http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Mahjong

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Mahjong (麻將, also written as 麻雀) is arguably the quintessential East-Asian gambling game, although it does not require money stakes. It originated in China during the last half of the 19th century, although the exact details of its creation are Shrouded in Myth. It also has numerous variants; common variants with major differences from the Chinese/Hong Kong variants are detailed in their own sections below. It is not to be confused (although it far too often is) with Shanghai (aka Mahjong solitaire), which is a completely different one-player tile-matching game played with Mahjong tiles.

Mahjong is generally played on a square table, with one player seated on each side, as in contract bridge. The game is played using rectangular tiles, with four identical tiles of each type in the set, and at least 34 different tiles, for a total of at least 136 tiles.

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(Note: Where possible, terminology will use the names most commonly seen in English-language editions of the game.

The set of tiles contains three regular Suits, with individual tiles having a value from one to nine

Characters (萬子/万子), sometimes called "cracks" or "craks", are classical Chinese numerals. Each tile has the specific value written on top (usually in blue), and the wán character for "myriad" (signifying prosperity) on the bottom in red. Modern sets are commonly marked with Arabic numerals in addition to the Chinese ones. There are in fact three possible wán characters; the first two are 萬 and 万, and the third is 卍, no longer seen on Western sets for reasons which should be obvious.

(萬子/万子), sometimes called "cracks" or "craks", are classical Chinese numerals. Each tile has the specific value written on top (usually in blue), and the wán character for "myriad" (signifying prosperity) on the bottom in red. Modern sets are commonly marked with Arabic numerals in addition to the Chinese ones. There are in fact three possible wán characters; the first two are 萬 and 万, and the third is 卍, no longer seen on Western sets for reasons which should be obvious. Sticks (索子), also called "bamboo" or "bams", use little bamboo rods to represent the number. Traditionally, the 1 Stick has a picture of a sparrow perched on it. There are several bird variants for the 1, including cranes, peacocks, and even an owl.

(索子), also called "bamboo" or "bams", use little bamboo rods to represent the number. Traditionally, the 1 Stick has a picture of a sparrow perched on it. Advertisement: Dots (筒子), also called "balls", "circles", "stones", or "loaves", use little circles to represent the number.

As well as those, there are also the Honour tiles:

Four Winds (風牌), East (東), South (南), West (西), and North (北).

(風牌), East (東), South (南), West (西), and North (北). Three Dragons (三元牌), Red (中), Green (發), and White (白, represented by a dark bluish frame or a completely blank tile face). Occasionally, the dragon tiles are stylized dragons (with White being a dragon in silver ink, or a frame made up of two blue-outlined dragons).

(三元牌), Red (中), Green (發), and White (白, represented by a dark bluish frame or a completely blank tile face). Occasionally, the dragon tiles are stylized dragons (with White being a dragon in silver ink, or a frame made up of two blue-outlined dragons). Eight optional Flower tiles (花牌), which consists of two sets: Four (actual) Flower tiles: Plum (梅), Orchid (蘭), Chrysanthemum (菊), and Bamboo (竹). These four plants are part of a wider motif in Chinese art called the "Four Gentlemen" . Four Season tiles: Spring (春), Summer (夏), Autumn (秋), and Winter (冬).

tiles (花牌), which consists of two sets:

A game is divided into hands and rounds. Each round is assigned a direction, beginning with East and progressing through South, West, and North in that order. Each player is also assigned a direction, referred to as their seat. The East seat opens every hand; at the end of each hand, the seats rotate anticlockwise (so that East becomes North, South becomes East, etc.) unless the hand was won by East or ended in a draw. A round ends when the East seat returns to the player who started as East. The game ends after four rounds have been played.

