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Learn to Play Mahjong
Mahjong is a game for four players built around a set of engraved tiles. On your turn you draw and discard, working to complete a winning hand from the three suits, bamboo, circles, and characters, along with the wind and dragon honor tiles. It is part skill, part memory, and part reading the table.
There has never been only one mahjong. The American game is played to an annual card of legal hands. The Chinese game, most widely played in its Hong Kong form, is faster and older. Japan's Riichi has its own deep strategy. We will teach each one on its own terms.
How to Play American Mah Jongg
The 152-tile set, the annual card, the Charleston, jokers, and how a hand is won.
How to Play Chinese Mahjong
The 144-tile parent game: chows, pungs, and kongs, the flowers and seasons, and Hong Kong scoring.
An Introduction to Japanese Riichi
The Japanese game, played without flowers or seasons, and the ideas a newcomer needs first.
The Charleston
The blind tile-passing ritual unique to the American game, pass by pass.
Mahjong Tiles: A Visual Glossary
Every kind of tile, its character, and what it means, from the suits to the dragons.
Jokers in American Mah Jongg
The wild tiles that make the American game friendlier: what they can and cannot do.
Further reading
Tom Sloper's Mah-Jongg FAQ
When a rules question runs deeper than a guide here, this is where we send people. Tom Sloper has answered players' questions at his Mah-Jongg FAQ since 2001, across the American, Chinese, and Japanese games, and much of the hobby still leans on it. A good deal of what anyone writes about mahjong, our pages included, traces back to the groundwork he laid.