Quick answer
A hand ends when someone declares mahjong or the wall runs out. What each ending pays, the final-discard exception worth knowing, and what to agree before you play.
Every hand of American Mahjong ends in one of two ways, and most players only learn the second one by accident when the tiles simply run out. Here is how each ending works, what it pays, and the one exception about the last discard that regularly wins hands for people who know it.
Ending one: somebody declares mahjong
A player whose fourteen tiles exactly match a line on the current card says mahjong out loud, exposes the whole hand, and the hand stops immediately. Everyone checks the hand against the card before any money moves, because a hand that does not actually match is a wrong call rather than a win.
Payment follows the standard convention: if the winner drew the tile themselves, all three opponents pay double the line's value. If the winner called someone's discard, the player who threw that tile pays double and the other two pay the printed value.
Ending two: the wall runs out
If the last tile is drawn and no one has declared mahjong, the hand is a wall game. Nobody wins, nobody pays, and the tiles are shuffled for the next deal. It is a completely normal outcome, not a failure of the table.
Wall games get more common the longer a table plays cautiously, because careful defence slows everybody down. At a table full of beginners they are rare; at a table of good defensive players they are not.
The final discard is the exception worth knowing
Two rules loosen on the winning tile. You normally cannot call a discard to complete a single or a pair, and you normally cannot call anything at all while playing a concealed line. Both of those restrictions lift when the discarded tile is the one that completes your hand: you may call it and declare mahjong.
This matters at the very end of the wall. A player sitting one tile away from a concealed hand or a singles-and-pairs line is not waiting helplessly for a self-draw; the right discard from anyone at the table still wins it. Knowing this changes what you are willing to throw in the last few turns.
What a dead hand does at the end
A dead hand cannot win, but it does not leave the game. That player keeps drawing and discarding until the hand ends, and in most groups still pays the winner. Because they cannot win, they are also free to throw whatever they like, which changes the texture of the last few turns for everyone else.
This is also why forcing a wall game is a legitimate play. If your own hand is beyond saving, running the wall down costs the table nothing, while feeding the player with two exposures costs everyone.
Who deals next, and why you should ask
After a normal win, most groups pass the deal to the right unless East won, in which case East deals again. After a wall game, practice genuinely varies: some tables have East deal again, others rotate as usual. Published sources disagree, so this is a table convention rather than a rule handed down.
Settle it before the first hand along with the other house questions, and it will never cost you an argument at eleven at night. If you are joining a new group, ask rather than assume; nobody minds the question and everybody minds the dispute.
Reading the end of the hand
The last ten turns are where most money changes hands, because exposures have accumulated and everyone's options have narrowed. Count what is left in the wall, look at the exposures, and decide honestly whether you are still attacking or now defending. Players who never make that switch pay for it.
That judgment, whether a hand is still live or should be played safe, is exactly what the coach makes explicit when it reads your tiles: which direction leads, what the backup is, and whether the hand has committed.
Put it into practice
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Knowing whether to attack or defend in the last ten turns is the difference between a wall game and paying somebody. Mei, our AI coach, reads your tiles and says plainly where the hand stands.