Mahjong from A to Zhú

By Scott D. Miller

From the most common Chinese traditions to the most arcane, this text contains over forty different Mahjong variants with detailed explanations and hand illustrations to appeal to beginners and masters alike. Ever wondered what else these beautiful tiles can do? Also included are games like Meow Meow Mahjong, Sap Tim Pun, Ten Phases, fortune telling and more. Tom Sloper of Sloperama Productions writes "Scott Miller has amassed an impressive amount of information about a great many mah-jongg variants. This is a work that all scholars and researchers of mah-jongg and games will need to add to their libraries. It's a valuable resource that's sure to add some branches to the family tree of mah-jongg."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781300447269

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Mahjong from A to Zhú

Title Page

Mahjong from A to Zhú

2nd Edition

麻将

从A到竹

Scott D. Miller

Copyright Page

Copyright © 2012, 2015 by Scott D. Miller. All rights reserved.

Produced in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Available through Apple iBookstore, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble bookstores, BarnesandNoble.com, Barnes & Noble’s NOOK™, Ingram Book Company, Lulu.com, and other choice retailers.

Second Edition

Designed by Scott D. Miller

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Miller, Scott D.

Mahjong: from A to Zhú/Scott D. Miller.

ePub ISBN: 978-1-300-44726-9

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-300-09202-5

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-105-65498-5

To provide feedback on this book, go to

www.mahjongnews.com

Description: psionicpress

Psionic Press

Preface to the 2nd Edition

I am eternally grateful to all the readers who supported and enjoyed my first edition, many of whom shared with me their thoughts on how to make my labor of love even better.

I remain grateful to all those who contributed directly to the first edition, including alphabetically Mary Jane Jacobs, Tom Sloper, and Tupa. Additionally I’m indebted to Norbert Luckhardt for all his critical feedback, Uwe Martin, and Martin Rep for helping me to refine several rule sets in this edition, Sushila Singh for her Mumbai rules and Sagar SSJB Rana for verifying the Nepali Palace rules. On top of all that, the various rule discussions I’ve had with friends and family to include Jenn Barr, Sylvain Malbec, Gemma Sakamoto, Emina Sato, and probably many others. As always, my most heartfelt thanks goes out to my wife Elisia for sharing in my passion for games and for supporting me in my quest to compile this book.

The mahjong terminology used in this text is as established by the official translations of the World Mahjong Organization, except where regional variations require the use of unique terminology.

Enjoy, and game on!

How to Use This Text

Core Rules list the core set of rules for mahjong that are common to all versions of the game. Deviations from this core set of rules are rare. By themselves, the Core Rules do not make a complete set of rules. They must be combined with one of the set rules to make a complete playable game.

Set rules detail the specific rules that make each type of mahjong unique. The Core Rules plus one set will make a complete playable set of rules.

Variations are subsets of rules for mahjong that are similar to a parent rule-set except for a few key points, and by themselves are not unique enough to warrant their own full reiteration of their rules. The Core Rules, plus one set, plus a variation subset will make a complete valid set of variation rules.

Hand-pattern Overview is a reference section where players can see illustrated examples of scoring tile patterns recognized by the many variations of mahjong covered in this text.

More Games and Mahjong Divination cover a collection of non-mahjong-related games that make use of the mahjong tiles. Some of these games originate from China, and some I’ve adapted from popular games previously played with a standard deck of playing cards.

For Beginners

Welcome my intrepid adventurer to the wonderful world of mahjong. This is the game that legends adorn, of scholars, and treasures, where dragons are borne, with winds that blow and fortunes that flow, it’s here through it all, our good fortune will call.

Mahjong is a wonderfully addictive four-player game of skill, cunning and luck that brings friends from all over the world together at one table. If you are surprised to learn this, thinking that mahjong is just a solitaire tile matching game, you have your computer to thank for that bit of misinformation. The popular computer-based tile matching game, which just happens to use mahjong tiles, is actually called 拆牌龜 destroying the turtle by the Chinese who invented it. But that name was deemed unacceptable when the game was ported to the Western market. Since the solitaire game happens to use mahjong tiles, and Westerners wouldn’t know the difference anyway, it was decided to rename the solitaire game to mahjong for the Western market, which has resulted in Western confusion ever since. Calling the tile-matching game mahjong is as wrong as calling the Western solitaire card game poker. Fortunately, now you know mahjong actually happens to be the most popular table game in the world; a four-player competitive game similar in concept to Western gin rummy.

