Mahjong is a matching game, similar to the card game Rummy, for 4 players which uses tiles instead of cards. Players draw tiles, discard tiles, and claim tiles from their opponents in order to be the first person to create a winning mahjong hand and ‘go out.’ Players earn points by having particular patterns of tiles in their hand when they go out, often combinations of sets of 3 or 4 identical tiles and sets of 3 tiles of the same suit in numerical order. It originates in China and is very popular across East Asia with numerous regional variations (of which Zung Jung is one).

Cool! How do I play?

That’s a small question with a big answer, particularly because of all of the regional variants that exist, each with their own way to set up the game, what constitutes a winning hand and the list of patterns that actually score points. However, there is a common core of mahjong, a foundation most of the variants share. The variants tweak the set-up, tweak the scoring system, and tweak the conditions under which you can declare a winning hand, but most of the rest is unchanged and would be familiar to a player of a different style. It’s this Common Core Mahjong that is a good place to start before adding on the complete ruleset of one of the variants (like Zung Jung).

Common Core Mahjong

How to play along with an unofficial, simplified scoring system to get you started.

What do I need to play?

You need a mahjong set. Common Core Mahjong is played with a 136-tile mahjong set. Some mahjong sets contain more that 136 tiles, but almost all will contain the 136 used in Common Core Mahjong. A pair of standard 6-sided dice is also useful.

You will need 3 other people. It’s a 4-player game, after all.

If you don’t have a set of tiles or three interested friends, don’t despair! Consider reading this rules explanation, and the information about ZJ and try playing on one of the suggested apps or websites listed in Where to Play ZJ.

How do I win?

By having the most points at the end of the game.

How do I get points?

By being the first person to be able to declare a winning 14-tile mahjong hand (also known as going out) and by having made combinations of tile of varying difficulty within your 14-tile mahjong hand.

What’s a winning hand?

A winning hand is 14 tiles consisting of 4 sets of tiles and 1 pair of tiles. The sets can be made of either 3 to 4 tiles of the same number and suit, or 3 tiles of the same suit in sequential order.

What numbers and suits are in a mahjong set?

In Common Core Mahjong, the game is played with a set of 136 tiles, 34 different kinds of tiles with 4 copies of each kind (34 x 4 = 136). These are divided into to two major types of tiles: the Suited tiles and the Honor Tiles.

Suited Tiles

The suited tiles include three different suits, known in English as Dots, Bamboos, and Characters. They are numbered from 1 to 9 with four copies of each. They can be used to make sets of three- and four-of-a-kind and sequences of 3 tiles in numerical order and can also be used as your pair.

The 1-Bamboo traditionally has a bird drawn on it (to prevent cheating by drawing extra bamboo sticks on the 1-Bamboo tile) and the Character tiles have the Chinese ideograph wan (萬). The suits originally denoted amounts of money – Dots were single coins, Bamboo were strings of coins, and Characters were tens of thousands of coins (萬 represents 10,000).

🀙🀚🀛🀜🀝🀞🀟🀠🀡
🀐🀑🀒🀓🀔🀕🀖🀗🀘
🀇🀈🀉🀊🀋🀌🀍🀎🀏

Honor Tiles

The honor tiles include the Wind tiles and the Dragon tiles. There are four winds, East (東), South (南), West (西), and North (北), and three Dragon tiles, Red, Green, and White. Just like the suited tiles, here are four copies of each honor tile. These tiles do not have numbers, so they cannot be used in sequences; they can only be used in making sets of three- and four-of-a-kind and as your pair.

The Wind tiles have their corresponding Chinese ideogram engraved on them. The White Dragon tile can be blank in some sets, or have a box drawn to denote it (as seen below).

🀀🀁🀂🀃 🀄🀅🀆

Any other major game terms I should know when talking about the tiles?

