How to Play American Mahjong

This is the whole game, start to finish, assuming you know nothing. Read it once before your first table and you'll be fine — nobody expects fluency, they expect you to know roughly what's happening.

What you need

• A set of 152 tiles.
• Four racks, one each. Pushers optional.
• Two dice.
• Chips, or a pen and paper.
• A current card for every player. Not one shared copy — one each.

1. Setting up

Turn all 152 tiles face-down and mix them thoroughly. Each player builds a wall in front of their own rack: 19 stacks long, two tiles high. Four walls of 38 is the whole set.

Somebody is East — at home, usually the host; otherwise everyone rolls two dice and the highest total takes it. Unlike Chinese mahjong, the other three seats don't have wind names. They're simply "to East's right", "across" and "to East's left".

2. Breaking the wall and dealing

East rolls both dice, pushes their wall forward, counts that many stacks in from the right end and breaks there. Tiles to the left of the break get dealt first.

Going counterclockwise, everyone takes four tiles at a time, three times over — twelve each. Then East takes two more and everyone else takes one.

3. The Charleston

Three passes, always: right, across, left. Three tiles each time, face-down.

Then an optional second round in reverse — left, across, right — which only happens if every player agrees. Then a courtesy pass of 0–3 tiles with the player across from you, where the smaller number wins.

Never pass a joker. Not on any pass, not blind.

The full walkthrough with every direction drawn: the Charleston, pass by pass.

4. Playing

East discards first and names the tile out loud. Play moves counterclockwise from there — to East's right.

On your turn: pick a tile from the wall (or claim the last discard), check whether you've won, optionally do a joker exchange, then discard and say what it is.

Claiming somebody's discard

Any player can claim the most recent discard — not just the next one in turn — but only to complete a pung, kong, quint or sextet, or to declare mahjong.

You cannot claim to complete a pair or a single unless you're winning with it. And you can never claim a discarded joker: it's dead the moment it lands.

The window shuts when the next player picks and racks a tile. When you claim, play resumes from you — the players in between lose their turn.

Jokers

Three or more identical tiles: a joker is fine. One or two: never.

You can also buy a joker out of anyone's exposure on your turn by giving them the natural tile it stands for. The rules describe this as yours to take, not something to negotiate. Full rules: the joker exchange.

5. Winning

You need fourteen tiles matching a hand printed on the current card. Say "mahjong", turn everything face-up on your rack, and let the table check it.

If you drew the winning tile yourself rather than claiming a discard, say "I picked it" — it doubles what everyone pays.

If all four walls run out and nobody has declared, it's a wall game. Nobody pays. East rotates and you start again.

6. The rhythm of an evening

East rotates after every game, win or wall. Four games — one with each player as East — makes a round. A game runs about twenty minutes. There's no fixed finish; the host calls time.

The five things that will actually trip you up

1. There are no runs. You cannot claim a discard to make 1-2-3. Sequences don't exist in this game.
2. Jokers can't go in pairs or singles — including card layouts that look like sets but aren't.
3. Name every discard out loud. The timing rules depend on it.
4. Don't announce a dead hand. Keep playing, play defensively, say nothing.
5. Check the card before you say "mahjong". Point at the line, count fourteen, look for a joker in a pair.