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The Drill Room

Read real dealt hands, make the call, get the coach's answer, and keep the streak alive.

The Drill Room is a set of American Mahjong drills: real dealt hands and real hands in progress, you make the call, and the coach gives the answer with the reasoning. It covers reading the deal, the Charleston pass, and the mid-game throw against exposed sets.

What the Drill Room is for

A drill is one real dealt hand and one question about it. You answer, the coach answers, and you find out whether you were right. Each one is a single decision about a single hand, so a few minutes covers several hands.

Read the Hand and Best Pass build the opening: naming a direction fast and honestly, then passing the tiles that serve neither of your best two. Defend the Table builds the rest of the hand. It plays a real game forward against three opponents until sets are on the table, then asks for your throw, graded on whether it feeds anyone and whether it breaks something you are building. Three clean throws in a row moves you to harder positions, and from Level 4 on every position is a hard one. Every graded throw counts toward your Defend level: 8 named levels from New to the Table to Table Anchor, the upper ones measured on hard positions only, then a further level for every 100 clean hard throws. A level you reach is never taken away. Members who already play can start with a placement instead: ten hard positions in a row, graded by the same rules, and the level those throws earn is where they start.

How a session goes

  1. A hand appears. Look at it and commit to an answer before you check anything.
  2. Make the call the drill asks for, whether that is the direction, the tiles to pass, or the tile to throw.
  3. Read the coach's answer and, more importantly, its reasoning.
  4. Note the ones you got wrong and look for a pattern in them, such as one kind of hand you keep rating too high.

The rules behind it

How to get better between game nights. How to choose a hand after the deal. How to sort your rack.

Read the Hand and Best Pass are free, and so are three Defend the Table positions a day. Club membership adds unlimited Defend positions that get harder as you get them right, a Defend level that syncs across your devices, the live coach on the daily hand and on your own real games, and a journal that records the direction you called before you asked. $14.99 a month or $149 a year.