Beginner guides Guide 5 of 14

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.

What is on the table

Each player has a rack, which holds your tiles upright so only you can see them, and usually a pusher, the flat arm that slides your wall forward. Your card sits beside your rack.

Build the walls

  1. Turn every tile face-down and mix them with open palms.
  2. Each player builds a wall in front of their rack: 19 stacks long and two tiles high.
  3. Push the four walls together into a square.

Four walls of 38 tiles is all 152.

Break the wall and deal

One player is the dealer, called East. East rolls two dice, counts that many stacks from the right-hand end of East's own wall, and separates them. Dealing starts from that break.

  1. East takes four tiles, which is two stacks. The player to East's right does the same, and so on around the table, until everyone has 12.
  2. East then takes the first and third tiles from the top row. Players call this "one and three."
  3. Each of the other three takes one more tile.

East now has 14 tiles and everyone else has 13. As a wall is used up, the next player's wall is pushed out to continue.

Sort your rack

Put your tiles on the rack facing you. Sort by suit, then by number, with winds, dragons, flowers, and jokers together at one end. Then look for pairs and pungs before you do anything else.

Tables vary

Some groups skip the dice. Some use a table that shuffles and builds the walls. Online, the deal is instant. None of it changes the game. If you are unsure, do what the player before you did.