• Getminted Casino
• Casino Rules
• Featured Games
• Lateral Thinking
• Strategy Games
• Multiplayer Games

• Wheel of Fortune
• Monopoly
• Poker
• Checkers
• Sudoku
• Quiz Games

• BINGO Rules
• Play Foxy Bingo
• Diam
• Lateral Thinking
• Word Search

RULES

The following sequence is for setting up a standard Hong Kong (or Singapore) game. Casual or beginning players may wish to proceed directly to gameplay. Shuffling the tiles is needed before piling up.

Prevailing Wind and Game Wind

To determine the Player Game Wind, each player throws three dice (two in some variants) and the player with the highest total is chosen as the dealer or the banker (莊家). The dealer's Wind is now East, the player to the right of the dealer has South wind, the next player to the right has West and the fourth player has North. Game Wind changes after every round, unless the dealer wins. In some variations, the longer the dealer remains as the dealer, the higher the value of each hand.

The Prevailing Wind (場風) is always set to East when starting. It changes after the Game Wind has rotated around the board, that is, after each player has lost as the dealer.

A Mahjong set with Winds in play will usually include a separate Prevailing Wind marker (typically a die marked with the Wind characters in a holder) and a pointer that can be oriented towards the dealer to show Player Game Wind. In sets with racks, a rack may be marked differently to denote the dealer.

These winds are also significant as winds are often associated with a member of a Flower tile group, typically 1 with East, 2 with South, 3 with West, and 4 with North.

Dealing tiles

All tiles are placed face down and shuffled. Each player then stacks a row of tiles two deep in front of him, the length of the row depending on the number of tiles in use:

The dealer throws three dice and sums up the total. Counting counterclockwise so that the dealer is '1', a player's row is chosen. Starting at the right edge, 'sum' tiles are counted and shifted to the right.

The dealer now takes a block of 4 tiles to the left of the divide.

The player to the dealer's right takes 4 tiles to the left, and players (counterclockwise) take blocks of 4 tiles (clockwise) until all players have 12 tiles for 13-tile variations and 16 for 16-tile variations. In 13-tile variations, each player then takes one more tile to make a 13-tile hand. In practice, in order to speed up the dealing procedure, the dealer often takes one extra tile during the dealing procedure to start their turn.

The board is now ready and new tiles will be taken from the wall where the dealing left off, proceeding clockwise. In some special cases discussed later, tiles are taken from the other end of the wall, commonly referred to as the back end of the wall. In some variations, a group of tiles at the back end, known as the dead wall, is reserved for this purpose instead. In such variations, the dead wall may be visually separated from the main wall, but it is not required.

Unless the dealer has already won (see below), the dealer then discards a tile. The dealing process with tiles is ritualised and complex to prevent cheating. Casual players, or players with Mahjong playing cards, may wish to simply shuffle well and deal out the tiles with fewer ceremonial procedures.

Charleston

In the American variations, it is required that before each hand begins, a Charleston is enacted. This consists of a procedure where three tiles are passed to the player on one's right, followed by three tiles passed to the player opposite, followed by three tiles passed to the left. The dealer can demand for a second Charleston, followed by an optional pass to the player across of one, two or three tiles. This is a distinctive feature of American-style Mahjong that may have been borrowed from card games

Standard Order of Play

The player whose turn it currently is will have fourteen tiles in his or her hand (actually, they may have more, due to Kongs, as explained below), while all others will have thirteen. East has fourteen to start with, and goes first. If they somehow have four melds and a pair, this termed a "Hand from Heaven", and East instantly wins the round, scoring the maximum number of points possible. Normally, however, East must simply continue as with a normal turn.

On a player's turn, he or she will have fourteen tiles, and must choose one tile and discard it face up into the courtyard in the center of the wall. If the next player could form a Chow using that tile and two from his hand, then he may call it, and place it and the other two tiles face up in front of his hand. It is then his turn. Alternately, if any player has two tiles identical to the one discarded, he may call it for a Pung, and place the three tiles face up in front of his hand, and it is then that player's turn, regardless whose turn it would normally have been next. Additionally, if another player has the other three of the discarded tile, he may claim it for a Kong, and place all four tiles face up in front of his hand. He then draws a loose tile from the top of the dead wall, and will have one more tile in his hand for the rest of the round. If this was the last loose tile, he takes up the last two tiles from the regular wall and places them on top of the dead wall as was done during setup. A claim for a Pung or a Kong takes precedence over a claim for a Chow. (Multiple claims for a Pungs or Kongs cannot happen, as there are only four of any given tile.) If no one wants the discarded tile, then it is out of play for the rest of the round, and the next player simply draws a tile (without showing it to the other players) from the front of the wall, and then takes his or her turn.

If a player forms a Chow or a Pung using only tiles drawn from the wall, he should keep it hidden in his hand until he can win. Not only is it worth more points this way, but other players don't know how close to victory he is, and he can still arrange those tiles into other melds if it becomes convenient, unlike exposed melds on the table. If a player gets four of a kind in his hand, he must reveal it if he wants to claim it as a Kong (otherwise, he wouldn't have enough tiles to be able to win). He shows the Kong to the other players, then places it on the table with the two outer tiles face up and the two inner tiles face down, to indicate that he completed it entirely from the wall, thus earning more points. Also, if a player previously formed an exposed Pung from another player's discard, and he later draws from the wall the fourth of that tile, he may add it to the Pung, turning it into an exposed Kong. This is not without some risk, as detailed below.

If a player needs only one tile to win, then he may claim that tile from any discard, even if it is to complete a Chow or the pair. This is referred to as "fishing", and a claim to win the game takes precedence over any other claim. If two players could win with the same discard, then the one whose turn would come next in the normal turn order gets to take it and win the hand. Also, a player who is fishing may claim a tile added to a Pung to turn it to a Kong, and thus win (and gets bonus points for doing so).

If a player draws a flower or a season, the tile is revealed and immediately set to the side of the player's hand. It does not count towards the number of tiles in the hand, and will provide bonus points at the end of the round. It is immediately replaced by drawing a loose tile, as described in the section on Kongs above.

When a player has a complete hand of melds and a pair, he may declare it and show it to the other players. This ends the hand. The player that went out calculates his score.