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MahjongSetGuide
Guide

American mahjong rules for your first game

American mahjong shares its tiles with Chinese mahjong and almost nothing else. It adds jokers, plays from a yearly card of hands, and starts every game with a tile-passing ritual called the Charleston. This is the order things happen in at the table.

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What you need

  • An American set: 152 playing tiles — three suits, winds, dragons, eight flowers and eight jokers. Sets are usually boxed as 166 with spares.
  • Four racks, ideally with pushers.
  • One copy of the current National Mah Jongg League card per player.
  • Dice, and four players.

Building the wall and dealing

All 152 tiles are turned face down and shuffled. Each player builds a wall 19 tiles long and two high in front of their rack, then the walls are pushed together into a square. East rolls the dice to decide where the wall is broken.

Tiles are dealt so that every player has 13 and East has 14. East starts by discarding.

The Charleston

Before any play, players pass unwanted tiles to each other in a fixed sequence. In the first Charleston everyone passes three tiles to the right, then three across, then three to the left. If every player agrees, a second Charleston follows in the opposite direction: left, across, right. A final optional courtesy pass lets players opposite each other swap up to three tiles by agreement.

Jokers may never be passed. The Charleston is where you start shaping your hand toward a section of the card.

Playing a turn

Play moves to the right. On your turn you draw from the wall, then discard one tile face up and name it aloud. Any player may call a discard if it completes a group they intend to expose — a pung, kong, quint or sextet — or if it is the last tile they need to win.

A called tile is shown with the rest of its group on top of the rack. You may only call for groups that the hand you are making allows to be exposed.

Jokers

  • A joker can stand in for any tile in a group of three or more: pung, kong, quint or sextet.
  • A joker can never be used in a pair or as a single tile.
  • On your turn you may swap the correct tile for a joker that someone else has exposed, and take the joker.
  • A discarded joker cannot be called by anyone.

Exposed, concealed and dead hands

Each hand on the card is marked exposed or concealed. For a concealed hand you may only call a discard for the final winning tile. If a player’s exposed tiles show that their hand cannot match any hand on the card, the hand can be declared dead: that player stops playing but still pays at the end.

Winning and paying

You win by completing a hand exactly as shown on the card and declaring "Mah Jongg". The card gives the value. Groups settle in different ways — many play for small stakes, many play for nothing — so agree before the first hand.

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