American mahjong

Bring the right tiles and cards

Use the National Mah Jongg League's 2026 card, one genuine copy per player, and its procedural rules. Keep the card open throughout play. Different years and other publishers have different winning hands, so all four cards must match. The League's store is linked below; this guide explains the procedure but does not reproduce its hand chart.

Count 152 playing tiles: four of each number 1–9 in each of three suits (108), four of each wind (16), four of each dragon (12), eight flowers and eight jokers. Remove spare tiles. Give each player a rack and place two ordinary six-sided dice within reach. Use a stable table with space for walls, discards, racks and cards. Pushers and a cloth are useful but optional.

Play each hand for a verified winner. This guide's social format uses no money, payment penalties or card-value bonuses; the printed value does not affect who wins. Choose the first dealer, called East, by agreement. East is a role, not a compass direction. Turns and dealership move to East's right, counterclockwise.

Read a hand before choosing one

The suits are dots, bams (bamboo) and craks (characters). Winds are N, E, W and S; F means any flower. D means a dragon: red corresponds to craks, green to bams and white to dots. The white dragon, often called soap, also supplies a suitless zero when the card shows 0. Flowers are interchangeable; their numbers do not matter. Keep flowers in your hand like other tiles.

Every winning hand has fourteen tiles. Follow a card line's group sizes, numbers, suit relationships and words in parentheses. The card's colors show different suits, not fixed tile colors: one color uses one suit, two colors use two different suits, and three colors use all three. Groups shown in the same color use the same suit, except suitless flowers, winds and zeros. Parenthetical instructions take precedence. You may choose which suit represents a color within those instructions.

X permits exposed groups; C means keep the hand concealed until the winning declaration. Neither marking makes every grouping callable. A pair is two identical tiles; a pung is three, a kong four, a quint five and a sextet six. A printed run or year grouping can contain singles and pairs rather than one identical group. Compare a few candidate lines to your tiles; you can change your target later if every existing exposure still fits.

Build the walls and deal

Turn all tiles face-down and mix them thoroughly. Each player builds a wall nineteen stacks long and two tiles high, thirty-eight tiles per wall, inside their rack. East rolls both dice in the center; reroll both if either is cocked or leaves the playing area. East counts that many stacks from the right end of their own wall and separates it there. Start taking tiles immediately to the left of the break. Set the counted right-end segment aside; it is used last.

East takes two stacks, four tiles. Each player to the right does the same. Make three circuits so everyone has twelve. East then takes the top tiles of the first and third remaining stacks. The player to East's right takes the next end tile, the opposite player the next top tile, and the last player the next end tile. East now has fourteen; everyone else has thirteen. Count before passing.

Take from the current wall's end, top tile before the tile beneath it. When that wall section empties, use the wall belonging to the player on its left; walls are supplied clockwise while player turns run counterclockwise. Use all other walls before East's reserved segment. There is no separate dead wall or replacement draw for flowers or kongs.

Pass tiles in the Charleston

Draw, claim and discard

Use and exchange jokers

A joker can replace a tile only within a group of three or more identical tiles. It cannot supply a single, either tile of a pair, or a non-identical printed run or year grouping. Several jokers may belong to one eligible group, including a fully joker-filled concealed group. To call a discard, the exposed group must include that natural discard.

On your turn, after drawing or after completing a legal discard exposure, you may exchange a matching natural tile from your hand for a joker in an exposure on any rack, including your own. Announce the exchange; offer the natural tile hand-to-hand to the other player, who verifies it and returns the joker. Do not put your offered tile on the discard floor. Any flower can replace a joker representing a flower. More than one exchange is allowed. This changes no tile count; use the joker in your concealed hand, declare a verified win if complete, or discard one tile to end the turn. A C hand may redeem another player's exposed joker without exposing its own tiles.

Verify the winner before resetting

On a draw, legal joker exchange or winning discard, declare mahjong and show all fourteen tiles on top of the rack. Point to the exact card line and arrange the tiles so the others can check the numbers, groups, suit choices, joker placements and X/C restriction. A called winning tile also goes on top of the rack. Other players keep their hands and the walls intact until verification.

A verified hand wins immediately; there is no equal-turn finish. If the last wall tile is drawn without a win, the player still discards and gives others their usual claim opportunity. A legal exposure of that last discard can still be followed by a joker exchange and discard; keep resolving permitted claims until play would require a wall draw that cannot be made. If nobody completes a valid hand, it is a wall game with no winner. For another hand, mix all tiles again and move East one seat to the right, whoever won.

For competing timely calls, a mahjong claim beats an exposure claim. Between two claims for the same purpose, the player nearest in turn order to the discarder has priority, unless the other player has already committed the claim by putting the discard atop the rack or beginning that claim's exposure. A simultaneous rack-and-call favors the caller. If two players contest a win, verify the priority claimant first; if that claim is invalid, the other timely mahjong claimant can be checked. Resolve the tile once; do not award two wins.

Handle mistakes and help people learn

Before playing, lay out one example of each tile family and show how a pair differs from a pung. Ask each person to find an X line on their own card and explain its group sizes; no memorization is required. Keep two plausible hands in mind through the Charleston rather than committing to the first one you see. Slow spoken passes and clear discard names help people follow the table.

If a tile count is wrong before play, stop. The player immediately to East's left may correct a missing thirteenth tile from the wall during the Charleston; other incorrect counts require a misdeal, remix and redeal with the same East. For this social format, use a house remedy for an accidentally passed joker: return it immediately if the exchange is still identifiable; if later passes make correction uncertain, redeal with the same East.

An incorrect tile count during play, incompatible exposures or an exposed group that cannot fit any X hand can make a hand dead. An active player may challenge using only publicly visible exposures and discards, never hidden tiles they happen to hold. If agreed, the challenged player stops drawing, calling, exchanging and discarding. Skip their turns. Earlier valid exposures stay available for joker exchange; an illegal exposure and tiles exposed in an erroneous win return to the concealed rack. If the dead hand resulted from exposed tiles belonging to a C hand, all its exposures return and their jokers cannot be redeemed.

For this social format, disputed dead-hand claims pause play while the two players consult the card and rulebook using public information. If they cannot settle it, let the challenged hand continue and resolve it after the hand ends, without payment penalties. This house procedure is intended to avoid exposing private tiles mid-hand. If only one active player remains, end without a winner; this is also a social-format house finish.

A fully exposed false mahjong makes that hand dead; the others continue from the proper next active player if their hands and walls are intact. An immediate mistaken declaration can be withdrawn before anyone exposes, throws in tiles or disturbs a wall. If the tiles or walls have been destroyed, this guide's house remedy is to end with no winner and redeal under the next East. Do not reset just because someone says mahjong, rush a draw to shut out calls, or add Chinese-style flower bonuses, chow claims or kong replacement draws.

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