Mahjong Rules
Players draw and discard tiles trying to complete a winning hand of sets and pairs.
4 players is standard; a league session usually plays several hands (rounds) in one sitting.
- •Winning hand scores points based on its composition (a scoring table varies by ruleset — agree one, e.g. Hong Kong or American, before the season)
- •League table ranks by total points across all hands played
- •Tiebreaker: most hands won
- •A winning hand is 4 sets (runs or triplets) plus 1 pair, built from drawn and discarded tiles
- •Players can call a discarded tile to complete a set (Pong/Chow/Kong, depending on ruleset)
- •Agree the exact ruleset in advance — Mahjong scoring genuinely differs a lot by region/variant
Rule sets are not interchangeable
Riichi, Hong Kong, American and Chinese Official mahjong differ so substantially in scoring and legal hands that they are effectively separate games. Riichi is the most commonly played competitively and has the deepest scoring system; Hong Kong is simpler and quicker to teach.
Pick one, name it in your league rules and keep a scoring reference at the table. Mahjong scoring is genuinely complex, and a league that assumes everyone remembers the yaku list will spend more time arbitrating than playing.
Scoring a season fairly
Mahjong is a four-player game with high variance, so a league needs many hanchan, or full games, before the table means anything. Twenty or more per player across a season is a reasonable minimum for standings to reflect skill.
Most leagues score using the final placement points from each game, plus or minus a fixed amount by finishing position, rather than raw point totals. That keeps one enormous hand from distorting a whole season.
Common questions
How long does a game take?
A full hanchan of east and south rounds takes roughly ninety minutes to two hours with four experienced players. A tonpuusen, east round only, halves that and is what most league nights use to fit multiple games in.
Do you need an automatic table?
No, though they speed things up considerably by shuffling and building walls for you. A standard set and a bit of patience works fine, and manual wall building is part of how most players learn the rhythm of the game.
How do you handle four players when five turn up?
Rotate the sitting-out player each game and score by average placement rather than total points, so nobody is penalised for playing fewer hands. It is the same problem every four-player game league has and the same solution works.
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