How to play Mahjong

What you need

• 136 tiles: four copies of each of 34 tiles. Three suits (circles, bamboos, characters) numbered 1 to 9, plus honours: four winds (East, South, West, North) and three dragons (white, green, red). Many sets also include flowers, jokers, or red fives. WRC 2025 uses none of them, so set them aside.
• Two six-sided dice.
• A wind marker showing East on one side and South on the other, to track the round.
• Scoring sticks worth 30,000 points per player. Sets usually include 100, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 sticks. Poker chips work if everyone agrees the values.
• A square table, ideally with a mat. WRC suggests 70 to 80 cm across.
• A printed yaku list and scoring table. WRC publishes both. Keep them on the table; nobody memorises payments in their first month.

Set up the game

1. Seats and winds. Draw one of each wind tile face down. Each player sits at the seat of the wind they drew. South sits on East’s right, West across from East, and North on East’s left. Place the wind marker East side up beside the first East player.
2. Starting points. Everyone counts out 30,000 points in sticks and checks the others.
3. Shuffle and build. Push the tiles around face down. Each player builds a wall in front of them, 17 tiles long and 2 high, and the four walls are pushed together into a square.
4. Break the wall. East rolls both dice. Count counter-clockwise from East to choose which wall gets broken, then count stacks from the right end of that wall to find the break point.
5. Deal. Starting with East and going counter-clockwise, each player takes four tiles (two stacks) at a time, three times round. Then East takes two more tiles and everyone else takes one. East has 14 tiles; the others have 13.
6. Dead wall and dora. The last 14 tiles of the wall (the seven stacks to the right of the break) form the dead wall. Flip the top tile of the third stack from the end: that is the first dora indicator.
7. Start. East already has 14 tiles, so East begins by discarding.

Playing Mahjong

1. Draw, then discard. Turns run counter-clockwise: East, South, West, North. On your turn draw the next tile from the live wall, then discard one face up in front of you. Between turns you hold 13 tiles; during your turn, 14. Lay discards in rows of six so everyone can see who threw what and in what order.
2. Know your groups. A sequence is three consecutive numbers in one suit, such as 4-5-6 bamboo. It never wraps from 9 to 1 and never uses honours. A triplet is three identical tiles; a quad is four. A pair is two identical tiles.
3. Calling a discard. Only the most recent discard can be called. Say chii to take it for a sequence, but only from the player on your left. Say pon for a triplet or kan for a quad from any player. Show the matching tiles, place the group face up on your right, then discard. Called groups are fixed and your hand becomes open. Players between the discarder and the caller lose their turn.
4. Quads. Any kan, even a concealed one, must be announced. You take a replacement tile from the dead wall and a new dora indicator is turned before you discard.
5. A complete hand. A valid hand is four groups and a pair, or seven different pairs, or Thirteen Orphans. To win, it must also contain at least one yaku, a scoring pattern from the official list. Dora is not a yaku.
6. Riichi. With a closed hand one tile from complete (tenpai), you may say riichi, discard a tile turned sideways, and put a 1,000-point stick in the centre. Riichi is itself a yaku. From then on you cannot change your hand: you discard each drawn tile unless it wins.
7. Winning. Say tsumo when you draw your winning tile, or ron when another player discards it. If two players ron the same tile, only the one closest to the discarder in turn order wins.
8. Furiten. If any of your own discards would complete your hand, you cannot win by ron, only by tsumo. Passing on a winning discard makes you temporarily furiten until your next draw; after riichi it lasts the rest of the hand.
9. End of hand and rotation. A hand ends with a win or when the live wall runs out. At an exhaustive draw, players declare tenpai or noten, and noten players pay 3,000 points between them to the tenpai players. If East wins, or is tenpai at a draw, East deals again. Otherwise the seat winds rotate. A full game, a hanchan, is the East round plus the South round, and ends after the fourth South dealer.

