Riichi Mahjong Rules: How to Play Japanese Mahjong

Riichi mahjong is the modern Japanese ruleset behind Tenhou, Mahjong Soul, and most competitive and home games played in Japan today - the version most people mean when they search “riichi mahjong” or ask how Japanese mahjong rules differ from the Chinese game. Rather than winning on any structurally complete hand, the way Hong Kong-style mahjong does, a riichi hand must also satisfy at least one yaku, and most of what makes the game feel different comes from three ideas the Chinese game doesn’t have: the riichi declaration itself, a dora bonus tile revealed from a set-aside dead wall, and furiten, the rule that blocks you from claiming a win you’ve already passed up. This page covers that ruleset end to end - the tiles, the deal, a turn, riichi and its companion rules, scoring at a beginner level, and how a hand ends - and flags where European tournament rules diverge.

Riichi mahjong rules, also called Japanese mahjong rules: how to play

This page follows riichi mahjong rules as played online and at most casual and club tables: kuitan is allowed, three red five tiles sit in the set, and ura dora is revealed on a riichi win. The European Mahjong Association’s Riichi Competition Rules, used at EMA tournaments, are built on the same core system but drop the red fives entirely, trading a little excitement for a more skill-driven luck balance. Nothing below assumes you already know the vocabulary - the tile set, dora, and yaku sections each define their terms before leaning on them.

Setup: the tiles, the wall and the dead wall

A riichi set has 136 tiles: the numbered man (characters), pin (circles) and sou (bamboo) suits from 1 to 9 in four copies each (108 tiles), plus four winds and three dragons in four copies each (28 tiles). Unlike the 144-tile sets used for Hong Kong or Taiwanese play, there are no flower or season bonus tiles. See the mahjong tiles guide for what each tile looks like and is called. Many physical sets and every major online client also mix in three red five tiles (akadora), one per suit, that count as a guaranteed extra dora no matter what’s flipped.

Each of the four players shuffles and stacks their own 17-tile-long, two-tile-high section of wall, and the four sections together form a square in front of the table. A dice roll picks the first dealer (East) and where that square’s wall breaks open for dealing. Fourteen tiles at the broken end are set aside, untouched by normal play, as the dead wall: it supplies replacement tiles after a kan and never shrinks below 14, since the live wall’s far end slides a tile into it each time one is drawn out. One tile from the dead wall is flipped face-up at the start as the dora indicator - the tile is not itself dora; the next tile in that suit’s sequence (or the next wind or dragon, cycling back to the first after the last) is.

Seats take the wind names East, South, West and North for the hand, and turns pass to the right, so play runs East, South, West, North. A hanchan, the full four-player session, plays an East round and a South round, with the deal rotating one seat each hand so everyone sits East at least once per round - eight hands minimum. A faster tonpuusen plays only the East round - four hands minimum. Either length can run longer: a dealer who wins, or who is tenpai when the wall runs out, repeats as dealer for another hand (renchan) rather than passing the deal along.

Turn structure: draw, discard, call, or declare riichi

On your turn, draw one tile from the live wall, then discard a tile face-up, either the tile you just drew or one already in your hand. Any player can interrupt the normal order to claim a discard for pon (a triplet) or kan (a quad); only the player to the discarder’s immediate left can claim one for chii (a run). Claiming a discard exposes that set face-up and opens your hand, which costs you some yaku and the ability to declare riichi for the rest of it.

If your hand is still closed and tenpai - one tile away from a win - you may declare riichi instead of a normal discard: turn that discard sideways, place a 1,000-point stick on the table, and from then on your hand is locked. Every tile you draw afterward must be discarded immediately unless it completes your hand (tsumo) or lets you add a fourth tile to an already-exposed or already-concealed triplet without changing what you’re waiting on. Declaring riichi generally needs at least 1,000 points banked and at least four tiles left in the live wall.

Riichi, dora, furiten and the one-yaku rule

Four ideas carry almost all of riichi mahjong’s identity, and skipping any one of them means you’re not really playing the game described here.

Riichi is the bet described above: a closed, tenpai hand declared with a sideways tile and a 1,000-point stick, locking your hand for a shot at a bigger payout. It also counts as a yaku worth one han in its own right if the hand goes on to win.

Dora is a bonus. The dora indicator, flipped from the dead wall at the start of the hand, points to the tile ranked just after it in sequence (so an indicator of 3-pin makes 4-pin the dora, and a 9 wraps back to 1; winds and dragons cycle the same way through their own four- or three-tile sets). Every dora tile you hold adds one han to a hand that already wins - calling a kan flips an extra “kan dora” indicator, and winning by riichi additionally reveals hidden “ura dora” indicators matched against your own hand. Crucially, dora is never a yaku by itself: a hand can be stacked with dora tiles and still fail to win if it has no qualifying yaku underneath them.

