American Mahjong Rules: Setup, Charleston & Scoring

American mahjong is the tile-rack, card-driven cousin of the Chinese game, played at most US clubs, community centers, and kitchen tables, and it plays nothing like a freeform mahjong hand. Instead of building any valid combination of sets, you draw and discard your way toward one specific pattern printed on a card the National Mah Jongg League issues fresh every year, trading for it first in a required passing phase called the Charleston. This page covers the NMJL’s American game start to finish — the deal, the Charleston, how a turn works, jokers, reading the card, declaring mah jongg, and scoring — and flags exactly where it departs from the Hong Kong-style game covered on this site’s main mahjong hub.

Mah jongg rules: how to play American mahjong

This page describes the National Mah Jongg League’s American mah jongg — the four-player, card-based game played with racks, jokers, and a Charleston. The American Mah-Jongg Association runs a parallel card and rulebook with the same underlying structure; where the two bodies differ, this page follows the NMJL and says so. If you’re looking for the traditional Chinese game instead, with no card and no jokers, see the main mahjong hub.

What makes the American game different

Five things separate American mahjong from every other style, and each one changes how you actually play:

• The card. Rather than any valid hand of four sets and a pair, you build toward one of a fixed list of patterns the NMJL prints and changes every year — a winning hand this year may not even be legal next year.
• Eight jokers. American sets carry 152 tiles, the usual 144 plus 8 jokers, and a joker can fill in for almost any tile in a group of three or more.
• The Charleston. Before a single tile is discarded, players pass tiles around the table in a fixed sequence, reshaping their hands toward the card before play even starts.
• 152 tiles and racks. Racking your hand upright, rather than holding or fanning tiles, is standard American equipment, not a house preference.
• No chows. A chow — three consecutive numbers in one suit, built loosely from whatever you draw — doesn’t exist here. Every run is spelled out tile-for-tile on the card as part of a named hand, never assembled freely the way a Hong Kong chow is.

Setup and the deal

Each of the four players takes a rack and builds their own section of the wall from shuffled tiles, two tiles high, the same as other mahjong styles. Roll dice to pick the first dealer (East) and where the wall breaks, then deal 13 tiles to every player in turn, with the dealer taking a 14th to open the hand. What’s left of each wall stays in place as the live wall, drawn from tile by tile once the Charleston ends and normal play begins — American mahjong has no separate dead wall.

The Charleston

Before anyone discards, the table runs the Charleston: a required three-round tile pass that lets every player trade toward their chosen hand before the draw-discard phase even begins. Jokers are never passed — if you’re dealt one, it stays on your rack.

1. First Charleston, pass right — each player passes any 3 tiles face-down to the player seated on their right.
2. First Charleston, pass across — each player passes 3 tiles to the player seated directly across the table.
3. First Charleston, pass left — each player passes 3 tiles to the player on their left. On this pass only, a player may make a blind pass: hand over some or all of the tiles just received from across without looking at them first.
4. Second Charleston (optional) — if no player objects, the table repeats the same three passes in reverse: left, then across, then right, with the blind pass again available on the final leg.
5. Courtesy pass (optional) — players sitting across from each other may privately agree to trade zero to three further tiles, a last chance to even out hands before play begins.

The diagram below shows the four seats and the direction each numbered pass travels.

The solid arrows above are pass 1 (right), travelling the same way around the table each time. Pass 3 (left) reverses that direction and permits the blind pass; the diagonal dashed lines are pass 2 (across).

How a turn works

Once the Charleston ends, the dealer discards first and play moves to the next seat. On your turn, draw one tile from the wall, then discard a tile face-up — either the one you drew or one already on your rack. The cycle repeats, hand after hand, until someone declares mah jongg or the wall runs dry.

Any player can interrupt the normal turn order to call a discard for an exposure, as long as it completes a pung, kong, quint, or sextet that belongs to their chosen hand — unlike Hong Kong mahjong’s chow, there’s no requirement to claim only from the player on your left, because there’s no chow to claim for in the first place. Calling a discard racks that set face-up for the rest of the hand and passes the next turn to whoever claimed it.