Each player stacks 1/4 of the tiles in a wall in front of them, two tiles high and all facing down. Then, the dealer rolls the dice to determine which wall is broken and where, and the deal starts at the breaking point, for a result similar to cutting a deck of cards. Each player is dealt a hand that usually has 13 tiles. After the deal, play starts with the dealer. Each player, on their own turn, draws the next tile from the wall. If a player does not have a complete hand, they discard one tile, and play continues with the player on their right. The object of the game is to be the first to make a complete hand consisting of a pair and four sets usually consisting of three tiles each. Possible sets are:

Chow (corruption of 吃, chi), or chii (チー), also known as Sheung (上): Three tiles from one of the regular suits in numerical sequence (eg 4,5,6). Numbers do not go "round the corner", i.e. 8,9,1 and 9,1,2 are not valid.

(corruption of 吃, chi), or chii (チー), also known as (上): Three tiles from one of the regular suits in numerical sequence (eg 4,5,6). Numbers do not go "round the corner", i.e. 8,9,1 and 9,1,2 are not valid. Pong (碰), or pung, pon (ポン): Three identical tiles.

(碰), or pung, pon (ポン): Three identical tiles. Kong (槓), or gang, kan (カン): Four identical tiles. Since this is the only possible set with more than three tiles, a kong must be declared and set aside, and the player must draw an additional tile to replace the fourth tile. A kong is worth no more than a pong in most variants; its purpose is mostly to use up the extra tile to avoid having to discard a tile or make it available to another player.

When a player discards a tile, another player may claim it to form a set if they already have two (for a shueng or pong) or three (for a kong) of the needed tiles in their hand. If a tile is claimed in this manner, play immediately jumps to the claimant. The set made by a discard must be set aside and revealed to the other players; the tiles in it may not be discarded.

A tile may only be claimed for a chow if it was discarded by the player on the claimant's left (unless it is the final tile needed to win). A tile discarded by anyone may be claimed for a pong or kong. If multiple players claim a discard tile, a player claiming it for a pong or kong is given priority over one claiming it for a chow, and one claiming it as the final tile for victory has priority over all others. The first player to form a complete hand, with four sets and a pair, wins the hand.

If a flower is drawn, it is set aside and a new tile drawn. Flowers may be worth points at the end of a hand. Each one corresponds to a direction: East is 1, South is 2, West is 3, and North is 4.

Because the Chinese words for "four" and "west" are both similar to the Chinese for "death" (observant players will have noticed that these two ideograms are very similar; one Chinese metaphor for death is "to return to the west", similar to the English-language metaphor in which a gadget which breaks down is said to have "gone south"), superstitions have grown around this:

It's considered bad luck to end a Mahjong game during the West round. In some rule sets, if all four players in succession discard a West Wind, the game is drawn.

Scoring

The winning hand is awarded points for patterns and winning conditions, then these hand points are converted to Scoring Points, usually on an exponential scale. If the hand was won by a discarded tile, the discarding player pays the value of the hand to the winner. If the hand was won by a tile drawn from the wall, all three players pay the winner; how the value is split up or duplicated depends on the variant. If the dealer is the winner, they keep the dealer button for an extra hand. If there are not enough tiles left in the wall and nobody has won, the hand ends in a draw; in most variants, this occurs at 14 tiles left. In the event of the draw, the dealer usually keeps the dealer button. Being the dealer often has scoring advantages, although the specific advantages depend on the variant.

The following bonuses are correct in the Hong Kong variant; other variants may have some differences, but scoring is generally pretty similar. Scores are cumulative, so you get points for each condition satisfied.

If the winning hand is completed by a tile picked up from the wall: 1 point

If that tile was picked up as a result of declaring a kong: 1 extra point

If the winning hand is all chow plus a pair: 1 point

If the winning hand is all pong or kong plus a pair: 3 points

A hand containing only one of the regular suits plus Winds and Dragons is considered semi-pure, and is worth 3 points

A hand containing exclusively one of the regular suits is considered pure, and is worth 6 points

A hand consisting entirely of Winds and Dragons is worth 7 extra points

A pong or kong of the Wind that matches your seat or the current round is worth 1 point.

