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 (actual) flower tiles: plum (梅), orchid (蘭), chrysanthemum (菊) and bamboo (竹).<ref>These four plants are part of a [[Flower Motifs|wider motif]] in Chinese art called the [[wikipedia:Four Gentlemen|"Four Gentlemen"]].</ref>

** 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.

 

 

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

{{tropelist}}

* [[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.

*** 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.

*** Kong Hand: [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|A hand of four Kongs]] and a pair. Strategically speaking, this is probably the most difficult hand to get, partly because of the sheer luck involved in getting 4 of a kind for any tile in the first place, and mostly because this is the one type of hand that will always be outright advertised if a player is going for it, as it requires 18 tiles total. Compounding things more is that in some rules, a fifth Kong declared in a single hand automatically makes that hand drawn, requiring that all Kongs declared for this hand be done by the winner.

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

 

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

* ''[[Ten]]''

** Chin Yisou, one of the original series villains, had somewhat of a Mahjong theme.

** 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.

 

* There's a quick gag in ''[[Annie Hall]]'' when Alvy is riffing on his Jewish background:

{{quote|'''Alvy''' ''(performing standup)''''':''' I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles.}}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* The ''[[Breaking the Wall]]'' series by Jane Lindskold has an entire [[Functional Magic|magical system]] based on mahjong.

* ''[[The Joy Luck Club]]'': Jing-Mei mentions having played mahjong with "some Jewish friends" in college, prompting Lindo to note that that game is entirely different.

* The [[Agatha Christie]] novel ''[[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]]'' features one chapter titled "An Evening at Mahjong". This particular round concludes with a Heavenly Hand (instant win after the distribution) by Dr. Sheppard.

 

 

== [[Music]] ==

* Seen a few times in ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures]]''.

* 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]]

[[Category:Tabletop Games]]