A sample hand

First hand of the game, East round. You are South, a non-dealer. The dora indicator is 1 of characters, so the dora is 2 of characters.

1. Your 13 tiles after a few turns: 2-3-4 characters, 5-6-7 circles, 6-7 bamboo, 3-4 bamboo, 9-9 circles, and a lone North wind. Two sequences and a pair are done; you have two half-finished sequences in bamboo.
2. You draw 8 bamboo. That finishes 6-7-8 bamboo. You now need only one more tile: 2 or 5 of bamboo to finish 3-4 bamboo. That is a two-sided wait.
3. You declare riichi. You say “riichi”, discard the North wind sideways, and put a 1,000-point stick on the table. Your hand is now locked.
4. Check furiten. You have not discarded any 2 or 5 of bamboo, so you can win off anyone’s discard.
5. West draws and discards 7 of circles; no use to you. North discards a white dragon. East discards 1 of bamboo.
6. You draw a red dragon, which doesn’t help, so you discard it. Riichi requires that.
7. West discards 5 of bamboo. You call “ron” and reveal your hand: 2-3-4 characters, 5-6-7 circles, 6-7-8 bamboo, 3-4-5 bamboo, 9-9 circles.

Now check the yaku before anyone touches a stick: Riichi (1 han) and Pinfu (1 han: a closed hand of four sequences, a non-value pair, won on a two-sided wait). Your 2 of characters is a dora, worth 1 more han. That is 3 han. Scoring follows below.

Scoring with worked examples

Riichi scoring has two units: han, which come from yaku and dora, and fu (minipoints), which come from the hand’s shape and how it was won.

The method

1. Count han.
2. For fewer than 5 han, count fu and round up to the next 10. Every win starts at 20 fu. A closed hand won by ron adds 10. Triplets, certain pairs, and awkward waits add more; pinfu adds nothing beyond the base.
3. Base value = fu × 2^{(han + 2)}, capped at 2,000 (mangan). WRC rounds 4 han 30 fu and 3 han 60 fu up to mangan.
4. Non-dealer ron: the discarder pays 4 × base. Dealer ron: 6 × base. On tsumo, a non-dealer winner collects 2 × base from East and 1 × base from each other player; a dealer winner collects 2 × base from everyone. Round each payment up to the next 100.
5. Add 300 per continuance counter on ron (100 from each payer on tsumo), and the winner collects all riichi sticks on the table.

Example 1: the sample hand

3 han, and fu = 20 + 10 (closed ron) = 30. Base = 30 × 2⁵ = 960. Non-dealer ron: 4 × 960 = 3,840, rounded up to 3,900, paid by West. You also take back your own 1,000-point riichi stick.

Example 2: same hand by tsumo, no dora

Riichi, Fully Concealed Hand (menzen tsumo), and Pinfu: 3 han. A pinfu tsumo scores exactly 20 fu. Base = 20 × 32 = 640. East pays 2 × 640 = 1,280, rounded to 1,300. West and North each pay 640, rounded to 700. Total 2,700.

Example 3: from the official table

A non-dealer ron of 3 han 40 fu: 40 × 32 = 1,280; × 4 = 5,120, rounded to 5,200. That matches the WRC scoring table.

End of the game

After the hanchan, each player’s result is (score − 30,000) ÷ 1,000 plus uma: +15 for first, +5 second, −5 third, −15 fourth. A player finishing on 41,200 in first place records 11.2 + 15 = +26.2.