1-2 Dragon pongs: 1 point each

Two Dragon pongs and a pair of the third Dragon: 4 points

Three Dragon pongs: 6 points

No Flowers: 1 point

Flower that matches your seat or the current round: 1 point each

All Flowers of a colour: 1 extra point each

Japanese Riichi variant

Riichi is probably one of the most complex variants, as well as one of the most popular for competitive non-gambling play. It adds many new rules, such as:

One-yaku requirement (Iihan-shibari): Players may only declare a win with a hand which fulfils at least one scoring condition that awards hand points (yaku).

(Iihan-shibari): Players may only declare a win with a hand which fulfils at least one scoring condition that awards hand points (yaku). Riichi: If a player is one tile away from winning and has no open sets, they may declare riichi when discarding a tile. They put a 1,000-point counter in the centre of the table, which goes to the next player to win the hand (including themself). From that point on, they may not call any discards except to win, and if they draw a tile that doesn't complete their hand, they must discard the newly drawn tile. Winning after declaring riichi is worth 1 point.

If a player is one tile away from winning and has no open sets, they may declare riichi when discarding a tile. They put a 1,000-point counter in the centre of the table, which goes to the next player to win the hand (including themself). From that point on, they may not call any discards except to win, and if they draw a tile that doesn't complete their hand, they must discard the newly drawn tile. Winning after declaring riichi is worth 1 point. Dora: The fifth-to-last tile in the wall (which will never be drawn) is flipped face up to determine the dora tile. If the dora indicator is a numerical tile, the next number in the same suit is the dora tile; if it's a 9, the 1 in the same suit is the dora. If the indicator is a Wind tile, the next tile in the sequence East, South, West, North is the dora; North wraps around to East. Similarly, if the indicator is a Dragon tile, the sequence is White, Green, Red. The winning hand gets one additional hand point for each copy of the dora tile it includes; these do not count towards the one-point minimum.

The fifth-to-last tile in the wall (which will never be drawn) is flipped face up to determine the dora tile. If the dora indicator is a numerical tile, the next number in the same suit is the dora tile; if it's a 9, the 1 in the same suit is the dora. If the indicator is a Wind tile, the next tile in the sequence East, South, West, North is the dora; North wraps around to East. Similarly, if the indicator is a Dragon tile, the sequence is White, Green, Red. The winning hand gets one additional hand point for each copy of the dora tile it includes; these do not count towards the one-point minimum. Furiten: This describes a player who is one tile away from winning but cannot take another's discard to win. Players must keep all their own discards in a pool in front of them, and open sets are arranged with one tile rotated sideways to mark who discarded the called tile (for pon or kan) or which tile in the set was called (for chii), so as to keep track of every tile each player has discarded. If a player is one tile away from winning, but one of the tiles they have already discarded would allow them to win if they acquired another copy of it, they are furiten, although they may change the composition of their hand to escape furiten. If a player can call a discard to complete their hand but misses or passes on the opportunity, they are furiten until their next turn if they have not declared riichi, or for the rest of the hand if they have declared riichi. Note that this applies even if calling the discard would form a complete hand with no points.

This describes a player who is one tile away from winning but cannot take another's discard to win. Noten bappu: If a hand ends in a draw by running out of tiles, players who are more than one tile away from victory (noten) split a 3,000-point penalty, and the 3,000 points are split among those who only require one tile to win. (No payment occurs if all four players are in the same situation.) Also, if the dealer is no-ten, the dealer button rotates.

Unlike most other variants, a typical riichi match consists of only two rounds, East and South, and it is not uncommon to play a one-round game with only the East round.

In the event of victory by self-pick, the payment of the point value of the hand is split among the other three players. If the winner is the dealer, each opponent pays half the base value of the hand, for a total of 1.5x the base value. Otherwise, the dealer pays 1/2 or the value of the hand, and the other 2 opponents pay 1/4 of the value. All payments are rounded up to the next 100 points. If the dealer wins by discard, their hand value is multiplied by 1.5x. Additionally, there is a honba count that starts at 0 and increases in increments of 1 every time the dealer wins a hand or a hand ends in a draw, and is reset to 0 every time a non-dealer wins a hand. The winning player gets an additional 300 points per honba; if they won by self-pick, this is split up with each opponent paying 100 points.

