Mahjong Rules

Mahjong is a traditional Chinese game. There are various versions of mahjong today: the Chinese, the Japanese and the American with different rules. Mahjong involves 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.

There are many kinds of Mahjong games ranging from the very easy to the most complicated. Each of these games has a set of predetermined rules. The rules establish procedures for determining the seating, building the wall, playing the game, winning the game, rounds, penalties, scoring, ways of going out, draws and abortive draws.

Mahjong is generally played by four people though it can also have 2, 3 or 5 players. A full game has 16 hands of play in four rounds named after the four directions- east, south, west and north in that order. Each player has a particular direction or wind, starting with East for the first player. Generally, the first player is selected by throwing the dice. The player with the highest score gets to be the first player.

The next step is to build the wall i.e. to arrange the tiles in a stack. The tiles are mixed well and arranged in 18 stacks (two tiles one on top of the other) in a horizontal row in front of each player in the form of a square. The stack is then broken and the tiles distributed among the players according to a particular format so that each player has 13 tiles each. The rest of the tiles are known as the wall and are kept in the middle.

Each player begins to discard the tiles and drawing from the wall. The objective is to get 4 sets and a pair. A set of tiles may be a sequence of three consecutive same suit tiles (CHOW) or three identical tiles (PUNG) or a set of 4 of a kind (KONG). The game ends when one player has finished accumulating the 4 sets and a pair. The game is said to be a “draw” if none of the players manages to win by the time the wall is exhausted. There are many variations in scoring in mahjong. It involves determining the points; multiplication of the points according to applicable doubles; and determining the payment. There are also penalties for breaking certain rules. The points defer based on the sets: sequences, melded triplets, concealed triplets, melded fours and concealed fours.

New international rules have been formulated for mahjong for international championships and tournaments like the World Championship by the China State Sports Commission in 1998. This has uplifted mahjong from the statues of a gambling game and made it an international sport. These rules were first used in 2002 in the first World Championship. The new rulebook contains 80 combinations of patterns and scoring elements based on traditional as well as modern variants of the game.

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