How to play riichi mahjong
Enough to sit down at a real table and know what is happening. Read it in order — each part uses the one before it. Ten minutes.
1 · The shape of the game
Four players sit around a table. Each holds 13 tiles nobody else can see. On your turn you draw one tile and throw one away, so your hand slowly improves while your discards pile up in front of you for everyone to read.
The first player to reach a legal 14-tile hand wins the hand and takes points from the others. Then the tiles are shuffled and it starts again. After a fixed number of hands, whoever has the most points wins.
That is the whole loop. Everything below is detail about what counts as a legal hand, and what it is worth.
2 · The tiles
136 tiles: 34 different kinds, four copies of each. There is no luck of the draw to memorise — every kind appears exactly four times, and that fact is the basis of nearly all the arithmetic in the game.
Three suits, numbered 1 to 9
Characters
Circles
Bamboo
Honours, which have no numbers
Winds East, South, West, North
Dragons white, green, red
1 and 9 of each suit are called terminals; 2 through 8 are simples. Terminals and honours together are the awkward tiles: they make fewer shapes, so they are usually the first to be thrown, and that is exactly why holding one late in a hand is a signal.
Notation. This site writes 3p for the 3 of circles
and 1z for East. Suits are m, p,
s; honours are 1z–7z in the
order above.
3 · What a finished hand looks like
A winning hand is four sets and one pair — 14 tiles. You hold 13 and win on the 14th.
A set is one of two things
A run three consecutive numbers in the same suit
A triplet three identical tiles
Runs cannot wrap around — 8-9-1 is not a run — and they
cannot cross suits. Honours have no order at all, so they only ever
form triplets or pairs.
A complete hand
Four runs and a pair of 5 bamboo. Read the groups from the spacing: 234 characters, 567 characters, 234 circles, 678 circles, and the pair. Learning to see a jumble of 14 tiles as five groups is most of what early practice is for.
Two hands that break the pattern
Seven pairs
Thirteen orphans
Seven different pairs, or one of every terminal and honour plus a spare. Both are rare. Neither is worth chasing on purpose until the ordinary shape is second nature.
4 · A turn
Turns pass to your right. On yours: draw one tile, discard one tile. That is it. Your discards stay face up in front of you for the rest of the hand.
After 13 tiles each are dealt, the wall holds 70 more draws. If it runs out before anyone wins, the hand is a draw — see the round for what that costs.
Two words you will need constantly
Tenpai ready — one tile away from a complete hand
Shanten how many tile swaps away from tenpai you are
A hand at 2-shanten needs two useful draws before it is ready. Every discard you make either lowers that number, keeps it, or raises it — and among the discards that keep it, some leave you far more tiles that help. That trade is the single most trainable skill in the game, and it is what drills.
5 · Taking other people's discards
When someone throws a tile you need, you can claim it out of turn. Say the call out loud, take the tile, lay the finished set face up in front of you, and it becomes your turn — you discard and play resumes from you.
Pon complete a triplet. You hold a pair, someone throws the third. From any player.
Chi complete a run. Only from the player on your left — the one who plays immediately before you.
Kan a fourth identical tile. Draws you a replacement and reveals another dora for everybody.
If two people want the same tile, a win beats a pon or kan, and a pon or kan beats a chi.
Calling has a price
A called set is face up, so everyone can see part of your hand. Worse, your hand is now open, and an open hand cannot declare riichi and loses most of the valuable ways of scoring. Beginners call far too much: it feels fast, and it quietly makes the hand worthless. Read the next section before deciding to call anything.
6 · Winning, and the rule that catches everyone
Tsumo you complete the hand on a tile you drew yourself
Ron you complete it on a tile someone else discarded
You are never forced to win. If you do, you must declare it immediately — you cannot take a tile back later.
A complete hand is not always a winning hand
Four sets and a pair is not enough. The hand must also have at least one yaku — a named pattern that gives it value. A hand with no yaku cannot be declared at all, no matter how close to finished it looks.
This is the rule that makes mahjong a game of construction rather than a race, and it is the reason calling is dangerous: the easiest yaku to hold on to are the ones that require a closed hand. Open your hand without a plan for how it will score, and you can end up holding a finished hand you are not allowed to win with.