Yes, there are a few terms that get used often when talking about sets of tiles that you may hear as you play or read about mahjong:

Triplet/pong: a set of 3 identical tiles (i.e. a three-of-a-kind)
Kong: a set of 4 identical tiles (i.e. a four-of-a-kind)
Sequence/chow: a set of three tiles of the same suit in numerical order

Even though this is about Common Core Mahjong, it’s a Zung Jung site after all, so I will use the terms used most commonly in the English translation of the Zung Jung rules: Triplet, Kong, and Sequence.

So, I got all of the stuff and I understand what the different types of tiles are and I know the terms you just mentioned. How do I set all this up?

First, get yourself and your three friends sitting around a small table (like a card table). Then put all the tiles face down on the table and start sliding, mixing, and shuffling them around. Keep pushing all the tiles around until everyone agrees they are well-shuffled. If any flip over, flip them back face down and keep shuffling until everyone agrees things are well shuffled.

Then each player makes a strip of tiles in front of them that is 17 tiles long and 2 tiles high. Once everyone has made their long strip of tiles, carefully push them together into square shape (doesn’t have to be perfect). This square of tiles is known as the wall.

This is where the dice come in. Have each player roll the dice to see who gets the highest number. The person with the highest number is East (also known as the dealer), and will be the one to go first when the hand begins. Everyone else is labeled going around the table counterclockwise in this order: South, West, North (i.e. the player to the right of East is South). Then have East roll the dice again, and starting with East, count counterclockwise around the table the number on the dice (2, 6, 10 = South; 3, 7, 11 = West; 4, 8, 12 = North; 5, 9 = East.). This person is the wallbreaker.

Now have the wallbreaker roll the dice. Starting from the right side of the portion of the wall in front of the wallbreaker (i.e. the right end of the section they made), count going left a number of stacks which equals the number rolled. Break the wall after that many stacks (i.e. split the wall at that location – make a little space between the two parts of that side of the wall)

Each player starting with East (then South, then West, then North) takes four tiles (two stacks) from the wall, starting at the break and taking their stacks clockwise off the wall until each player has 12 tiles.

Note: The wall will be depleted clockwise, but the player order in which this happens is counterclockwise.

All players in order each take one more tile, and the dealer takes one more. The dealer now has 14 tiles and the other players have 13 each. East starts the game as though East has already drawn its first tile.

Ready to go. How does gameplay work?

First, everyone takes a look at their hand and usually sorts their tiles. At this point, keep all your tiles concealed in one continuous straight line. Don’t leave a big space between already-completed triplets, kongs or sequences and the rest of your tiles. You want to keep the composition of your hand a secret from your opponents. East starts play by discarding an unwanted tile (since they have 14 tiles, as mentioned above). If East has a winning hand (4 sets and a pair), they can declare ‘mahjong’ and win (this is exceedingly rare).

Then South (the player to the right of East) draws their first tile off of the wall from the end where everyone took their initial tiles. They put that tile in their hand and then discard a tile. They can discard a different tile in their hand or discard the exact tile that they just drew (this is very common in Mahjong). Whenever someone discards a tile, it should be placed in front of them toward the center of the table, making rows of six tiles, with the first row made in the center, and the row right under it (so each row will be slightly closer to the player). Everyone’s discards end up organized neatly in the middle area of the table outlined by the wall.

Play continues around the table in this manner and could continue like this until someone makes a winning mahjong hand. However, there is another way to get tiles than just drawing them from the wall.

Another way to get tiles? Tell me more!

Players are allowed to claim the most recently discarded tile (including the very first tile discarded by East at the start of the game) in the following way:

If the discarded tile completes your hand (for any set or the pair), you may say mahjong and take the tile. If two or more players call mahjong on the same tile, the first in order of play gets the tile.
If you can use the tile to make a kong, say kong.
If you can use the tile to make a triplet, say pong.
If you can use the tile to make a sequence, and the tile was discarded by the player to your left, say chi. (You may claim for sequences only the tiles discarded by the player to your left).

You must announce your claim! The priority of who gets the tile is based on why the player is claiming the tile.

Claiming a tile for mahjong wins over any other reason.
Claiming a tile for a kong or a triplet outranks claiming a tile for a sequence.