If you are an absolute beginner, then let’s start with the absolute basics. The objective of mahjong is to put together a complete hand of fourteen tiles that is worth as many points as possible.

Each player starts with thirteen tiles. With each turn, a player picks up a fourteenth tile from a draw pile. If the drawn tile makes a valid winning hand, he declares mahjong. If a player doesn’t have a winning hand, he then discards one tile faceup in the center of the table, bringing his hand back down to just thirteen tiles. At this point, other players can choose to take this freshly discarded tile or draw from the pile. This continues until the first player assembles fourteen tiles into a winning hand and declares mahjong. You’ll notice, unlike most Western card games which still need a discard to win, in mahjong the player’s winning hand will include his last drawn tile, and there is no discard when winning.

A winning hand is typically made up of four sets and a pair, where the basic sets are either a pung (three identical tiles of the same suit), or a chow (three sequential tiles of the same suit).

That’s the down-and-dirty summary of how to play basic mahjong, but of course there are more rules than just that. Beginners can start there, scrambling the tiles face down in a pile and then just going for four sets and a pair to win with no special hands, no restrictions, and no scoring. Once this concept becomes too easy, prepare to step it up, read the Core Rules, and then crack open a regional rule-set to learn a more detailed version of mahjong and have some real fun!

With so many set rules to choose from, a beginner may wonder where to start.

In sheer numbers worldwide, Japanese riichi and Hong Kong mahjong are the two blockbuster popular styles played on the streets, although for organized competitions, Japanese riichi mahjong was king, with Chinese Official rules gaining in popularity. In the United States, the NMJL rules are very popular particularly in the Jewish communities. It’s still fun, however, to expand your horizons and explore the many unique rule-sets available in mahjong. Whichever set of rules you learn to play, don’t forget to have fun… and game on!

Where to Get a Set of Mahjong Tiles

If you just want to start playing mahjong cheap and quick, consider buying a deck of mahjong cards, which sell for about $4 and can typically be found at amazon.com, ebay.com, wherethewindsblow.com, and ymimports.com.

Description: cards

While cards will get you going, there’s nothing like the look and feel of real tiles, some of which can be unparalleled works of art, like the tiles pictured below from Dee Gallo’s 2013 limited edition Shanghai Water mahjong set.

Description: dgallo

Prices for mahjong tile sets can range from about $27.00 all the way up to what ever you can imagine.

Actual tiles can be found on a variety of websites, searching for mahjong tiles.

amazon.comebay.com

hinkyimport.comjapanese-games-shop.com

jwebshop.commah-jong-shop.com

mahjonged.commahjongmart.com

mahjongstudio.comshp88.com

ymimports.com

Sites that carry mostly American style products include:

exclusivelymahjongg.comkmaindustries.com

mahjonggmaven.comtoysrus.com

wherethewindsblow.com

Be aware that American style tiles are thinner than most other mahjong tiles, and play best resting on racks. All other styles of tiles are thicker, and usually play standing on their own without racks. One is not necessarily better than the other; it’s a matter of preference.

If you aren’t sure which kind of set to buy, I recommend a Singaporean set of tiles, since these sets usually come with enough extra tiles to play any other version of mahjong out there. Aside from that, a Chinese set with Arabic numerals on the tiles is still very versatile.

Mahjong Crib Sheet

Description: d1 1 Description: d2 2 Description: d3 3 Description: d4 4 Description: d5 5 Description: d6 6 Description: d7 7 Description: d8 8 Description: d9 9

Description: b1 1 Description: b2 2 Description: b3 3 Description: b4 4 Description: b5 5 Description: b6 6 Description: b7 7 Description: b8 8 Description: b9 9

For dot or bamboo suited tiles, just like domino tiles, you can simply count the pips (items) on the tile to determine its number.

