How to Play Mahjong: Rules, Setup & Scoring

This guide teaches you how to play mahjong starting from the simplified Hong Kong (Cantonese) version played at most casual tables and taught in most Western mahjong sets, then shows exactly where American mahjong — and the other major styles — part ways with it.

Which mahjong are you playing?

“Mahjong” isn’t one game — it’s a family of related games with the same core tiles but different scoring, hand requirements, and even tile counts. Before you read a single rule, know which one you’re sitting down to:

• American mahjong is played from the National Mah Jongg League’s yearly printed hand card, adds eight jokers, and opens every hand with the Charleston, a structured tile-passing ritual — it’s the dominant style at tables and clubs across the United States.
• Riichi (Japanese) mahjong layers on a declared “riichi” ready bet, bonus “dora” tiles revealed fresh each hand, and a furiten rule that blocks you from winning off certain tiles you’ve already discarded — it’s the style behind most mahjong video games, apps and esports.
• Taiwanese mahjong deals sixteen tiles instead of thirteen, scores every single hand rather than requiring a minimum point threshold to win, and uses its own distinct scoring table built around that larger hand.

This page teaches Hong Kong (Cantonese) mahjong first, because it’s the simplest ruleset of the family and the one most beginner sets, apps and casual tables default to, then has a dedicated section below on exactly how American mahjong differs. The Riichi mahjong hub and Taiwanese mahjong hub cover those two styles in the same depth this page gives Hong Kong mahjong. If you’re shopping for tiles rather than learning the rules, see the mahjong sets buyer’s guide, covering American, Chinese and Riichi sets.

Mahjong rules: how to play mahjong step by step

The rest of this page walks through the mahjong rules you need for a full game: the tile set, setup and the deal, how a turn works, the melds you’re building toward, what counts as a winning hand, how scoring works, and where the American game departs from all of it.

The tiles

A standard Hong Kong set has 144 tiles, built from three families:

• Suits (108 tiles). Bamboo, Dots (circles) and Characters, each numbered one through nine with four identical copies of every number — 36 tiles per suit.
• Honours (28 tiles). Four wind tiles (East, South, West, North) with four copies each (16 tiles), and three dragon tiles (Red, Green, White) with four copies each (12 tiles).
• Bonus tiles (8 tiles). Four flower tiles and four seasons, one copy of each — these don’t belong to any suit and never form part of a meld.

American sets add eight joker tiles on top of this same 144, for 152 tiles total — more on that in the American-mahjong section below.

Setup and the deal

Shuffle all 144 tiles face down, then each player builds their own wall: two-tile-high stacks pushed together into a row in front of their seat. The four walls are pushed together into a square. Roll the dice to decide which seat breaks the wall and where, then deal 13 tiles to each player, going around the table, with the dealer (East) taking one extra tile — 14 — to start. Each player’s remaining tiles go to the back of their section of the wall as the “dead wall,” held in reserve as replacement tiles for kongs and for flowers or seasons drawn during play.

How a turn works

Play proceeds counter-clockwise, so the next turn is the player seated to your right. On your turn you draw one tile from the live wall, then discard one tile face-up into the middle of the table — either the tile you just drew, or one you already held. That’s the whole cycle: draw, then discard, hand after hand, until someone wins or the wall runs out.

Discards aren’t only available to the next player in line. Any player can interrupt the normal turn order to claim a discard for a pung or a kong, no matter who discarded it. A chow, by contrast, can only be claimed from the player sitting immediately to your left, and only to complete a sequence. Claiming a discard exposes that meld face-up in front of you for the rest of the hand, and play continues from the player who claimed it.

Melds

A mahjong hand is built from four melds plus a pair. The three meld types:

• Chow — three tiles in consecutive numerical order, in a single suit (honours can never form a chow). Only claimable from the discard of the player to your left.
• Pung — three identical tiles. Claimable from any player’s discard, or formed from tiles already in your hand.
• Kong — four identical tiles. A kong can be built three ways: claim a discard to complete a concealed set of three, reveal four matching tiles you already drew yourself, or add a fourth, self-drawn tile to a pung you’d already exposed. Forming any kong earns you a replacement tile from the dead wall, since a kong would otherwise leave you one tile short.

Flower and season tiles never join a meld. Draw one and you set it face-up in front of you as a bonus, then immediately draw a replacement tile from the dead wall to keep your hand at the right size.

Winning the hand

A complete hand is fourteen tiles: four melds (any mix of chows, pungs and kongs) plus one matching pair. You can complete that fourteenth tile either by drawing it yourself or by claiming it off another player’s discard, and in either case you call out to show your hand and end the round immediately — a completed hand you fail to declare doesn’t count. Hong Kong mahjong additionally requires your finished hand to be worth a minimum score (commonly three fan by house agreement, though tables vary) before you’re allowed to call it a win at all; a structurally complete hand worth fewer points than that minimum isn’t a legal win yet.

Scoring

Hong Kong scoring works in “fan,” a doubling point scale: specific patterns in your finished hand (all one suit, an all-honour hand, triplets of dragons, holding the prevailing or your own seat wind, and similar) each add fan, and the fan total is converted to a points payment the other three players owe the winner. Self-drawing your winning tile, or winning as the dealer, typically doubles the payout again. Because the exact fan values and minimum-to-win threshold are set by house agreement rather than one universal table, confirm them with your table before the first hand — this page describes the structure, not a single fixed scoring chart.

How American mahjong differs

American mahjong, governed by the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL), plays with the same basic draw-discard cycle but changes almost everything around it:

• The card. Instead of building any valid chow-pung-kong-and-pair hand, you build toward one of a specific set of hand patterns printed on that year’s official NMJL card, which changes annually.
• Jokers. American sets carry eight jokers, usable in pungs, kongs, and the larger quints and sextets some hand patterns require — but never in a single tile or a pair. You can hold more than one joker in the same group, and you may trade an exposed joker for the exact natural tile it stands in for.
• The Charleston. Before anyone discards, players pass three tiles at a time around the table in a fixed sequence (right, then across, then left for the first round), trading toward their chosen hand before the draw-discard phase even starts.
• 152 tiles, not 144 — the standard 144 plus the eight jokers.

Everything else on this page — the suits, the honour tiles, claiming a discard, forming a kong — carries over; it’s the goal you’re building toward and the pre-game ritual that change.

Common variations and house rules

Even within Hong Kong-style play, tables disagree on details: the minimum fan needed to call a win, whether a self-drawn kong pays extra, whether “last tile” or “robbing a kong” bonus payouts are in play, and whether flower and season tiles score points on their own. Riichi mahjong (common in Japan and in most mahjong video games) adds a declared riichi bet, dora bonus tiles, and the furiten restriction mentioned above. Taiwanese mahjong deals sixteen tiles per hand and its own scoring table. Agree on which rules your table is using before the first tile is drawn — it’s the single most common source of disputes in casual mahjong.