7 · The yaku worth knowing
There are around forty. These nine cover the large majority of real hands. Han are doubles — the more han, the more the hand pays.
| Yaku | Han | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Riichi | 1 | A closed hand, declared ready. See below — it is the most common yaku in the game. |
| Menzen tsumo | 1 | Closed hand, won on your own draw. |
| Pinfu | 1 | Closed, all four sets are runs, the pair is worthless, and you were waiting on two tiles at either end of a run. |
| Tanyao | 1 | No terminals and no honours anywhere. Works open. |
| Yakuhai | 1 each | A triplet of dragons, of your own seat wind, or of the round wind. Works open — this is the yaku that makes calling safe. |
| Sanshoku | 2 / 1 | The same run in all three suits, e.g. 345 of each. |
| Ittsu | 2 / 1 | 123, 456 and 789 all in one suit. |
| Chiitoitsu | 2 | Seven different pairs. Closed only. |
| Honitsu / chinitsu | 3 / 6 | One suit plus honours, or one suit and nothing else. Both drop by one han if the hand is open. |
Where two numbers are given, the second is what the yaku is worth once the hand is open. Yaku stack: a hand can easily be riichi and pinfu and tanyao at once.
8 · Riichi
The move the game is named after. If your hand is closed — you have called nothing — and you are tenpai, you may declare riichi as you discard. You put 1,000 points on the table and turn the declaring tile sideways so everyone can see when you got ready.
What you get
- A han, straight away.
- Ippatsu — another han if you win within your next go-around.
- Ura dora — a second set of bonus tiles revealed only if you win. Riichi hands swing enormously because of this.
- Three opponents now know you are ready, and most of them will stop attacking.
What you give up
- Your hand is locked. Every tile you draw from then on goes straight back out, whatever it is. You cannot improve your wait, and you cannot dodge a dangerous draw.
- The 1,000 points, unless you win — the stick goes to whoever does.
- Everyone knows. Your discards before the sideways tile tell them a great deal about what you are waiting on.
Declaring riichi with a bad wait, late in the hand, while somebody else is clearly attacking, is one of the more expensive habits to unlearn.
9 · Furiten
If any tile that would complete your hand is already in your own discards, you may not win by ron. Not on that tile — on any of your winning tiles. You can still win by drawing it yourself.
Say you are waiting on and there is a 3 of circles sitting in your own discard row. You are furiten: the 6 goes past and you cannot take it either.
There are two more ways to end up furiten:
- Passing on a win. Decline a tile you could have ronned and you are furiten until your next draw.
- After riichi. Your hand is locked, so if you become furiten it lasts for the rest of the hand.
The table tells you when it applies — your seat line reads furiten — you cannot ron — but the habit worth building is checking your own discards before you settle on a wait.
10 · Dora
One tile is turned face up at the start of the hand. It is not the bonus tile itself — it is an indicator, and the dora is the next tile after it.
Indicator → dora is
Indicator → wraps round to
Winds cycle East → South → West → North → East, and dragons cycle white → green → red → white.
Every dora in your hand is worth an extra han. Dora are not yaku. A hand of five dora and no yaku is worth precisely nothing and cannot be declared — the trap from section 6, in its most painful form.
11 · Scoring
A hand's value comes from two numbers. Han are doubles, from yaku and dora. Fu are minipoints, from the small details — triplets score more than runs, terminals more than simples, an awkward wait more than a comfortable one. Most hands are 30 or 40 fu, so in practice han does the work.
A worked example
You declared riichi, and won by ron on the 6 of circles while waiting on either end of . The dora indicator was , making the 2 of characters dora — and you hold one.
- Riichi — 1 han
- Pinfu — 1 han. All runs, the pair is plain 5 bamboo, and the wait was two-sided.
- Tanyao — 1 han. Not a terminal or honour in sight.
- Dora — 1 han for the 2 of characters.
Four han, 30 fu. As a non-dealer, that is 7,700 points from the player who threw the tile.
What hands are worth
Points paid by the discarder on a ron:
| Hand | Non-dealer | Dealer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 han 30 fu | 1,000 | 1,500 |
| 2 han 30 fu | 2,000 | 2,900 |
| 3 han 30 fu | 3,900 | 5,800 |
| 4 han 30 fu | 7,700 | 11,600 |
| Mangan · 5 han | 8,000 | 12,000 |
| Haneman · 6–7 han | 12,000 | 18,000 |
| Baiman · 8–10 han | 16,000 | 24,000 |
| Sanbaiman · 11–12 han | 24,000 | 36,000 |
| Yakuman · 13+ | 32,000 | 48,000 |
Everyone starts on 25,000, so a mangan is roughly a third of a player's stack. The dealer wins more and pays more, which is why the dealer's turn is worth defending.