Jokers and the joker exchange

Jokers can substitute for almost any tile in a group of three or more — pungs, kongs, quints, and sextets — but never in a lone tile or a pair. You may hold several jokers in the same exposed group. If an opponent has exposed a joker standing in for a tile you can supply, you can trade your natural tile for that joker on your turn, taking the joker into your own hand and leaving your tile in its place; this is the joker exchange, and it’s one of the few ways to pull a joker out of an opponent’s exposed set once the Charleston is over.

How the card works

The NMJL and AMJA cards are the actual rulebook for a given year: a printed grid of eligible hand patterns, grouped into categories (such as pairs, runs that are explicitly spelled out tile by tile, “any like numbers,” and 13579- or 2468-style number families), each with a point value. Because the card is copyrighted, nothing here reproduces an actual published hand — the structure below is an invented, clearly-labeled illustrative example only, not a transcription from any year’s card.

Imagine a sample row reading something like FFFF 2026 DDDD — 25 pts printed in two colors, with some tiles shown in outline and others solid. On a real card, that kind of row would mean: the color tells you which suit to use for the number tiles in the pattern (so every player reading the same row can pick a different, valid suit); solid tiles must be exposed if you complete that group by calling a discard, while outlined tiles may stay concealed; and the point value at the end is what the hand is worth once you call mah jongg with it. Reading a real card is mostly a matter of learning that color convention and which groupings (pairs, pungs, kongs, quints, runs) a given row is asking for.

If you’re looking for this year’s actual card rather than an explanation of the notation, the National Mah Jongg League sells it directly through its official store, and the American Mah-Jongg Association distributes its own card to members the same way — both renew their card annually, so check that you have the current year’s before sitting down at an NMJL or AMJA table.

Declaring mah jongg and the wall game

The instant your rack matches one of the card’s patterns exactly — in the right tile groupings, the right counts, with any jokers in legal positions — call “mah jongg,” rack your hand face-up, and the round ends immediately. If the wall is exhausted and nobody has gone out, the hand ends in a wall game: no one wins it, nobody pays, and the deal typically passes along to the next dealer exactly as if East had won, depending on house agreement.

Scoring and payment

Every hand on the card lists its own point value, and that’s what gets paid when someone calls mah jongg with it. The player who discarded the winning tile usually pays double their share while the other two pay the base value; on a self-drawn win (completing your own hand on a draw rather than a claimed discard), all three opponents typically pay double instead of just the discarder. A hand built with no jokers at all doubles the payout again at most tables, and a self-drawn jokerless hand doubles it twice over. Concealment itself isn’t a separate multiplier: the card marks each hand C (must stay concealed until mah jongg) or X (may be exposed along the way), and that difficulty is already priced into the printed point value. Exact point minimums and multiplier conventions are set by the card and table agreement, so confirm them before the first hand.

American mahjong vs. the main mahjong hub

Everything above is specific to the NMJL’s American game. If you sit down at a table playing Hong Kong, Taiwanese, or Riichi mahjong, expect none of the Charleston, no jokers, no annual card, and freeform hands built from any valid chows, pungs, and kongs — see the main mahjong rules hub for that side of the family and how its scoring works. The two games share tiles and a name, not much else.

A short history note

American mahjong took its current card-and-Charleston shape in the 1930s, when the newly formed National Mah Jongg League standardized a tangle of regional house rules into one game. It’s also widely known as Jewish mahjong, after the Jewish social clubs and community groups that kept it popular through the mid-20th century — see the Jewish mahjong explainer for that history in full.

Common variations and house rules

Tables vary on whether a wall game passes the deal or holds it with the same dealer, whether the courtesy pass is used at all, and how strictly a blind pass is enforced on the Charleston’s third leg. Some groups also play “Chinese-style” round-the-table seating rotation rules borrowed from games like backgammon for deciding first dealer, rather than a dice roll. If you’re coming from a tile game with a simpler setup, dominoes shares the same draw-and-build family feel without a card, jokers, or a Charleston — a useful comparison for just how much structure the American card adds on top of the basics. Shopping for your first set? The mahjong sets buyer’s guide covers what to look for in an American mahjong set — racks, pushers, and the NMJL card you’ll need to buy separately — alongside Chinese and Riichi picks.