Description: c1 1 Description: c2 2 Description: c3 3 Description: c4 4 Description: c5 hidden 5 Description: c6 person 6 Description: c7 hidden 7 Description: c8 8 Description: c9 9

For the character suit, notice that with tiles numbered 1 through 4 you can simply count the slashes (the four slashes are vertical), leaving only a few more numbered tiles to learn. The 五 (five) looks like it’s hiding a 5 in it. The 六 (six) looks like a 6-year-old’s drawing of a person. The 七 (seven) looks like it hides a 7. From it’s top to it’s bottom, the 八 (eight) gains weight, and lastly the 九 (nine) is the hook on a line.

Description: w-east East Description: w-south South Description: w-west West Description: w-north North

For the winds, 西 (West) looks most like a W, and 北 (North) looks most like an N. With 東 (East) you’ll have to imagine it stands on three prongs of a tripod like a pointy letter E on its side ⩚. This leaves only 南 (South), with a pipe in its mouth.

Description: d-white1 White Description: d-green Green Description: d-red Red

The painted colors on the dragon tiles match the color of the dragon they represent, making them the easiest of all to remember.

Brief History of Mahjong

Some stories claim that mahjong dates back to as far as 2350

b.c.

and was played on Noah’s ark, or back to 500 b.c. and was a favorite pastime of Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. Be weary the folklore claiming mahjong is an ancient game, since that truth is greatly exaggerated. While it is true that mahjong has many ancient Chinese predecessors, the current set of tiles and rules used for mahjong and its current concept of game-play were introduced somewhere around 1850.

In China, the game was originally called 麻雀 (mah que, meaning hemp sparrow), but now even in China it has been officially renamed to its current title of 麻将, or mahjong, to reflect its more common, even if apocryphal, international title. In China, there are various dialect pronunciations of 麻将, which partially accounts for the various English versions of the name, to include ma jong, mah jong, mah jongg, ma cheuk, mah cheuck, baak ling, and pung chow, although the official English translation, according to the World Mahjong Organization, is mahjong. Occasionally, you may see the game also referred to as ma diao (馬吊), however this would be done so only in error, since ma diao refers to a specific four-player card game of winning tricks in the same vein as hearts, spades, or bridge. Ma diao will be discussed in more detail later, but for now just understand that it shouldn’t be counted as a type of mahjong since ma diao’s rules have nothing in common with mahjong beyond the appearance of some of its tiles. The tile similarity is no coincidence, however, since a deck of ma diao cards inspired mahjong’s tile designs.

While mahjong is not an ancient game, it does owe its tile design inspiration to earlier money games dating back to the Sung Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.). Ya pei is one such game, which was played with thirty-two cards made of either wood or ivory. Ya pei evolved during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 A.D.) into ma diao (hanging horse), which was also called ma tiae (paper tiger). This game was played with forty paper cards in four suits, all of which draw from ancient Chinese coins. The eleven-card wen suit depicted individual coins, and evolved into the dot suit in mahjong. Chinese coins, having a hole in them, were often carried on a string for convenience, and the nine-card suo zi suit represented hundreds of coins so strung. The image looks a lot like shoots of bamboo to some observers, and this identification gave rise to the bamboo suit in mahjong. The nine-card wan suit, represented by the character 萬 (meaning myriad, uncommonly also depicted as 万 or 卍), represents ten thousand coins (one hundred strings of one hundred coins), which becomes the character suit in mahjong.

This is a good opportunity to discuss the suits as they relate to mahjong. Knowing that the suits originate from money symbols, with the dot suit depicting individual coins, bamboo evolving from strings of coins, and the character suit representing ten thousand coins, clearly the mahjong suits rank in this order: dots, bamboos and then characters.

The eleven cards of the fourth ma diao suit, the shi suit, were omitted from mahjong. Depicted below are money cards stamped from original antique printing blocks formerly held by the Mahjong Museum of Japan. These money cards can be used to play ma diao. Here they represent the shi suit from two hundred thousand to nine hundred thousand, one million, ten million, and finally a red one hundred million card.

Description: maDiaoShiSuit

In ma diao, four players would begin with choosing a banker by rolling dice, and it is this person the other three players would try to beat. Next each player would be dealt eight cards, leaving the rest on the table. Each player then took turns in discarding, with cards of higher value winning the trick over cards of lower value; similar to the way spades or hearts is played.

