How to Learn Mahjong
Mahjong is like a Chinese version of solitaire. It is a game of strategy and chance that involves drawing and throwing away tiles (the name for the game pieces). The goal is to take out all the playing tiles while attempting to gather the highest score by making four or five melds (Pung, Kong, Chow, and Eye) and a pair (also called Head). A Pung is comprised of three identical tiles while a Kong has four. A Chow has three suited tiles arranged in a sequence. An Eye is formed with one suit tile and two tiles of the same number.
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Things You'll Need
- Mahjong table
- Mahjong tiles
- Four chairs
- Two dice
- Diagram of the different Mahjong suites
- Mahjong scoring system
Instructions
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Instructions
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1
Gather three other players and assemble the table and chairs. Label one chair as "east." Moving counterclockwise, label the other chairs in this order: south, west and north. Each player will throw the dice. Whoever scores the highest, will sit on the east chair. The next highest will be south. The player with the lowest score will sit north. Should a tie occur, the players on draw will throw the dice again until one of them scores higher than the other.
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2
Shuffle the tiles. All the tiles are placed face down so that the engraved characters are not seen. The players then mix the tiles. Each player creates a stack of tiles. Each stack should have 18 pairs of tiles if the 144 tile set is used. The stack is two tiles high and eight tiles long, making it resemble a wall. There should be four stacks of tiles after players do this.
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3
Begin the game by throwing the dice. East tosses the dice. Starting from the east player, moving counterclockwise, count until the number on the dice is reached. The player at which the count ends takes six pairs of tiles from his or her stack and gives it to east player. The next six pairs are given to the south player. Once all the players have their tiles the game can begin. The north player takes a tile from the stack where the player who distributed took the last six pairs.
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4
Form combinations by taking tiles from the stack or by taking the tile that was discarded by other players. For every tile that is picked up a tile must be discarded. If the discarded tile is needed by one of the players to form a combination, then a call must be made by that player. The discard continues from the player who called the tile. If a call has not been made, the discarded tile becomes irretrievable from the pile and the next tile is pulled out from the wall. The only time a tile is not discarded is when a winning combination is reached.
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5
Compute for the scores every time a move is made and at the end of the game. The player with the highest score wins.
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