Beginner strategy

• Stay closed while you learn. Riichi, menzen tsumo, and pinfu all need a closed hand. A closed hand always has riichi available as a yaku; an open hand might have none at all.
• Before you call, name the yaku. Pon a red dragon and you have Value Honour, a yaku that survives opening. Pon a 6 of circles with no plan and you may build a complete hand that cannot win.
• Throw honours early. Lone winds that are not your seat or the round wind rarely help, and they are safer to discard early than late, before anyone is waiting on them.
• Prefer two-sided waits. A 3-4 shape waits on two tile types (2 or 5); an edge wait like 1-2 or a middle wait like 4-6 waits on only one. More outs means more wins, and two-sided waits enable pinfu.
• Defend against riichi. When someone declares riichi, tiles already in their discard pond can’t ron them, because that would leave them furiten. If your hand is far from ready, discard those “safe” tiles.
• Check your own furiten. Before declaring riichi, scan your discards for any tile you are now waiting on.
• Keep the scoring table beside you. Dealer status, win method, and hand shape all change payment. Reading the table is normal, even at tournaments.

Common mistakes and rule disputes

• Declaring a win with no yaku. Four groups and a pair is a valid hand, but without a yaku it is not a winning hand.
• Counting dora as the yaku. Dora adds han only after you already have a yaku.
• Chii from across the table. A sequence can only be called from the player on your left. Pon, kan, and ron can be called from anyone.
• Ron while furiten. Not allowed, even on a different tile from the one you discarded. Tsumo is still allowed.
• Two people call the same discard. WRC precedence: a win beats any other call; among wins, the player closest in turn order to the discarder wins and there is only one winner. If one calls pon and another chii at about the same time, pon wins.
• Swap-calling. WRC forbids calling a tile and immediately discarding the same tile, or calling for a sequence and discarding the tile on the other end of it.
• Changing a riichi hand. After riichi you discard what you draw. A concealed quad after riichi is allowed only in narrow cases that don’t change your wait; check the rulebook before trying.
• Ending the game early when East leads. WRC has no early stop: the last hand is played out.

Other rule sets and house rules

Riichi groups differ, so label your table’s rules. These are variants or other games, not WRC 2025.

• Red fives. Many sets include red 5 tiles that count as extra dora. WRC 2025 does not use them; plenty of casual tables do.
• Abortive draws. Some rule sets abandon a hand in special situations. WRC recognises none.
• Time limits. For tournaments WRC recommends 90 minutes per hanchan (60 with automatic tables). When time ends, the current hand is finished and one more is played.
• East-only games. Many casual groups and online platforms play only the East round for a shorter session. Agree it before starting.
• Different games entirely. American mah-jongg uses a yearly card of hands and joker tiles. Chinese Official and Hong Kong styles have their own scoring. Mahjong solitaire is a tile-matching puzzle. None of these follow this page.

Teach it in five minutes

1. Goal. “Make four groups and a pair. Groups are runs like 4-5-6 in one suit, or three of a kind.” Lay out an example hand face up.
2. The catch. “The hand also needs a yaku, a named pattern. Tonight, use one: keep your hand closed and call riichi when you’re one tile away.”
3. The turn. “Draw one, discard one. Turns go counter-clockwise.”
4. Calls. “For your first game, only call ron, or pon on dragons. Skip chii for now.”
5. Furiten in one line. “If you already threw away the tile you need, you can only win by drawing it yourself.”
6. Scoring. “I’ll score with the table. You just say ron or tsumo.” Play two practice hands with no sticks changing hands.

Age and group-size advice

Riichi needs exactly four players, as WRC states. Three-player versions exist but follow different rules. We suggest 12+, mainly because of the yaku list and scoring arithmetic; a younger teen who likes Rummy will pick up the draw-discard rhythm quickly. A first full hanchan with beginners can take two hours, so teach on a night with time to spare, or play only the East round.

Check yourself

Questions people ask

Sources and edition notes

Four-player Japanese riichi, World Riichi Championship Rules 2025. This is not American mah-jongg, Chinese competition mahjong or tile-matching solitaire.

Sources and stated format checked October 2026. This records a document check, not a claim of hands-on testing. The rulebook reviewed is version v20250526.

• World Riichi: rules and clarifications
• WRC 2025 full rulebook (PDF)
• WRC official scoring table (PDF)

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