General Basics on How to Play Mahjong

this is by no means a complete set of rules and explanations, but i hope it's coherent enough to understand. i will link to two sites you can play mahjong on at the end, and the english site has a bit more that you can review for when you plan to take on the mahjong league and become a mahjong champion

mahjong seems like it's complicated at first--and i'm not gonna stop you from thinking that--but once you get the hang of it, it can be really simple. the basics on the game are the easiest concepts to grasp.

when the game starts, you're dealt thirteen tiles, and you have to make a hand based on a few things: sequential tiles (1, 2, 3) or triplets (555). the actual number of the tiles doesn't add any value, unless it's a specific hand. you must always draw and discard a tile, as you're never allowed to have more than thirteen tiles in your hand. if you have any complete sets and a pair of two matching tiles, your hand is complete. what's actually in the hand will determine its worth. dragon tiles (white, red, and green) will increase your hand's worth, and each session has its own associated wind direction. matches are always east, or east-south, and depending on which round it's in, the prevailing wind will add extra points to your hand if you have a pair, or better yet, a triplet. if you draw the tile you need, that's called a "tsumo." if your opponent discards the tile you need, that's a "ron." tsumos add more value to your hand, but it's a very minuscule amount and only really matters if you're desperate for points.

riichi is a sort of insurance that you risk a thousand points for, and whether or not you even complete your hand that round, riichi means you've still won and you take a thousand points from the other three players. if it's late in the round and you know you've screwed yourself up, calling riichi is a good way to make sure you don't fall behind. riichi is an automatic win, unless someone wins before you.

you'll notice there's a little tile that's flipped up along the wall, and that's called the dora indicator. the dora indicator is chosen based on a dice roll, but playing mahjong in person is much different--and more complicated--than playing it online, so that's not really something that's too important right now. the dora indicator means that the next sequential tile is the dora, which adds more points to your hand if you have it. if the dora indicator is one-pin, then the dora is two-pin. if you have a two-pin triplet and the prevailing wind as a set, your hand is looking pretty good.

what also determines its worth is whether or not it's concealed. when you call a pon, as we see the player after akagi do during his match with ichikawa (which causes a bit of a problem, if you're able to tell what's going on), that means the player before you has to skip their turn. it also means that your hand is now considered opened, because what a pon actually is is calling on other players' tiles. let's say you have two five-sou tiles (the bamboos), and one of the other players in the game deals one of the other five-sous (there's four of each tile in the set of tiles). you're allowed to call on that to add it to your hand to make a triplet, but the other players now know that you have three five-sous, and more experienced players can tell very easily what your hand contains based on that alone.

opened hands are worth less than concealed hands. it's best to almost never have to open up your hand, but if your hand is already expensive and you're confident in your abilities, don't be afraid.

a chi is another way of opening your hand to the opponent, and is only possible if the player BEFORE you deals a tile that you need to complete a sequence. if you have a 6, 7 man in your hand, and your opponent deals a 5-man, you can call a chi. no one has their turn skipped, but it's basically a separate form of a pon. both pon and chi involve you discarding a tile already in your hand. another warning is that if you've already discarded the tile that you need to win, not knowing how the tides of the game would turn, you CANNOT call on another player's discard. you have to win by self-draw.

a kan is sort of half-and-half. when you have four of the same tiles in your hand, you can form a concealed kan, which adds more value to your hand, PLUS it lets you draw an extra tile. i know i said complete sets have to be triplets, but a kan, a hand forming around four kans, and a hand formed around seven pairs are the only exceptions to that rule. if you have four seven-pin tiles, for example, you call a kan by having two tiles turned down and the other two facing up. you recall that also, in the match with ichikawa, akagi found a way to cheat by having the two concealed tiles not actually be apart of the kan. an open kan is when you have three tiles, but another player deals another. all four tiles have to be flipped up, and it lessens the worth of your hand. you still get to draw another tile.

those are the very essentials that you need to know upon going into a game of mahjong. if you're playing it with three other people, follow their lead because setting up the game itself is very complicated and hard to describe in words, as it's something you need to be able to see to understand. remember: a hand consisting of thirteen tiles--three triplets or sequences and two pairs. the worth of your hand depends on what tiles you have and what order they're in, and whether or not your hand is open.

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/mahjong/mahjong_e.html is a good site to play mahjong by yourself, but for a beginner it can be quite daunting as it's ai-based and you can't change the level of the ai lmao, but another reason i recommend it is because it has a complete list of the hands you can form and their worth, plus a few rules here and there i didn't touch upon. THE GAMES ON THIS SITE CAN MESS UP. SOMETIMES YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO CALL ON A RON OR A TSUMO UNLESS YOU MEET STRANGE QUALIFICATIONS YOU'LL FIND IN NO OTHER FORM OF MAHJONG. the site is in english, and has the man-tiles numbered for conveniences sake, along with the wind and dragon tiles.

http://tenhou.net is a user-based site where you play with other real people from all over the world, and it's very understanding of different levels of experience, as beginners start out playing against other beginners, and the more points you earn through matches, the higher-leveled games you can play. HOWEVER, IT IS IN JAPANESE. there are guides on the internet to help you navigate the site, but at some point, i'll post a description on how to start a game. it's very simple.

meme it up, my children

good post

shve a mahjong tile up uour ass

mahjong daad

sheepy will be the legend of mahjongmeme