Mah Jongg

When I was growing up, my friend and I used to play with a mah-jongg set. From what I remember, Dad had bought it while travelling. We never knew how to play real Mahjongg, but we could play always Mahjongg Solitaire.

Fast forward to now. My parents went on a trip to China and bought me a small, traditional Mahjongg set. I'd never opened it, but when Emily's Poh-poh (grandmother) visited, we pulled it out and learned how to play.

Despite all the strange concepts like "breaking the wall" and "poong", Mahjongg is not that different from a regular game of cards. Here's a quick mapping from Mahjongg to cards:

The deck of 144 tiles can be split into three groups...

• There are 3 suits ("stones", "bamboo", and "characters"). Each suit runs from 1 through 9. There are 4 complete copies of each suit, giving a total of 108 regular tiles.
• There are 7 specials ("north", "south", "east", "west", "red", "green" and "white"). Again there are 4 copies of each special tile, giving a total of 28 special tiles.
• Finally, there are 8 useless tiles (these have varying depictions of flowers, a cat, a man, etc). These serve almost no purpose whatsoever, but do have some impact on your final score. If you're scoring...

Shuffling and cutting the deck...

• Take all the tiles and flip them over so their faces are down. Swirl them around on the table. Make as much noise as you can. No idea why, but it's fun. :)
• Without flipping the tiles over, start building 4 "walls". Each wall should be 2 tiles high and 18 tiles wide.
• Someone rolls a dice. The number on the dice determines where the wall will be "broken". This is just the same as cutting a deck of cards.
• Deal out tiles to each player. Each player takes a group of 4 tiles out of the breach in the wall. This is repeated 3 times, so everyone has 12 tiles. Then the person who rolled the dice takes 2 more tiles, and everyone else takes 1.

Basic play...

• The person who has 14 tiles starts the game. They throw one of their tiles into the middle, face up. Play than proceeds to the next player on their right.
• Each player's turn is basically making a choice. They can take a fresh tile from the breach in the wall (just like taking another card from the deck), or they pick up the scrap tile that was just thrown out (called chowing, or eating).
• The goal is to organise your hand into 4 groups of three, and 1 pair. A "group of three" is either a straight of matching suit, or any three identical tiles. A pair is just a pair of identical tiles.
• If you fail to achieve the goal in your turn, you must throw out a tile into the middle and play proceeds to the next player on your right.

Then it gets weird...

• Immediately after a player throws a tile into the middle, there is a brief game of 'snap' or 'poong'.
• Any player who can use that tile to form a group of three identical tiles can cry "poong!" and grab the tile. They then form their group of three, and lie them down face-up on the table to prove they weren't lying. Assuming they haven't completed their hand yet, they must then throw out a tile in the middle and play proceeds to the next player on their right.
• In some obscure cases, there can be two people calling "poong!" at the same time. If one of those players can use the tile to complete their hand, then they get that tile. If both players can use the tile to complete their hand (yes, it can happen), then it is given to the one who's turn it would have been soonest.

Strategy...

• It is fairly easy to get most of the way to the goal. Simple chowing or taking from the wall will do this. The trick is to structure your hand to maximise the chance of 'poong' at the end of the game. Most games are won with a final poong...
• Pairs are important. You can't poong to form a straight, only triples! If you have a few pairs in your hand, you just have to wait for any of those tiles to appear and you can call poong...
• Be prepared to throw out things you were working on. If you have "1 bamboo" and "2 bamboo", and most of the "3 bamboo" tiles are already discarded in the middle, you need to strongly consider getting rid of those tiles. The odds of you finding the last remaining "3 bamboo" tile is pretty small...

Anyway, that's it. :) I'll probably get abused by Mah Jongg experts, but this should explain most of it. Whenever we have visitors, I think we'll have to pull this out. :)