Setting Up the Table
Walls, dice and the deal — the three minutes of ritual before anybody plays a tile.
On this page
The opening looks like a ritual because it is one. It's also completely mechanical, and once you've done it twice your hands know it without you.
Who is East
East is called the dealer and plays first — but nobody actually deals: each player takes their own tiles from the wall. At a home game the host usually takes East. Otherwise everyone rolls two dice once and the highest total is East, re-rolling ties. Rolling isn't just tradition; it's a rule, and it exists so nobody can stack the wall they know they'll break.
The other three seats have no names. In Chinese mahjong they'd be South, West and North; here they're described positionally — "the player to East's right", "the player across", "the player to East's left". Wind tiles are just tiles.
Building the wall
All 152 tiles go face-down in the middle and get mixed properly. Then each player builds a wall along the flat back of their rack: 19 stacks, two tiles high.
Don't look at faces while you build. Nobody is checking, and everybody would know.
19 stacks × 2 tiles × 4 players = 152. If your walls come out 18 long with tiles left over, you're either missing jokers or playing with a Chinese set.
Breaking the wall
East rolls two dice into the centre. If a die leaves the table or lands crooked, both get rolled again.
East then pushes their own wall forward — usually at a slight angle, using the rack or a pusher — and counts stacks from the right end leftwards, as many as the dice total. That's where the wall breaks.
Tiles to the left of the break are dealt first. The stack to the right of the break gets pulled back beside East's rack; those are the very last tiles served.
Then East puts the dice at their right-hand corner, ready for whoever is East next game.
The deal
Selection moves counterclockwise, to the right. Everybody takes four tiles at a time — two stacks — and does that three times. Twelve each.
Then the extras: East takes two more, and each other player takes one.
Final count: East has 14, everyone else has 13. East opens the game by discarding, which brings everyone level at 13.
There's no penalty for it, but the polite convention is to leave your tiles face-down in their stacks until everyone has finished selecting. It keeps the pace even and stops people reading your reactions.
What's on the table
| Item | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Rack | Sloped side faces you and hides your hand. Exposures sit on top. Also used to build and push the wall. |
| Pusher | Optional arm for moving the wall without touching individual tiles. Sold separately from racks. |
| Two dice | Choosing East, and breaking the wall. |
| Chips or paper | Values aren't standardised — the host sets them and says so before play starts. |
| Your own card | Required, per player. Not shared. |
Seat rotation over an evening
East moves counterclockwise after every game, win or wall game. Four games — one with each player as East — makes a round.
There's also a seat rotation: the original East is the pivot player, and after each full round they swap seats with the player to their right. This stops the same people sitting opposite each other all night, which matters more than it sounds when the courtesy pass only happens across the table.
When a wall runs out mid-game
Play continues into the next wall — the next player clockwise serves theirs. When all four are exhausted with no winner, that's a wall game: no payments, East rotates, start again.
When you have read it all: the rules workbook, 105 questions with an answer key that cites the rule behind every answer, $19.
Where this comes from
Wall dimensions, the dice procedure, deal order and counts, equipment and seat rotation follow the American Mah-Jongg Association's published rulebook. The absence of names for the non-East seats is consistent throughout that rulebook, which describes those players positionally rather than by wind.