Mahjong: Difference between revisions

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Mahjong is generally played on a square table, with one player seated on each side, as in contract bridge. The game is played using rectangular tiles, with four identical tiles of each type in the set, and at least 34 different tiles, for a total of at least 136 tiles.

(Note: Where possible, terminology will use the names most commonly seen in English-language editions of the game.

 

* '''Stones''' (筒子), also called "balls", "dots" or "circles", use little circles to represent the number.

 

* Four '''Winds''' (風牌), East (東), South (南), West (西) and North (北)

* Three '''Dragons''' (三元牌), red (中), green (發), and white (白, represented by a dark bluish frame or a completely blank tile face). Occasionally, the dragon tiles are stylized dragons (with white being a dragon in silver ink, or a frame made up of two blue-outlined dragons).

** Four season tiles: spring (春), summer (夏), autumn (秋) and winter (冬).

 

A game is divided into hands and rounds. Each round is assigned a direction, beginning with east and progressing through south, west, and north in that order. Each player is also assigned a direction, referred to as their seat. The East seat opens every hand; at the end of each hand, the seats rotate anticlockwise (so that East becomes North, South becomes East, etc) unless the hand was won by East or ended in a draw. A round ends when the East seat returns to the player who started as East. The game ends after four rounds have been played.

 

=== Scoring ===

The winning hand is awarded points for patterns and winning conditions, then these hand points are converted to [[Scoring Points]], usually on an exponential scale. If the hand was won by a discarded tile, the discarding player pays the value of the hand to the winner. If the hand was won by a tile drawn from the wall, all three players pay the winner; how the value is split up or duplicated depends on the variant. If the dealer is the winner, he keeps the dealer button for an extra hand. If there are not enough tiles left in the wall and nobody has won, the hand ends in a draw; in most variants, this occurs at 14 tiles left. In the event of the draw, the dealer usually keeps the dealer button. Being the dealer often has scoring advantages, although the specific advantages depend on the variant.

 

* The American set uses 152 tiles, including 8 jokers (wild card tiles, which are used to form sets of 5 tiles, known as ''quints'');

* Tiles are passed among players at the beginning of the game, much like modern versions of the game of Hearts. As befits the era the game first became big in the US, the passing rounds are known as "Charlestons".

 

Notably, the NJML was founded by primarily Jewish players, and even today in the US many Mah Jongg players are of Jewish descent.

* [[Calvin Ball]]: That's what it looks like when someone tries to explain the rules. Or when one looks at the length of this page.

* [[Flower Motifs]]: The eight Flower tiles. The four non-Season tiles within that set feature the [[wikipedia:Four Gentlemen|Four Gentlemen]].

*** Big Three Dragons: A Pong or Kong of each dragon tile. This is hard to accomplish because (a) you must draw two of each dragon before your opponents discard the other two, and (b) if you Pong two dragons, any sensible opponent will avoid discarding the third to give you the special hand. Additional bonus points if the other 5 tiles are a pong of a wind and a pair of another wind.

*** Big Four Winds: A Pong or Kong of each wind tile. Even harder to accomplish than Big Three Dragons but for the same reasons. Additional bonus points if the pair in your hand is a dragon.

* [[Obvious Rule Patch]]: The "kuitan nashi" house rule in the Japanese Riichi variant.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** ''[[Akagi]]'', a prequel to the above.

** ''[[Washizu Lord of Mahjong Hell]]'' as well.

* ''[[The Legend of Koizumi]]'', in which ''all world politics'' are secretly carried out by behind-the-scenes high-stakes mahjong games between politicians, referred to in public as "negotiations". [[The Pope]] explains that mahjong is mankind's attempt to recreate genesis.

** And all of that is before {{spoiler|the Nazis, who have colonized the moon, show up and the characters get involved in games where losing points equates to having your life force sucked out of your body and a full on loss literally killing you.}}

* ''[[Detective Conan]]'' - Kogorou loves playing it, but he's not very good; and Ran, being [[Born Lucky]], tends to win rather improbable hands.

* ''[[Saiyuki]]'' - The four main characters are often seen playing Mahjong (and it's all but spelled out that they all cheat blatantly). Sanzo in particular once managed to draw the jaw-droppingly impossible Kokushi Musou (see [[Luck-Based Mission]] above). (But then, he's [[Sanzo]].) Gojyo once wisecracked that the only reason he was saving Goku's life was to make sure they had a fourth for mahjong games.

** The occasion of Sanzo's astonishing draw was doubly symbolically loaded, in that it was concluded with a West tile (as referenced above), suggesting both the group's westward journey and its frequent consequences.

* [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing|Kakei]] from [[Legal Drug]] is revealed in an omake to love Mahjong. Considering he's a [[Seer]], it's a wonder why anyone agrees to play with him.

* The third series of ''[[Kaiji]]'' has a two-player variant called Minefield Mahjong.

* At one point in ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' "Ura-Dora" and "Mangan" are used as code phrases.

 

 

== [[Literature]] ==

 

 

== [[Music]] ==

* During the American fad, Eddie Cantor had a hit with "Since Ma is Playing Mah Jong", the [[Values Dissonance|unfortunately racist]] rant of a husband whose wife has become addicted to the game:

Pa wants all the Chinks hung....'' }}

::A recording of the song by the Memphis Five with Billy Jones is on YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOhtalqFMtk here.]

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In ''Killer7'' you witness a mahjong game between four negotiators, which ends with the quad-suicide as a result of one party declaring Ron without realizing that he was in Furiten. This symbolizes the backdoor dealings in the world of politics.

* There's a [[Touhou]] fangame, titled ''Touhou Unreal Mahjong'', which revolves around mysterious Mahjong boards appearing. It uses Riichi rules, plus special abilities.

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'', Po's father mentions that his great-grandfather won his noodle shop in a game of mahjong.

* In ''[[Chowder]]'', Truffles is a Mahjong player. Since Truffles is a classic ''[[Alter Kocker|yenta,]]'' it's probably the American game.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Useful Notes/Japan]]

[[Category:Useful Notes/China]]