Ma diao evolved through history and eventually adopted a rule wherein a player can collect cards discarded by the player ahead of him to form a hand. This new game was mo he pai, which dropped the shi suit and added three primary tiles in the colors of white, green, and red. Originally, these new tiles drew their inspiration from notations used in ancient Chinese archery, and were referred to as the three 箭牌 (jiàn pái; arrow tiles). The blue 白 (bái) means blank, in reference to a blank slate, or no hits scored. The green 發 (fā) translates in this context to shooting. The red 中 (zhōng) means direct hit. These primary tiles, along with the three suits discussed above, carried over into mahjong. Eastern mahjong players still consider these three new tiles to be primary tiles, and do not refer to them as dragons. The dragon interpretation is entirely a Western one, as is the association of these three tiles with the three Confucian virtues of filial piety, sincerity, and benevolence respectively.

Mo he pai also starting using two of every tile, now for a total of sixty tiles. In mo he pai, the object is to arrange the tiles into three consecutive numbers as a set. Each player starts with ten tiles, then, in turn, each player draws and discards a tile. Whoever forms three sets and a pair in a hand may declare He (as pronounced in Chinese pinyin, which means win). This game is already very similar to mahjong, but continues to develop.

Mo he pai further evolved into peng he pai, which again doubles the number of tiles, now to one hundred and twenty, and defines sets as kan (three consecutive numbers), peng (three identical tiles) and gang (four identical tiles).

It is thought that roughly around 1850 A.D. the final changes were made to create mahjong as the tile game we know today. Some argue this occurred in the city of Ningpo, Chekiang, with two brothers there refining the rules of Peng He Pai into mahjong. There is also good evidence that mahjong originated in one of three Chinese provinces: Kiangsu, Anhwei, or Chekiang. Beyond that, one theory from Canton states that the inventor was Hung Hsiu-Ch'uan, the Cantonese who led a rebellion and proclaimed himself Emperor of Nanking. Still, others argue one man named Chen Yumen invented it. Finally, some hold the invention came from Hong Kong or elsewhere. Wherever you believe mahjong formally came to be, it is clear that the game didn’t just suddenly appear in its current state, but slowly evolved into being from its ancestors, harkening back to the first millennium.

In the beginning of the 1900s, mahjong was not really known outside of the above mentioned regions of China, but over the next fifteen years its popularity spread quickly across most of China, and eventually surpassed chess as the most popular parlor game there. Over time, the rituals of the game were refined, especially those regarding the building and the breaking of the walls. To a beginner, they often seem unnecessary but the truth is that mahjong was often a game of gambling, and most of these elements were designed to minimize opportunities for cheating while money is on the line.

By the 1920s common rule-sets began their worldwide publication, soon becoming popular throughout the Orient, Europe, and the new Americas, each region adding its own nuances to the rules and scoring.

In the very earliest known writings about the game (from the 1890s), the Chinese referred to it by various names, among them chung fa, que ma que, or ma que (in Cantonese: mah cheuk). Mah que translates to the hemp sparrow. It’s often observed that the shuffling of the tiles makes a noise reminiscent of the sound of sparrows squabbling, and many suppose this gave the game its name.

An early Western importer, Joseph Park Babcock, decided it would be beneficial to give the game a name that he could trademark. He decided mahjong would sound better than mah que, but at that time he chose to write it as Mah-Jongg, with the hyphen and the two G's. Babcock also heavily simplified the rules of the game in hopes that a simpler game would catch on and sell more quickly, which it did. Other entrepreneurs, authors, and companies wanted in on that success, and each made their own sets and books, embellishing the rules with an array of weird and wonderful special hands to increase the enjoyment. These others could not use the name Mah-Jongg since Babcock trademarked it, and so they came up with their own names. Among them were Ma Chiang, Ma Chong, Ma Deuck, Pe-Ling, Pung Chow, and The Game of a Thousand Intelligences. Despite all these names, the Old West players still called the game mah-jongg no matter whose set they bought, and eventually the trademark name fell into the public domain.

Over time, the rest of the world started using the mahjong name too…even in China, where the game came from. The official Chinese title was changed from 麻雀 (mah que) to 麻将 (mahjong) to match the name used by the rest of the world. Ironically, this new name can’t even be accurately translated backward into Chinese anymore, since it now, if taken literally, translates to hemp leader, which makes no sense. But even in China they don’t read it literally like