Also, Riichi Mahjong has several additional draw conditions rarely seen in other variants:

Suufontsu renda: If all four players discard the same wind tile on their first turns, the hand immediately ends in a draw.

If all four players discard the same wind tile on their first turns, the hand immediately ends in a draw. Suukaikan: If kan is called four times in a single hand, the hand ends in a draw, unless all four kan were by the same player, in which case the fifth kan causes the draw.

If kan is called four times in a single hand, the hand ends in a draw, unless all four kan were by the same player, in which case the fifth kan causes the draw. Kyuushuu kyuuhai: If any player, on their first turn, has nine or more different terminals (1s, 9s, and Wind and Dragon tiles), they may reveal their hand and declare a draw if they wish.

If any player, on their first turn, has nine or more different terminals (1s, 9s, and Wind and Dragon tiles), they may reveal their hand and declare a draw if they wish. Suucha riichi: If all four players declare riichi, the hand ends in a draw.

If all four players declare riichi, the hand ends in a draw. Sancha hou: If one player discards a tile and all three opponents call it to win, nobody wins and the hand is drawn.

Sanma

The 2-8 tiles in one suit (usually Characters) are removed. If the dora indicator is a 1 in this suit, the 9 of the suit becomes the dora instead of the 2.

There is no North seat player. Optional House Rules make the North Wind tile always a dora in addition to the normal dora (and if the indicator is a West Wind, each North Wind tile is worth two dora points), and/or plays the North Wind tile as a flower.

Claiming a discarded tile for chii is disallowed.

Sanma is heavily based on Riichi, but modified for three players. The primary differences from Riichi rules are:

Payment division in the event of victory by self-pick varies by House Rules. Common methods are to split it 50/50, ignore the would-be North player's payment, or split the would-be North player's payment 50/50 among the other two.

Taiwanese variant

Unlike most other variants, Taiwanese Mahjong uses 16-tile hands, and a completed hand has five sets (instead of four) plus the pair. The hand points to Scoring Points conversion is also done linearly instead, with a base value for winning and an additional point value per hand point; these two values are set by House Rules . For a win by self-pick, the hand gets one additional point, then all three rivals pay the full value of the hand.

American Mah Jongg

The American set uses 152 tiles, including 8 Jokers (wild card tiles, which are used to form sets of 5 tiles, known as quints);

Tiles are passed among players at the beginning of the game, much like modern versions of the game of Hearts. As befits the era the game first became big in the US, the passing rounds are known as "Charlestons".

The biggest difference of all is that winning hands are not composed of a number of standard sets, but rather based on a series of hands listed on cards issued annually by the NJMLin a sense, all American Mah Jongg hands are special hands (see below).

Mah Jongg was first imported to the United States in The Roaring '20s , and became a huge fad. While the fad died down somewhat in The '30s , a variant game developed which was eventually codified by the National Mah Jongg League (NJML), formed in 1937. Among the differences:

Notably, the NJML was founded by primarily Jewish players, and even today in the US many Mah Jongg players are of Jewish descent.

Mahjong provides examples of:

Boring, but Practical: Tanyao (a.k.a. "All Simples", a yaku consisting only tiles of 2's to 8's) in Riichi Mahjong is among the easiest to score with, but is consequently low-value. That said, the ease of scoring with it allows the player to end a round quickly to deny someone else the win.

Calvinball: That's what it looks like when someone tries to explain the rules. Or when one looks at the length of this page.

Flower Motifs: The eight Flower tiles. The four non-Season tiles within that set feature the Four Gentlemen .

. House Rules: Many, many of them.

Kyu and Dan Ranks: By far the most common ranking system used in Mahjong games and leagues.

