American Mah Jongg How to Play

American mah jongg is played by four people with a 152-tile set that includes 8 jokers. Every winning hand must match one of the hands printed on that year's card from the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL). Before play starts, everyone trades tiles in a ritual called the Charleston.

The first player to complete a hand from the card and declare “Mah Jongg!” wins the hand and collects the value printed on the card from the other three players.

American vs. Taiwanese at a glance

• A winning hand is 14 tiles that match a line on the card exactly, not “sets plus a pair” of your own design.
• There is no chow. Groups are always identical tiles: pairs, pungs (3), kongs (4), quints (5).
• Jokers fill in for tiles in groups of three or more.
• Flowers stay in your hand as ordinary tiles; they are not bonus tiles.
• Scoring is a flat value per hand, printed on the card. There are no point-by-point patterns to add up.

The NMJL publishes a new card every year (it goes on sale each spring), and the hands change with it. Most players keep the card in front of them the whole game. In this app you can open it from the table with the card button, and the Hand Helper shows which hands are closest to the tiles you hold.

Sections

Hands are grouped into sections by theme, for example a hand built around the current year, even numbers (2468), like numbers, quints, consecutive runs, odd numbers (13579), winds and dragons, 369, and singles and pairs. The section names don't change much from year to year; the hands inside them do.

Reading a line

• Every line is a 14-tile hand. You must match it exactly, tile for tile.
• Colors mean suits, not specific suits. Tiles printed in one color must all be the same suit; tiles in a second color must be a different suit. Unless the line says otherwise, you choose which suits.
• Letters: NEWS are the winds, F is a flower, and D is a dragon. A dragon's color ties it to a suit: the Red Dragon goes with craks, the Green Dragon with bams, and the White Dragon (“Soap”) with dots.
• Zero: in hands built around the year, the White Dragon 0 is used as a zero.
• Consecutive numbers: some lines let you pick any run of consecutive numbers. In this app's card view, K K+1… stand for “your chosen number, the next one, …”.
• X or C: each line ends with X (exposed) or C (concealed). On an X hand you may call discards to make exposures during play. On a C hand you keep everything in your rack and may call a discard only for the tile that completes Mah Jongg.
• Value: the number at the end of the line is the hand's value in points, typically 25 to 75. Harder hands pay more. Concealed hands usually pay more than similar exposed ones.

In the app's card view the chips use the same letters a US card does: N/E/W/S for winds, R/G/0 for the red, green and white dragons, D for a dragon matched to a suit, and F for flowers.

The 152 tiles

• Suits (108): dots, bams (bamboo) and craks (characters), numbered 1–9, four of each.
• Winds (16): North, East, West, South, four of each.
• Dragons (12): Red, Green and White (“Soap”), four of each.
• Flowers (8): all flowers count as the same tile, so any flower matches any other.
• Jokers (8).

The deal

East (the dealer) starts with 14 tiles; everyone else starts with 13. The app builds the wall and deals for you. After the Charleston, East discards first without drawing, and play moves to the right: East, then South, then West, then North.

Before the first discard, players pass unwanted tiles to each other, three at a time. Jokers can never be passed.

First Charleston (required)

1. Pass right: three tiles to the player on your right.
2. Pass across: three tiles to the player opposite you.
3. Pass left: three tiles to the player on your left. On this last pass you may blind pass (also called stealing): instead of choosing all three from your hand, pass along one, two or three of the tiles you are receiving without looking at them.

Second Charleston (optional)

After the first Charleston, the table may do a second one in the opposite order: left, across, right, again with a blind pass allowed on the last pass. It only happens if all four players agree. Any one player can stop it, and nobody has to say why.

Courtesy pass (optional)

Finally, you and the player across from you may exchange zero to three tiles. Each of you says how many you'd like to swap, and the smaller number is what you both pass.

1. Draw a tile from the wall, or call the last discard (see below).
2. If you can, exchange jokers or declare Mah Jongg.
3. Discard one tile face up and name it. Play then passes to the player on your right.

Between turns you always hold 13 tiles (counting your exposures); on your turn, after you draw or call, you hold 14.

When someone discards, any other player may call it, before the next player draws, instead of waiting for their own turn.

• For an exposure: you may call a discard to complete a pung (3), kong (4) or quint (5) that your hand needs. You place the group face up on your rack using tiles (and jokers) from your hand, then discard. Play continues to the right of you, so any players in between lose their turn.
• For Mah Jongg: you may call any discard that completes your hand, even if it finishes a pair or a single.
• Never for a pair or single otherwise. If the tile would only make a pair or a single, you can't call it unless it gives you Mah Jongg.
• Concealed (C) hands may call a discard only for Mah Jongg.
• No chow. American mah jongg has no calls for runs.
• Priority: a call for Mah Jongg beats a call for an exposure. If two players call for the same reason, the one who would play next (closest to the discarder's right) gets the tile.

• A joker can stand in for any tile, but only in a group of three or more: a pung, kong, quint or sextet.
• Jokers can never be used in a pair or a single. That's why Singles and Pairs hands can't use jokers at all.
• A discarded joker is dead: nobody can call it.
• Joker exchange: on your turn, after you have drawn (or called), if a joker is sitting in any exposure (yours or another player's) and you hold the real tile it stands for, you may swap your tile for the joker and keep the joker. You may make more than one exchange in a turn.
• Jokers can't be passed in the Charleston.
• A hand with no jokers at all is worth double (see payments).

An exposure is a group you've placed face up after calling a discard. Everyone can see it, so it tells the table which hand you're playing.

• An exposure is made all at once: a kong is exposed as four tiles (natural tiles plus any jokers), a quint as five.
• Once you've discarded, an exposure can't change size. A pung stays a pung. You can't add a fourth tile to it on a later turn.
• Your exposures must fit the hand you're making. If they no longer fit any hand on the card, your hand is dead.

Declaring Mah Jongg

When your 14 tiles match a line on the card, whether you drew the last tile yourself or called a discard, declare Mah Jongg. The app checks your hand against the card and scores it.

Dead hands

A hand is dead when it can no longer become a legal winning hand: for example, your exposures don't match any line on the card, or you have the wrong number of tiles. A dead player keeps drawing and discarding but can't call tiles or win, and still pays if someone else goes Mah Jongg.

Wall game

If the wall runs out and nobody has declared Mah Jongg, the hand is a wall game. Nobody pays.

The winner is paid the hand's value as printed on the card:

Example: a 25-point hand won on a discard: the discarder pays 50, the other two pay 25 each, and the winner collects 100.

After every hand, including a wall game, the deal passes to the right: the player on East's right becomes the new East and deals the next hand. The room's “Hands” setting decides how many hands a game lasts.

Some other things the app handles for you:

• The wall, the deal and the dice are automatic.
• The tile set defaults to Western faces (numbers plus DOT / BAM / CRAK) for American games. You can pick any set from the table's tile-set button.

Mah Jongg cards are published by the National Mah Jongg League. This guide explains how to read a card and play; it doesn't reproduce any card hands.