American Mahjong Rules: The Complete Plain-English Reference

Players, tiles, and the goal

Four players. A full American set has 152 tiles. There are three suits (craks, bams, dots) numbered one to nine with four of each, four each of the four winds, four each of the three dragons, eight flowers, and eight jokers. The goal is to be first to assemble fourteen tiles that exactly match one of the hands printed on the current year's card.

Setup and the deal

Each player rolls the dice, and the player with the highest roll is East, the dealer, for the first hand. Tiles are shuffled face down, and each player builds a wall nineteen tiles long and two high in front of their rack. East rolls the dice to decide where the wall is broken. Players then take four tiles at a time, East first and around to the right, until everyone holds twelve. East takes two more tiles and everyone else takes one, so everyone holds thirteen and East holds fourteen. East does not discard yet, because the Charleston comes first. After every hand the deal passes to the player on East's right, whether East won, another player won, or the wall ran out. Under League rules a winning East does not deal again.

The Charleston

Before play, players pass tiles in a fixed sequence, three to the right, then three across, then three to the left. This first Charleston is mandatory. A second Charleston (left, across, right) is optional and only happens if every player agrees. Whether or not it is played, an optional courtesy pass then lets you swap up to three tiles with the player across from you, by mutual agreement. Blind passing, sending on tiles you have not looked at, is allowed only on the final pass of each Charleston, the left that ends the first round and the right that ends the second, and never on an across pass or the courtesy pass. Jokers may never be passed, in the Charleston or the courtesy pass.

Taking turns: draw and discard

Play moves to the right, starting with East, who discards first. On your turn you either draw the next tile from the wall or call the tile just discarded, then you discard one tile face up and name it out loud. A tile counts as discarded once it is named or touches the table. You always end your turn holding thirteen tiles counting any exposed sets.

Calling and exposing

You may claim the most recent discard to complete a pung (three identical tiles), a kong (four), or a quint (five, with at least one joker unless it is flowers), and the window stays open until the next player racks the tile they drew or discards. You may claim a discard for a pair, or for a group of different tiles such as NEWS or the year, only when that tile completes your winning hand. There is no calling for runs. When you call, you expose the whole completed set face up on your rack, then discard. A call for mahjong beats a call for a set. When two players call for the same thing, both for a set or both for mahjong, the tile goes to the player next in turn after the discarder, unless the other caller has already started to expose tiles for the claim.

You can change an exposure only on the turn you made it, before you discard. Until then you may move tiles from your hand on or off it, turning a pung into a kong or back again. Once you discard, the set is fixed, so a pung exposed on an earlier turn cannot take a fourth tile later, whether you draw that tile or another player discards it.

Jokers

A joker may stand in for any tile inside a pung, kong, or quint. It may never be part of a pair or stand as a single tile, so neither NEWS nor a year written in single tiles, like 2026, can ever hold one. A joker sitting in any player's exposed set may be redeemed by any player on their turn by handing over the real tile it represents, and the joker then goes into that player's rack. Discarded jokers are dead and cannot be called.

Dead hands

A hand is dead when it can no longer legally win, for example because of an exposure that matches no card line, exposures that fit only a concealed line, or the wrong number of tiles. A dead hand cannot declare mahjong. Jokers in its correct exposures, made before the hand died, stay available for other players to redeem, but not a joker in the exposure that killed it. Calling mahjong in error carries no penalty on its own under League tournament rules. What ends the hand is showing the tiles. A player who exposes their hand on a false call is dead, scores zero, and stops drawing and discarding.

Winning

You win by declaring mahjong when your fourteen tiles exactly match a line on the current card, either by drawing the final tile or by calling it. Concealed hands must be completed without calling any discard except the winning tile. If the wall runs out with no winner, the hand is a wall game and nobody pays.

Scoring and payment

Each card line carries a point value. On a win, all three opponents pay the winner. Under League rules, if the winner drew the final tile, everyone pays double, and if the winner called it from a discard, the player who threw it pays double while the other two pay the base value. A hand with no jokers in it doubles every payment again, except on the Singles and Pairs group, and sanctioned tournament scoring adds twenty points for it instead. Settle any house rules before the first deal.