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How to play Riichi Mahjong

Objective

The object of Mahjong is to get the name sake of the game, "Mahjong". A mahjong consists of four melds and a pair. A meld is one of three different tile combinations:

  • Chi: A three tile sequence of the same suit
  • Pon: Three of the same tile
  • Kan: Four of the same tile

    • NOTE: Pairs are just two of the same tile. THEY ARE NOT MELDS.

    Tiles

    There are 5 different suits divided into two types: Numbericals and Honors. There are 4 of each tile.

    The Numbericals consist of tiles from 1-9 and are called the following:

  • Pin or Dots
  • Sou or Bamboo
  • Han or Numbers

    • The Honors do not have any numerical ordering (and therefore cannot form Chi's) and are called the following.

  • The Dragons. They consist of Red, Green, and White dragon tiles.
  • The Winds. They consist of East, South, West, North. Each one corrisponds to a player's seating position.

    • NOTE: American mahjong sets include jokers, Flowers, and Season tiles and Chinese sets include Flower and Season tiles. If you're using one of these, remove these tiles for standard Riichi play.

    Setup

    Shuffle the tiles face down on the play space. Begin building the wall, the wall will be where you draw your tiles from throughout the game. Make a4 rows out of 17 face down tiles each . Create another row on top of each of these. These 4 double high rows will be the wall. Determine East player, they will begin dealing.