Mahjong

Mahjong is a game for 4 players that created in China. Mahjong involves talent, tactics, and calculation, and also certain extent of chance.

 

Each player is dealt 13 or 16 tiles in a hand. Players draw a tile and discard one, on their turn, with the aim of making four or five melds and one pair, or “head”. Winning comes “on the draw”, by drawing a new or discarded tile that completes the hand. Hence a winning hand really contains fourteen (or seventeen) tiles.

 

A turn involves a player drawing a tile from the wall (or draw pile) and then placing it in his or her hand. The player then discards a tile onto the table and directing the player to the right to make his move. Through the game, the number of tiles kept by each player must be the same, i.e. 13 or 16. A player should discard a tile after picking up one. Failure to do so, that player effectively rules out of winning.

 

When a player discards a tile, any other player may “call” or “bid” for it so as to complete a meld (a certain set of tiles) in his hand. A set of three identical tiles is called as a pong or pung and a set of four identical tiles is a kong. A meld of three suited tiles in sequence is a chow. When two or more players demand a discarded tile, a player taking the tile to win the hand has preference over all others, succeeded by pong or kong, and finally chows.