Beginner guides
American Mahjong, one idea at a time.
14 short guides that take you from the tiles to your first real game. Read them in order, or jump to the part that is confusing you tonight.
What American Mahjong is
Four players, 152 tiles, and a card that says which hands can win. Here is the whole game, start to finish.
The 152 tiles
Three suits, four winds, three dragons, flowers, and jokers. Once you can name every tile, you can follow any table.
Pairs, pungs, kongs, and quints
Every hand on the card is built from a few kinds of group. Learn to see them in a messy rack and the card starts to make sense.
How to read the card
The card looks like code until you know four conventions. After that, every line reads as a picture of fourteen tiles.
Setting up and dealing
Building the walls, breaking them, and getting 13 tiles in front of each player. An automatic table does most of this for you.
The Charleston, step by step
Three tiles right, three across, three left. The passing ritual that opens every game, in the order it happens.
What to pass in the Charleston
You cannot know what is coming. You can know what you are keeping. A simple order for choosing your three tiles.
How a turn works
Draw, decide, discard, name it. The rhythm of play, who goes next, and how a round ends.
Jokers: what they can and can't do
Eight wild tiles and a few firm rules. Most beginner mistakes with jokers come down to one of them.
Calling a tile, and when to pass
A discard can be yours if it finishes a group of three or more. Often the better move is to let it go.
Choosing a hand, and when to switch
Pick the hand your rack is already closest to, keep a second one alive, and change course when the tiles say so.
Reading the table
Exposures and discards tell you what the other players are building. Use them to choose safer tiles to throw.
Scoring and paying
Each hand on the card has a value. Who pays, and how much, depends on how the winning tile arrived.
Your first real game
What to say, what to touch, and what to ask before the first tile is drawn.
The printable cheat sheet
Everything above on two sides of one page, to keep beside your card.
These guides teach the standard American game. Your table's house rules and your own card always come first. Mahjong Ready is not affiliated with any card publisher.