well for me: Look at the discard ponds and notice how they're organized in rows of 6 tiles, and in a hand drawn to exhaustion there are 3 rows of discards per player. You can break mahjong into essentially a 3 act game using the rows of discards as a kind of clock. I find it really helps to compartmentalize your strategy like that.

In the first act players are feeling each other out and putting together the foundation of their hands. People are generally optimistic enough to not open their hands up in the first act. On the flip side, people tend to make some pretty dangerous cuts early on so this is a great time to call honors for a yakuhai if you can.

By the start of the second act players usually have a strategy in mind, whether they're going all out for a particular hand, hedging their bets, or playing defensively. This is when the vast majority of hands open up. There is enough information at this point for people to start reading discards though so cuts tend to be made a little more carefully here.

If someone hasn't won by the third act and you aren't in tenpai or are close, this is when you want to go crazy and make as many calls and cuts as possible to get yourself to tenpai. If you aren't going to win you might as well not lose.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 23:13

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Stelas posted:

Yeah, but trying to get to tenpai while you're doing it is worth it, provided you can get there while discarding mostly safe tiles. If you don't have a read on someone's hand, generally speaking you just want to try to discard the same tiles they do, since furiten will generally stop them from being able to call on it.

For sure. You don't want to get ron'd but a 3000 point penalty if you are the only one not in tenpai can also be pretty significant.

Here's a good article on defensive play that covers that end of the game nicely http://riichiround.blogspot.com/2011/01/riichi-and-defensive-play.html

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 19:55

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

The Lord of Hats posted:

drat, this made a world of difference. Being able to play for the small win off of a triplet is way easier than trying to assemble a Tsumo every time.

Which leads me to my next question: is Kan a "If you can do it, do it" sort of thing?

Kans are worth more slightly more points than pons are, not enough to usually be too worried about it but in a lot of cases it could push you over into mangan territory. I usually just go for it, more out of hope of getting a rinshan or a good dora than anything else.

Couple edge cases to be aware of I guess, if you have no hope of winning you probably don't want to play a kan because the newly flipped dora could potentially make your opponents' hand stronger. Also if there are already 3 kans on the table, calling a 4th will immediately abort the hand. Sometimes that's advantageous, other times it might be something you want to avoid.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 08:00

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 05:22

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Opening your hand is an insanely important decision, and realizing that is your first and most critical step when learning how to play Mahjong. Heck, the name of the game is Riichi and you can't even call a riichi unless your hand is closed, that's how big a deal the decision to open your hand is.

And you're right on, that's mostly going to come from remembering yaku and analyzing how likely/quickly you'll be able to achieve them, and how close you think other people are to finishing theirs.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 01:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Mahjong, The Art and Science of