Furiten is the rule beginners break first. You cannot win by ron - claiming someone else’s discard - if you have already passed up that same winning tile, in any of three ways: it’s sitting in your own discard pile; an opponent discarded it earlier in the current hand and you let it go by; or you declared riichi and a winning tile went by afterward, which locks you into furiten for the rest of that hand no matter what. The first two clear themselves once you draw again; riichi furiten does not clear until the hand ends. In every case you can still win by tsumo, drawing the tile yourself - furiten only takes ron off the table.

At least one yaku is required to declare a win at all. A hand that’s structurally complete - four sets and a pair, fourteen tiles - still can’t be called if it matches none of the named yaku patterns; dora and a complete shape together are not enough on their own. The table below covers the yaku a beginner sees most often.

Yaku	Han (closed hand)	What it needs
Riichi	1	Declare riichi and win the hand
Menzen tsumo	1	Self-drawn win with a fully closed hand
Tanyao (all simples)	1	No terminals (1s or 9s) and no honor tiles anywhere in the hand
Yakuhai	1 per set	A triplet or quad of a dragon, or of your seat or round wind
Pinfu	1	All runs plus a non-scoring pair, won on a two-sided wait, fully closed
Iipeiko	1	Two identical three-tile runs in the same suit, fully closed
Toitoi	2	All triplets or quads, no runs at all

Scoring: han, fu and simplified point values

Riichi scoring runs on two numbers: han, the total value from every yaku and dora you hold, and fu, a base point count built from your hand’s wait, your pair, and how hard each set was to complete. Counting fu exactly is its own small rulebook - exceptions for open vs. closed triplets, wait shape, and pair value all stack up - and it’s deliberately out of scope here; what matters for a beginner is that more han is always worth more, and fu nudges the total up within a han level rather than driving it.

The simplified table below gives typical point totals for a ron win, assuming an ordinary 30-40 fu hand - exact figures shift a little with real fu counting, which is the detail this page skips:

Han	Non-dealer wins	Dealer wins
1	~1,000-1,500	~1,500-2,000
2	~2,000-2,900	~2,900-3,900
3	~3,900-5,800	~5,800-7,700
4	~7,700-8,000	~11,600-12,000
5 (mangan)	8,000	12,000
6-7 (haneman)	12,000	18,000
8-10 (baiman)	16,000	24,000
11-12 (sanbaiman)	24,000	36,000
13+ (yakuman)	32,000	48,000

A tsumo (self-drawn win) splits payment three ways instead of one, with the dealer paying or receiving double whichever side of the hand they’re on. Any riichi sticks sitting on the table from earlier declarations go to whoever wins the current hand, on top of the total above.

How a hand ends: tsumo, ron and the exhaustive draw

A hand ends in one of three ways. Tsumo is a self-drawn win: you draw the tile that completes your hand, and every other player pays their share. Ron is a win claimed off another player’s discard: that player alone pays the full amount, unless more than one player can ron the same tile, in which case house or table rules settle who collects. If the live wall runs out before anyone wins, the hand ends in an exhaustive draw: players who are tenpai collect a small fixed payment from those who aren’t, the deal passes to the next seat unless the dealer was among the tenpai players, and a new hand begins.

Common variations: kuitan, red fives and sanma

Whether tanyao counts on an open hand - kuitan - is the most common house-rule fork: modern online play and most casual tables allow it (kuitan ari), while some older or stricter house rules require tanyao to stay fully closed (kuitan nashi), the same way pinfu and iipeiko already must. Red five tiles (akadora) are themselves a variation rather than a universal rule: casual tables and every major online client use three of them, each worth a guaranteed extra han, while EMA tournament play leaves them out, as noted above.

Three-player riichi, sanma, drops the pin or sou suit’s middle numbers, plays with a shorter wall, and usually removes chii calls along with whichever suit went missing, changing both pacing and which yaku show up often. It’s a different enough table that it’s generally learned as its own variant rather than a shortcut version of the four-player game.

Riichi isn’t the only non-Chinese branch of the mahjong family. Taiwanese mahjong keeps a freeform, no-yaku-requirement hand structure closer to Hong Kong play, but deals 16 tiles instead of 13 and scores flower tiles differently - no riichi, no dora, no furiten. On the American side, American mahjong replaces all of this with a card of required patterns, jokers, and the Charleston, and has its own social history as Jewish mahjong in the United States. If you’re coming from the simpler, no-yaku-requirement Chinese game instead, the main mahjong hub covers that version and how its scoring differs from everything on this page.