Mahjong Solitaire is a kind of Mahjong game, also known as Shanghai Solitaire. Mahjong solitaire involves144 tiles that have beautiful designs and Chinese characters painted on them. The game requires skill, intelligence, estimation as well as luck. Mahjong, which literally means “the game of a hundred intelligences” in Chinese, has been traditionally used as a gambling game. Ma Chiao, Mo Tsiah, Ma Cheuk, Ma Jong, Ma Chiang, Ma Chong, Man Chu, Mah Diao, Pung Chow, Mah Chong, Ching Chong, Mah Cheuk, Ma Chiang, Kong Chow, Mah Deuck, Lung Chan, Mah Lowe, Pe Ling, Baak Ling are other names for Mahjong.
In mahjong solitaire, the tiles are stacked on top of each other in a four layer grid in a random order, all facing upwards. These have to be matched with each other and discarded as a pair. Only free tiles, or tiles that can be moved freely without disturbing the ones on the right or left, can be moved and matched. When each of the free tiles is matched with another free tile and removed from the stack, it exposes other tiles under them and makes them free and ready to be matched. The objective is to remove all the 144 tiles from the board. The game is over when all the tiles are gone or when there is no possibility for removing other tiles. This happens when no free tiles can be matched with each other.
The most common tiles are: the circle suit (contains circles), the bamboo suit (contains bamboos), character suit (Chinese characters representing ten thousand coins each), wind tiles (representing north, south, east and west), dragon tiles (red, green and white) flower tiles (containing art work). These tiles are of 34 kinds, in five different suits or designs: wan, circle, bamboo, wind and prime and 8 flower tiles.
Mahjong solitaire can be played solo or with another player. While playing with another player, the winner accumulates the maximum number of pairs or is the last one to match a pair. There are electronic versions of mahjong solitaire available. These can be purchased or they are also available for free download on the Internet. Mahjong solitaire can also be played online with other online players or with the computer. The earliest electronic version was created in 1981 by Brodie Lockard but it was officially released in 1983 by Control Data Corporation as a paid online game. The 1986 version released by Activision by the name of Shanghai made the game very popular was converted into many platforms.
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