Search 'mahjong' and you'll find solitaire tile-matching games, Chinese classical play, Japanese Riichi, and the American game with its yearly card — all sharing tiles, none sharing rules. If you're joining a US club, here's exactly how the American game differs and why your Chinese-rules experience (or that solitaire app) only half-prepares you.
The card
The defining difference: American Mahjong is played against an annually published card of legal hands from the National Mah Jongg League. Chinese and Riichi mahjong build hands from universal melds — any four sets plus a pair. In the American game, if your 14 tiles don't match a printed line exactly, it's not a hand.
This is why American players buy a new card every spring, and why the game stays fresh: the meta resets annually for everyone at once.
Jokers, flowers, and racks
American sets add eight jokers — wild cards Chinese classical play doesn't use — plus interchangeable flowers and the plastic racks that hold and display tiles. The joker rules (no pairs, no passing, exchanges from exposures) exist only in the American game.
The Charleston
Unique to American play: the pre-game passing ritual (right-across-left, optional reverse, courtesy) that lets players shape their dealt tiles before the first discard. Chinese and Riichi games start playing immediately off the deal. The Charleston adds a whole strategic layer — and most of the American game's social texture.
Calling, scoring, and pace
American play restricts calls to groups of three or more for exposed hands (plus the game-winning tile), where Chinese rules allow chows (sequences) off the previous player. American scoring follows the card's printed values with doubling rules; Riichi uses its famous han/fu arithmetic. An American game runs a brisk 10–15 minutes.
Net: if you know any mahjong, you'll learn the American game faster — but the card, the Charleston, and joker law are genuinely new skills. They're also exactly what our lesson track and drills teach.