American Mahjong cheat sheet

The 152 tiles

• Suits: craks, bams and dots, numbered 1 to 9, four of each (108)
• Winds: North, East, West and South, four of each (16)
• Dragons: red, green and soap (the white dragon), four of each (12)
• Flowers: 8
• Jokers: 8
• The goal: be first to hold fourteen tiles that exactly match one hand on the current year's card.

Setup and the deal

• Shuffle face down. Each of the four players builds a wall 19 tiles long and 2 high.
• East rolls the dice to decide where the wall is broken.
• Take four tiles at a time, East first and around to the right, until everyone holds 12.
• East takes two more and everyone else one. East holds 14, the others 13.
• East does not discard until the Charleston is over.

The Charleston

• First Charleston (required): three tiles right, then three across, then three left.
• Second Charleston (optional): left, across, right, only if all four players agree.
• Courtesy pass (optional): swap up to three tiles with the player across, by mutual agreement.
• Blind pass: only on the last pass of each Charleston, the left that ends the first and the right that ends the second. Never on an across pass or the courtesy pass.
• Jokers: may never be passed, in either Charleston or the courtesy pass.

Your turn

• Play moves to the right, starting with East, who discards first.
• Draw the next tile from the wall, or call the tile just discarded.
• Then discard one tile face up and name it out loud.
• A discard is final once it touches the table.
• You end every turn holding 13 tiles, exposed sets included.

Calling a discard

• Pung, kong, quint: three, four or five alike. A quint needs at least one joker unless it is flowers.
• The window: stays open until the next player racks the tile they drew or discards.
• Pairs, NEWS, the year: call the tile only when it completes your winning hand.
• Runs: no calling for runs.
• Exposing: lay the whole set face up on your rack, then discard.
• Two calls at once: mahjong beats a set. Between two set calls, the player nearer the discarder's right wins.

Jokers

Dead hands

• A hand is dead when it can no longer legally win: an exposure that matches no card line, an exposure on a concealed hand, or the wrong number of tiles.
• A dead hand cannot declare mahjong. Jokers in its exposed sets can still be redeemed.
• Calling mahjong in error carries no penalty on its own under League tournament rules. Exposing your tiles on a false call makes the hand dead. It scores zero and stops drawing and discarding.

Winning

• Declare mahjong when your 14 tiles exactly match a line on the current card, by drawing the last tile or by calling it.
• A concealed hand (marked C) takes no call except the winning tile.
• If the wall runs out with no winner, it is a wall game and nobody pays.

Paying (League rules)

• Each line on the card has a point value printed beside it.
• All three opponents pay the winner.
• Self-drawn: everyone pays double.
• Won on a discard: the player who threw it pays double, the other two pay the value.
• No jokers in the hand: every payment doubles again, except in the Singles and Pairs group. Tournament scoring adds 20 points instead.
• Agree any house rules before the first deal.

Reading the card

• Each line is one complete 14-tile winning hand. The National Mah Jongg League reissues the card every April.
• Digits printed together: one set. Two alike are a pair, three a pung, four a kong.
• Colors: one color in a line is one suit. Different colors mean different suits, and you choose which.
• Letters: F is a flower and N, E, W, S the winds. D is a dragon, red with craks, green with bams, soap with dots. A 0 in a year hand is the soap.
• X or C: X means you may expose sets for the hand, C means it must stay concealed.