American Mah Jongg

How to play American Mah Jongg

American Mah Jongg is the four-player game played in the United States. You and three computer opponents build hands from the card, swap tiles in the Charleston and use jokers to fill sets. Complete one of the hands on the card to win the round.

• The round opens with the Charleston. Pick three tiles from your rack and pass them — first to the right, then across, then to the left. All four players pass at the same time.
• A complete hand is fourteen tiles. On your turn, draw a tile from the wall and then discard one; the discard goes face up into the middle.
• You may claim a discarded tile to complete a pung (three of a kind), a kong (four of a kind) or a quint (five of a kind). Unlike the Chinese game, American Mah Jongg has no runs.
• Jokers are wild, but only inside pungs, kongs and quints. A joker can never stand in for a pair, and never for a flower.
• A hand only counts if it matches one of the hands printed on the card. Press The Card at any time to see all of them.
• Complete a hand and call Mah Jongg. If the wall runs out before anyone does, the round is a draw.

Tips that actually help

• Read the card before you commit. Three tiles that look good together may belong to no hand at all.
• Jokers are the most valuable tiles on the rack. Never throw one away unless it is genuinely dead.
• Flowers are cheap to keep and several hands want them.
• Watch what the other three discard. A tile two of them have thrown is probably not what they are collecting.
• A pung claimed early narrows your options. Sometimes it is better to pass and stay concealed.

What is American Mah Jongg?

American Mah Jongg is the four-player tile game played in the United States. It grew out of the Chinese game, but the rules were rewritten in the 1920s and again in the 1930s, and it now plays quite differently. If you have only ever played mahjong solitaire — matching pairs to clear a board — the American game will feel like a different sport.

It is a card game as much as a tile game

The single biggest difference is the card. In American Mah Jongg you are not free to assemble any three sets and a pair. Each year the National Mah Jongg League publishes a card of roughly fifty specific hands, and you must build one of them exactly. That is why the card is part of the interface here: press The Card and you will see all twelve hands in this game written out, tile by tile.

No runs

Chinese mahjong lets you make a chow — three tiles of the same suit in sequence, like 4-5-6 of bamboo. American Mah Jongg has no chows at all. Every set is made of identical tiles: a pung of three, a kong of four, or a quint of five.

Jokers

The set contains eight jokers, and they are wild — but not completely. A joker may stand in for a tile inside a pung, a kong or a quint. It may never be used in a pair, and it may never be used as a flower. A hand built entirely from jokers is not legal either. This makes jokers enormously powerful and worth watching: two jokers on your rack can turn an unremarkable hand into a real threat.

The Charleston

The round begins with the Charleston, and it is the most distinctive ritual in the game. Every player selects three tiles and passes them to the right. Then three more across, then three more to the left. Because everyone passes simultaneously, you are not simply throwing tiles away — you are trading information, and you are reading what the other three players thought was disposable. After the compulsory three passes, the table may agree to a second Charleston in the opposite direction, and you can choose to start play instead.

Only free tiles

As in mahjong solitaire, a tile can only be taken when it is free — when no tile is lying on top of it and it has a clear left or right edge. The pyramid of four stepped layers on this board makes that visible at a glance: the outer ring of the bottom layer is available, the tiles buried under the second layer are not, and the centre opens up only as the layers above it come away.

Why the American game is worth learning

American Mah Jongg has grown quickly in the last few years, particularly among younger players in the United States, and the reason is the card. Because the target hands change every year, the game never settles into a memorised optimum. You have to read the card, decide which hands are still reachable from the tiles in front of you, and commit — which is exactly what makes the four-player game more interesting than solitaire.

Frequently asked questions