Ron is paid by the one player who threw the tile. Tsumo is split between all three — and a hand you draw yourself pays about the same in total, so it costs the table more evenly.
12 · The round
Seats are named by wind. One player is East — the dealer — and the others are South, West and North going right. A short game is an East round: four hands, with the dealer's seat moving on each time.
- The dealer repeats if they win, or if they are ready when the hand runs out. The counter of repeats is called honba, and each one adds 300 points to the next win.
- Riichi sticks left on the table go to the next player to win, so a hand that follows two failed riichi is worth 2,000 extra.
- An exhaustive draw — the wall runs out — pays 3,000 in total from the players who are not ready to the players who are. Being one tile short of nothing is still worth being.
Your own seat wind matters: a triplet of it is a yaku, and so is a triplet of the round's wind. In an East round, East is worth double to the dealer.
13 · Defence
You cannot fold and sit out a hand — you must keep discarding. What you can do is stop building and throw only tiles that are unlikely to be claimed. Against a declared riichi, giving up on a hopeless hand is usually worth more than pushing it.
Two reads you can make immediately
Furiten. A tile already in an opponent's own discards can never win for them — that is their furiten, working for you. Anything in their discard row is completely safe against them. This is the only certainty in the game, and it is free: it is sitting face up on the table.
Suji. If someone has discarded , they cannot be waiting on as a two-sided wait — that would have made the 4 a winning tile, and they are furiten on it. So 1 and 7 are safer than they look. Not safe: they could still be waiting on a pair or a gap.
Failing both, the ranks tell you something. Honours and terminals make fewer shapes and are the safest guess; 4, 5 and 6 make the most and are the most dangerous.
is built entirely around this, and it is the one part of the game the efficiency drills deliberately ignore.
14 · Where to practise what
- One hand a day, the same for everyone. A habit, and a streak to lose.
- Which tile to throw. Trains shanten and the count of tiles that help you. Adapts to the shapes you misplay.
- The same decision under time pressure.
- Given a ready hand, name every tile that finishes it. Directly useful for reading your own hand and other people's.
- Counting minipoints — the part of scoring you have to know by heart.
- Pure defence. Read a discard row and survive it.
- All of it at once, against three opponents, with real scoring.
If you are starting from nothing: read this page, play a few hands of on Novice to see the shape of it, then come back and use Practice regularly. The rules stop being the hard part very quickly.
Glossary
- Chi
- Claiming a discard to finish a run. Only from the player on your left.
- Dora
- Bonus tiles worth an extra han each. Not a yaku on their own.
- Fu
- Minipoints, from the small details of how a hand is built.
- Furiten
- Barred from winning by ron because one of your winning tiles is in your own discards.
- Han
- Doubles. The main measure of what a hand is worth.
- Honba
- The count of repeated dealerships. Each adds 300 to the next win.
- Ippatsu
- A bonus han for winning within one go-around of declaring riichi.
- Kan
- A set of four identical tiles. Draws a replacement and reveals another dora.
- Mangan
- The first scoring limit: 8,000 points for a non-dealer.
- Noten
- Not ready. Costs points at an exhaustive draw.
- Open / closed
- A hand is open once you have claimed a discard. Closed hands score far better.
- Pinfu
- A yaku for the plainest possible hand: all runs, worthless pair, two-sided wait.
- Pon
- Claiming a discard to finish a triplet. From any player.
- Riichi
- Declaring a closed, ready hand for 1,000 points. Locks your hand.
- Ron
- Winning on a tile someone else discarded.
- Shanten
- How many tile swaps you are from being ready.
- Suji
- Reasoning that a discarded 4 makes 1 and 7 safer.
- Tanyao
- A yaku for a hand with no terminals or honours.
- Tenpai
- Ready. One tile from a complete hand.
- Tsumo
- Winning on a tile you drew yourself.
- Ukeire
- The number of tiles still live that would improve your hand. What Practice measures.
- Yaku
- A named pattern that gives a hand value. Without one you cannot win.
- Yakuman
- The rarest hands, worth 32,000 for a non-dealer.
Rules vary slightly between houses. This page describes what the site implements; the differences it leaves out — red fives, abortive draws, nagashi mangan — are noted in the project README.