Table Manners: Which Bits Are Actually Rules
Half of what you get corrected for at a table can get your hand called dead. The other half is somebody’s preference. Almost nobody can tell you which is which.
On this page
Tom Sloper puts the whole problem in one line: one person's bad etiquette is another person's official rule. He is describing a habit that his Japanese friends shout at him for and his American friends call him dead for — the same habit, in opposite directions.
That is why a list of table manners is not much use on its own. What a new player needs is the sorting: which corrections carry a penalty, and which are somebody's preference you can politely decline.
These are rules, and they can kill your hand
Picking ahead
Also called playing with a future: taking your next tile from the wall before your turn comes round. Sloper reports that many American players believe this is the correct way to play, and that it is the surest way he knows to be called dead in a tournament. The League's own rulebook and bulletins are against it.
If your home table does it, that is your table's business. Just know that it does not travel.
Discarding ahead
Claiming a discard and then discarding before you have made the exposure. Strict players will call you dead for it.
Sloper's Japanese friends tell him off for the opposite — for making the exposure first. Nobody can play until he discards, and they want to get on with it.
There is no universal table etiquette. There is the etiquette of the game you are sitting down to play, and it is worth asking rather than assuming.
The three moments you are committed
Not manners at all. These are the points where a change of heart stops being allowed:
- Taking from the wall. You may reach for a tile and change your mind. You may even touch it. Once you lift or move it, it is yours.
- Claiming a discard. You may touch it and change your mind. Once you have put it on top of your rack, or exposed tiles from your hand, you have committed.
- Discarding. Once the tile touches the table or you have said its name in full — whichever happens first — it is down, and down is down.
These are manners, and no rule backs them
Touching somebody else's rack
Sloper was once told off for it and looked for the rule. His answer is worth quoting in full: there is no official rule, but it is her rack and her rule, so do not.
That is the shape of most table etiquette. Not a rule, still not yours to overrule.
Making everybody wait
Needing a moment is normal. If you think you might want a discard it is fine to say "wait a second" — and then to decide within a second or two, and apologise if you pass on it.
Sloper adds the part nobody mentions: hesitating has just told the table something about your hand. That is your problem, not theirs.
Saying "wait" quickly does not win you the tile. When two players want the same discard it is decided by turn order, not speed. Speed decides nothing at all, and a table that thinks otherwise is playing a house rule.
Kvetching, and gloating
Venting about bad luck is fine in small amounts. As a lifestyle it stops the other three thinking about their own tiles. The same goes double for the player who cannot stop talking about the hand they just won.
Pointing out somebody's mistake
Sloper's own example: he once missed a chance to redeem a joker and a player said "Hello-o!!" at him sarcastically, which told him nothing. The version that works is a sentence: oh no, surely you did not mean to pass up that joker?
Laying your exposures out properly
Chronological order, first exposure at your left, with gaps between the sets. Face them towards you or towards the player opposite, as you prefer, but face them all the same way. Everybody at the table has to read them, including you at the end of the hand.
Two more look like manners and are really self-interest. Putting your jokers in the same place on your rack every time, and discarding in patterns. Both tell the table how you are doing.
When a mistake can be taken back
Sloper offers a framework, and calls it a philosophical principle rather than a rule — his words, and he is right that it is vague. It is still the clearest thing anybody has written down:
| The mistake | Noticed | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Hurts only your own hand | Before you discard | Undo it, if the rules allow |
| Hurts only your own hand | After you discard | Too late. Live with it |
| Messes up the game | Immediately | Fix it on the spot, if the rules allow |
| Messes up the game | Too late to fix | Often best that everybody throws in and starts over |
Underneath it is one idea: intending to do something commits you to nothing, starting it probably does not, and finishing it does.
The slow player
The most common complaint at any table, and the one people handle worst.
The useful advice is not "hurry up" — it is the time for thinking is during other people's turns. Decide what you will discard before you pick. Nine times out of ten the tile you pick will not change that decision, and the tenth time happens to everyone.
Sloper's book puts it in one sentence: it is more important to avoid disrupting the game than it is to win.
Which is also the answer to almost every question on this page. Nobody at the table minds losing to you. They mind waiting.
Where this comes from
Nearly all of it comes from Tom Sloper's mah-jongg etiquette FAQ and his rules FAQ. Picking ahead and discarding ahead, the commitment points, the rack question, the exposure layout, the mistake principles, and the advice on a slow player.
The mistake framework is explicitly his own philosophy rather than a League rule, and he says so in print. We have kept that label rather than presenting it as settled.
That conflicting claims are decided by turn order rather than speed is confirmed by the AMJA rulebook and Sloper's rules FAQ. It is the one point here where the etiquette and the rule pull in opposite directions.