American mahjong, from the tiles up
Learn American mahjong. Properly.
It isn't a game you learn from a rulebook. It's a table you get invited to. Consider this your invitation.
Three stages. Stop when you have enough.
Each one ends somewhere useful. Stage one is enough to sit down at a table; most people pick up the other two there, with somebody telling them.
What people come here asking
The eight guides search sends the most people to. If your question is one of them, it is probably answered in the first paragraph.
- Matching Dragons, Opposite DragonsThe one place a colour on the card points at a particular suit.
- Playing With Three — and With Two, Five or SixYes, and there is an official way. One rule almost every table ignores.
- American Mahjong Joker Rules, SettledWhich groupings take a joker, the three prohibitions, and how the exchange works.
- How to Play American MahjongFrom opening the box to saying the word, in the order it happens.
- Can You Use a Joker for That?Thirty-two joker situations, answered in one word each.
- Your Set Has More Than 152 Tiles. That Is NormalWhat the spares are for, and how to spot a Chinese set in ten seconds.
- The Words on the Card Nobody ExplainsTwo of these headings mean the opposite of what you would guess.
- The American Mahjong Cheat SheetOne page of everything you forget mid-game. Print it straight from the browser.
We checked eight teaching sources. Three of them are wrong about who deals.
Every rule here names where it comes from, and says so when the sources disagree. That is the whole difference between this site and a forum post.
How we check every rule- Nobody deals. East is the dealer in name only, and each player takes their own tiles.
- NEWS is four tiles, not a set. Printed together, still separate, and it kills hands.
- An opposite dragon is the one place a colour on the card points at a suit, reversed.
Forty free drills, every answer citing the rule
Is the hand still possible? Does the joker rule allow it? Whose claim wins? No card needed for any of them.
When you have read it all
Knowing a rule and recognising the situation it covers are different skills, and only the first one is taught by reading. The rules workbook is 105 questions about exposures, dead hands, claims and jokers, with an answer key that cites the rule behind every answer.
See the rules workbook — $19