Spread Your Jokers, Don't Stack Them
Two jokers in one grouping can call for nothing. One in each of two groupings can call for either. Almost nobody teaches this.
On this page
You are holding two jokers and two unfinished groupings. Where the jokers sit looks like bookkeeping. It is not — it decides how many discards you can still claim.
The arithmetic
Say the card wants a pung of 5 craks and a pung of 8 bams, and you have two natural tiles toward each, plus two jokers.
Same tiles, same jokers. In the first arrangement one discard in the whole game helps you. In the second, two do.
A joker is worth most when it is the tile standing between you and a claim. Put two in the same grouping and the second one is doing nothing the first was not already doing.
Where this comes from, and where it stops
This is Elaine Sandberg's, from Play American Mah Jongg! We checked it against seven other sources while building this site and none of them raises it — not to disagree, simply not at all. So treat it as one experienced teacher's tactic rather than settled doctrine.
It is also not a rule about where jokers may legally sit. Legally a joker can stand in anywhere inside a grouping of three or more, and there is no cap below the size of the grouping — two jokers and one natural tile is a perfectly legal pung. This is about which arrangement leaves you more ways to win, not which is allowed.
The exposure version of the same idea
Sandberg's related advice: avoid exposing more than one joker in a single exposure, especially early.
The reason is not aesthetic. Every joker sitting in your exposure is a joker any opponent can redeem by handing you the natural tile it stands for, on their turn, whether you like it or not. The exposure stays complete and the same size — you simply end up holding a natural tile where a joker was, and they end up holding the joker. Two jokers in one exposure is two separate ways for the table to take them back, and it advertises that you could not find the tiles, which narrows what you might be building.
Holding jokers back keeps them safe and keeps your options open. Exposing gets the grouping locked in and gets you closer to done. Which matters more depends on how the hand is going, and that is judgement — the part of this game a book cannot hand you.
What to actually do
- Two jokers, two unfinished groupings: one each, unless you have a reason.
- Two jokers, one unfinished grouping: no choice, and no problem.
- Given the option, expose the grouping with one joker rather than the one with two.
- Remember a discarded joker is dead for everybody — which makes it the safest tile you can throw, and therefore the last one.
The joker rules underneath this
Where a joker may sit, where it may never sit, who can take one off your exposure, and what happens the moment one is discarded.
Read the joker rulesWhere this comes from
Both tactics are Elaine Sandberg's, in Play American Mah Jongg! No other source we checked contradicts them; none raises them either, so they are attributed rather than asserted.
The underlying rules — a joker in any grouping of three or more, never in a pair or a single, redeemable off an exposure by any player holding the natural tile, and dead permanently once discarded — are confirmed independently by the American Mah-Jongg Association's rulebook and Tom Sloper's rules FAQ.