Definition
A pair is two identical tiles, and it is the one set a joker can never be part of.
Pairs must be drawn naturally or completed by the winning call. A hand built only of singles and pairs cannot use a joker anywhere, which is why Singles and Pairs hands get no help from jokers.
At the table
A joker can never fill a pair, and a set has only four of each suited tile, wind and dragon, so every pair has to be built from real tiles. That makes a natural pair in the deal worth more than a raw tile count suggests. The mistake is breaking one during the Charleston to make up three tiles to pass, when a lone tile somewhere else in the rack would have done the same job.
Read the full guide: Pung, Kong, Quint, and Pair: The Sets That Make Up Every Hand.
Lesson 5, The Charleston II: Strategy, teaches this in its step "Keep your pairs, and watch what you feed". It comes with the Club. See what Lesson 5 covers.
See it on real tiles. The AI coach reads a dealt hand, free, and names the direction it goes for, what to keep and what to pass, at the free read.
Want the coach on call? The Club adds the coach for your own tiles and for each morning’s hand, all 10 lessons, and every new NMJL card taught the week it lands, for $14.99 a month, cancel anytime. See what the Club includes.
Related: Pung, Kong, Quint, Charleston. All 52 terms.