The player with the highest priority call gets the tile.

What do I do with the tile I just claimed?

If you claimed it for mahjong, show the rest of your tiles to the table. Then grab the tile and put it next to your hand so everyone can see how it completes a winning 14-tile hand (4 sets and a pair).

If you claimed it for a kong, a triplet, or a sequence, expose the other tiles of the set you are making (to prove your claim is valid), then place the claimed tile with the other exposed tiles between your hand and the wall. Then discard a tile. Play then continues to the right (i.e. to the player to the right of the claimer) – this means a player’s turn may be skipped.

Since someone could win off of a discarded tile or change whose turn is next, give 1 to 2 seconds after the last player discards their tile before drawing your tile off of the wall. It’s frustrating when people rush into their turn before you get a moment to lay claim to a discarded tile and it can be difficult to reverse the issue before someone sees the mistakenly drawn tile.

If I claim a tile for a kong or if I make a kong on my own, won’t I be short a tile when I try to make my other sets and a pair?

Very astute! This is a concern, so kongs have a few special rules around them:

There are three ways you make a kong. They are known as:

The Concealed Kong: You’ve drawn all four tiles from the wall. On your turn after drawing a tile, if you have 4 identical tiles and want to make make a set with them, you can declare kong, show the tiles to everyone, and turn the two tiles on the ends face down to indicate you got them yourself without claiming it from someone. The set is still considered concealed (this is important for scoring).
The Exposed Kong: You’ve got three identical tiles, and someone discards the fourth. You can declare kong, and expose the other 3 tiles and add the fourth to it.
The Promoted Kong: You have an exposed triplet and draw the fourth identical tile from the wall. Declare kong, and add the tile to your exposed triplet. Be careful though: this added tile can be claimed for
by an opponent for mahjong (known as robbing the kong).

In each case once you’ve shown your kong, take a replacement tile from the back end of the wall. Then complete your turn as you normally would (decide if that replacement tile lets you declare mahjong. If not, choose a tile to discard). Your hand will have one extra tile per kong, up to four.

If you don’t choose to declare your concealed kong in your hand, it acts as two separate pairs, so keep that in mind. Sometimes you may not want to declare your concealed kong because it may make it difficult to go out (e.g. you need some of the tiles that could become a kong to complete sequences in your hand).

How does the hand end?

A hand ends in one of 2 ways:

A draw. No one is able to make a winning hand and declare mahjong by the time the wall is down to 14 tiles (these unplayed 14 tiles are called the dead wall. Even if replacement tiles were taken from the back end the wall during the course of the game, the remaining 14 tiles don’t get played).
Someone is able to make a winning hand and declare mahjong. When this happens, the winning player shows all their tiles, then places the newly drawn or claimed tile nearby and shows everyone else their completed hand.

The very last discard (i.e. the 15th-to-last tile) can only be called for mahjong, not to complete a set.

So this is when we get points, right?

Indeed it is. The winning player gets points based on having won the hand and the composition of their hand.

In our simplified scoring system, the winning player gets 1 point for winning the hand, and:

1 additional point if all their sets are concealed
1 additional point if all of their sets are sequences
1 additional point for every triplet in their hand points
2 additional points for every kong in their hand
1 additional point if a triplet or a kong is a set of dragon tiles or a set of your seat wind (e.g. If you are East and you have a triplet of East tiles, that’s worth 2 points)

A player gets points for anything and everything above that applies to their hand, so if a player had 1 sequence, 2 triplets, 1 kong of red dragons, and a pair, and it was all concealed (i.e. no claiming discarded tiles other than the tile needed for mahjong) they would score 7 points. Individual sequences are worth nothing.

After the hand, the deal passes to the right: The player who was South is now East. Usually you play a number of rounds. Each round has 4 hands, meaning everyone gets to be the dealer once a round. After completing the agreed upon number of rounds, whoever has the most points is the winner!

You did it!

Well done! I hope you had fun learning and playing your first game. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, consider upgrading your game to Zung Jung Mahjong…