Luck-Based Mission: Depending on the variant, luck can be anywhere from a minimal factor to becoming the biggest factor in winning. In particular, the Taiwanese variant more than triples your score gain for a win by zimo (self pick, "drawn by yourself"; i.e., a lucky draw on your part rather than through another player's discard). Some (if not all) Hong Kong rules include the special hand "Picked by the Golden Cock": This is where you win by drawing the 5 Dots from the wall, and gives a huge bonus (e.g. 100 points in one version, where Mahjong itself is only 20 points). If you have doubles as well, this can result in a crushing lead. Most if not all rule variants award an extremely large number of points for certain special hands, which require some lucky draws on the part of the winner: Thirteen Terminals (a.k.a. Kokushi Musou in the Riichi variant): One of each terminal (1, 9, Wind, and Dragon; thirteen tiles total), plus a second of any of them. Some House Rules award more bonus points if you draw one of each terminal first and are waiting to pair up any of them; this bonus may or may not require that you have not discarded any terminals prior to winning the hand. Pure Nine Gates: The player must have a fully concealed (i.e. all self-drawn, no called discards) hand of 1112345678999 in any suit. They can then win on any numerical tile of the suit. Big Three Dragons: A pong or kong of each Dragon tile. This is hard to accomplish because (a) you must draw two of each dragon before your opponents discard the other two, and (b) if you have two Dragon pongs, any sensible opponent will avoid discarding the third to give you the special hand. Additional bonus points if the other 5 tiles are a pong of a Wind and a pair of another Wind. Big Four Winds: A pong or kong of each Wind tile. Even harder to accomplish than Big Three Dragons but for the same reasons. Additional bonus points if the pair in your hand is a dragon. Kong Hand: A hand of four kongs and a pair. Strategically speaking, this is probably the most difficult hand to get, partly because of the sheer luck involved in getting 4 of a kind for any tile in the first place, and mostly because this is the one type of hand that will always be outright advertised if a player is going for it, as it requires 18 tiles total. Compounding things more is that in some rules, a fifth kong declared in a single hand automatically makes that hand drawn, requiring that all kongs declared for this hand be done by the winner. Heavenly Hand (a.k.a. Tenhou): The dealer's opening hand must be a winning hand (even if there are no other yaku, drawing the winning tile counts as one). Possibly one of the purest examples of this trope, as there is no skill involved other than knowing your starting hand is a winning one. The odds of this happening are roughly 1 in 330,000! The less elite but still just as valuable Hand of Earth (a.k.a. Chiihou, a non-dealer winning with their first draw), and the Hand of Man (a.k.a. Renhou, winning off a discard before your first draw) are marginally more likely to occur but still very rare. Seven Twins (probably the second most common special hand, after Picked By The Golden Cock): seven pairs. Even more valuable if it's Yin And Yang (the pairs are of the winds and dragons).

Non-Standard Game Over: When a player loses all their points and becomes hakoten (or "boxed") the game usually ends prematurely (some rules allow a player to continue if they have exactly 0 points; some rules will let the player continue with a negative score). To an extent, the agari-yame rule, where the dealer may end the game if they are in the lead on the last hand (normally the dealer plays another round as dealer if they win). Inverted in some rules where the game will continue into a West round if no one has reached 30,000 points after the South round.

Noob Bridge: One thing that trips up new players of Riichi is that to win a hand, you must have one yaku (scoring condition). Even if you have enough sets that you've reached tenpai, you still can't win if you don't have any yaku. This often confuses players who are playing mahjong through a video game, as many mahjong games will unhelpfully inform the player that they are in furiten (cannot claim a discard to win) even though they actually aren't, although some other mahjong video games will inform the player that they have a no-yaku tenpai. By far the most common way for this to happen is to make a bunch of sequences and triplets...except some of those sets (but not all ) have a terminal tile (1's and 9's) while others don't ("all simples", one of the easiest (and consequently, least valuable) yaku requires that your hand has no terminals, i.e. only 2's through 8's).

This often confuses players who are playing mahjong through a video game, as many mahjong games will unhelpfully inform the player that they are in furiten (cannot claim a discard to win) even though they actually aren't, although some other mahjong video games will inform the player that they have a no-yaku tenpai. By far the most common way for this to happen is to make a bunch of sequences and triplets...except some of those sets (but not all ) have a terminal tile (1's and 9's) while others don't ("all simples", one of the easiest (and consequently, least valuable) yaku requires that your hand has no terminals, i.e. only 2's through 8's). Obvious Rule Patch: The "kuitan nashi" house rule in the Japanese Riichi variant, which disallows the Tanyao yaku to be open.

Sudden Death: In the Japanese Riichi variant, some rules will have the game continue into a West round (or a South round in an East-only game) if no one has reached a quota (usually 30,000 points) by what would have been the end of the game. Some rules will end the game as soon as someone exceeds the quota, or sometimes the entire extra wind is played.

Works that feature Mahjong:

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Anime and Manga

Film / Live Action

There's a quick gag in Annie Hall when Alvy is riffing on his Jewish background: Alvy (performing standup) : I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah Jongg tiles.

Lust, Caution begins with a mahjong game, and the game is being played on several occasions throughout the film.

Crazy Rich Asians has Rachel challenging Eleanor in a mahjong game in order to settle their score on Nick's future. The scene plays out that Rachel is winning the game but she loses. Turns out that she chooses to lose because she wants Eleanor to realize her reason of breaking off with Nick so he can have the future her mother wanted .

Literature

Live Action TV

In an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza's mother and some of her friends are playing Mah Jongg while George describes the pilot of the show he and Jerry are working on.

That '70s Show: "Mahjong? What the hell is mahjong?" It should be noted that Eric and Kitty were watching Annie Hall when thinking this.

In Lie To Me, mahjong is the game of choice, in the darkened back room.

Music

During the American fad, Eddie Cantor had a hit with "Since Ma Is Playing Mah Jong", the unfortunately racist rant of a husband whose wife has become addicted to the game: Since Ma is playing Mah Jong,

Pa wants all the Chinks hung.... A recording of the song by the Memphis Five with Billy Jones is on YouTube here. "A Pillow of Winds" by Pink Floyd, from the album Meddle, refers to a possible mahjong hand. Apparently the song was named as an inside joke on how much the band members played the game while on tour. Plus it sounds cool.

Another song dating from the American fad period is "Mah-Jongg," written by George Gershwin and B.G. DeSylva and introduced in the 1924 edition of George White's Scandals.

Video Games

Dream C Club has a Spin-Off called 'Mahjong Dream Club which borrows all of the main series elements such as a beautiful club hostess and lots of fanservice, and places them on a table to play mahjong.

Litchi Faye-Ling of BlazBlue needed a few more Chinese touches—the panda, Taoist philosophy, love of green tea, the Qipao and yin-yang hair clip apparently weren't enoughso she was also conceived as an avid mahjong player. Several of her move names come directly from mahjong terms, with her super moves being named after high-value hands like "Thirteen Orphans" and "All Green". In fact, aside of the fruit pun, Litchi's name could also be a spin on that "Japanese Riichi" mentioned above.

In Killer7 you witness a mahjong game between four negotiators, which ends with the quad murder-suicide as a result of one party declaring ron without realizing that he was in furiten. This symbolizes the backdoor dealings in the world of politics.

There's a Touhou fangame, titled Touhou Unreal Mahjong, which revolves around mysterious mahjong boards appearing. It uses Riichi rules, plus special abilities.

In Japan, prior to the early 2000s crackdown by Moral Guardians, strip mahjong games (played against female AI opponents that would undress as they lost succesive rounds) were an arcade standby. These were notoriously difficult due to using rules variants that heavily stacked the game against the player. Nowadays one occasionally comes out for the PC, but it's somewhat more of a niche genre there.

In Final Fantasy VII, one of the rooms room in Don Corneo's mansion has a mahjong table.

The Yakuza series has mahjong parlours where you can play against CPU opponents and potentially win lots of in-game cash.

Final Fantasy XIV has Riichi mahjong inwhere else?the Golden Saucer. While it's not played for anything other than rank, and possibly a few orchestrion rolls, it's still frightfully addictive.

Animal Crossing features some arcade cabinets you can purchase to decorate your house, including a mahjong cabinet.

Western Animation