Hong Kong Versus Japanese Mahjong

As of yesterday, the McGill Students' Mahjong Club is an officially recognized club in the SSMU organization! Congratulations to us!

I'm honestly unsure what kind of mahjong is the most popular in North America. Though I would immediately assume that Americans commonly play American Style mahjong (which is thing that we will hopefully never play, since it barely even qualifies as mahjong), the game is not very popular outside of older people (and for whatever reason, specifically old Jewish women). On the other hand, the biggest source of exposure to the game in North America likely comes from Japanese anime and manga, which obviously play using Japanese Riichi style rules.

Japanese Riichi mahjong is a much more defensive game than our Hong Kong Old Style games, where in pro matches online, up to 70% of hands end in a draw, and ~30% of those draws end with no players waiting for their winning tile (known as being in 'tenpai' in Japanese). Let's look at how these games are different in order to understand them better.

1. No bonus tiles
Japanese Riichi mahjong sets come with four flower tiles and no season tiles (Instead, they come with four red tiles, two red 5-characters, a red 5-bamboo, and a red 5-dots). That being said, it is impossible for those flower tiles to be included in the wall in Japanese style. Flower tiles directly contradict the most commonly used rules of Japanese Riichi mahjong, and therefore are never used in any way.

2. The 'dead wall'
After you roll the dice, split the wall, and draw your hands, take the last 14 tiles in the wall and make a gap to separate them from the rest of the wall. These 14 tiles are the 'dead wall', and with the exception of replacement tiles from gongs, are never drawn. That means that you never know exactly what tiles are left to be drawn, and you might be waiting on a tile that's buried in the dead wall, never to be seen. Also, the dead wall is always exactly 14 tiles, so every time a gong is made, the last tile of the live wall joins the dead wall to make up for your replacement tile.

Fun fact! In Japanese, the dead wall is called the 'king's tiles'!

3. Dora tiles
So, you've separated the dead wall successfully. Now, take the third tile from the end and flip it over. This tile is the 'dora indicator', and is used to show you what the 'dora' tiles are. For example, if the dora indicator is 3-dots, the dora is 4-dots. If the indicator is 7-bamboo, the dora is 8-bamboo. If the indicator is 9-characters, the dora tile wraps back around to 1-characters. Wind tiles follow the normal pattern of east-south-west-north-East, and dragon tiles fortunately follow alphabetically, green-red-white-green.

Every dora tile in your hand is worth one faan, but cannot contribute to Japanese Riichi mahjong's one faan minimum. In addition, if you're playing with those red 5 tiles mentioned earlier, each one of those is also a dora tile.

Examples of dora tiles and dora indicators. Image taken from yakuza.wikia.com

4. Gong Dora
Every time someone makes a gong, flip over the tile next to the dora (not on the same side as the four replacement tiles). This tile is a Gong Dora indicator (known in Japanese as a Kan Dora indicator), and just increases the amount of dora in play. Aside from only appearing when a gong is made, they are functionally identical to the regular dora tiles. Because of this though, a single tile can be worth multiple fan through dora indicators.

In an extreme example, if three gongs were made and all four dora indicators were the 4-dots, and your hand had four copies of the 5-dots, each of those tiles would be worth 4 fan for a total of 16 fan (And if you were playing with the red 5 tiles, two of them would be worth 5 fan for a total of 18 fan).
As you can imagine, scoring counted limit hands is much easier in Japanese Riichi mahjong thanks to dora tiles.

5. Scoring Fu
Oh god, here's where it gets complicated. There are four types of scoring terms in Japanese Riichi mahjong. 'Yaku' (which are Seven Pairs, All Pungs, Rob a Gong, etc.), 'Faan', 'Points', and 'Fu'. Fu are like mini-faan that contribute to calculating the final score. Where 'All Pungs' would be worth 2 faan in Japanese Riichi style and a dora tile would be worth 1 faan, fu is calculated totally differently, and does not need to be counted if you score 5 faan or more, or if your hand is Seven Pairs (which is automatically worth 25 fu).

• If you win, your hand is worth 20 fu immediately.
• If your hand is concealed and you won by discard, add 10 fu.
• If you win by self-pick, whether your hand is concealed or not, add 2 fu.
• If your hand is only waiting on one tile (ex: a 1-2 characters wait for the 3-characters, a 4-6 dots wait for a 5-dots, or a wait to pair the last tile in your hand), add 2 fu.
• If your hand's pair is a pair of dragon tiles, your seat wind, or the round wind, add 2 fu.
• For every pung in your hand, add 2 fu.
• Double that fu if it's a pung of honor or terminal tiles.
• Double that fu if it's a concealed pung (just like the Four Concealed Pungs limit hand, if you claim the final tile as a discard, the pung counts as 'open' even if the hand itself is concealed).
• Quadruple that fu if it's a gong instead of a pung.
• So a closed gong of honor tiles is 2 x 2 x 2 x 4 = 32 fu, and an open pung of honor tiles is 2 x 2 = 4 fu.
• If your hand is open and scores only 20 fu, add 2 fu.
• Round the fu up to the nearest 10. A hand worth 22 fu counts as 30 fu.

6. General Scoring
So now you have your fu and your faan, how do you calculate score? Well, in Japanese Riichi mahjong, all players start with 25000 points, and if anyone drops below 0 points, the game immediately ends. If your hand has four or less fan, the formula for calculating its worth is:

base points = fu x 2^(2 + faan)

So a hand worth 30 fu and 2 faan is worth 30 x 2^(2+2) = 30 x 2^4 = 30 x 16 = 480 points! It's far less complicated to calculate than it seems, but there are charts to do the calculations if you prefer. Since your base points double for every faan you score, your hand could be worth an insurmountable sum. To cap this:

• Any hand worth 5 faan automatically scores 2000 base points.
• Any hand worth 6 or 7 faan scores 3000 base points.
• Any hand worth 8-10 faan scores 4000 base points.
• Any hand worth 11 or 12 faan scores 6000 base points.
• A hand worth 13+ faan or a limit hand scores 8000 base points.

These make calculations much easier! Once you have the base points counted, there's only a few more things to consider. If you are the dealer, double your basic points. If you win by self-pick, all three players pay you the (doubled) basic points, rounded up to the next 100. If you win by discard, that player pays you triple the (already doubled) basic points rounded up.

If you are not the dealer and you win by discard, the discarding player pays you quadruple the basic points rounded up. If you win by self-pick, the dealer pays you double the basic points rounded, and the other two players simply pay you the basic points rounded.

Fu and fan scoring table. Image taken from http://www.osamuko.com

Every time the dealer wins a hand or the hand ends in a draw, the next hand is worth an extra 300 points (So if the dealer won four hands in a row, the fifth hand would be worth an extra 4 x 300 = 1200 points).

7. Furiten
'Furiten', often translated as 'sacred discard' is a big part of Japanese Riichi style rules. The four players all have their own discard piles, and anytime an open meld is made, you must rotate a tile in the meld to show who it came from (e.g., If I call pung on a 4-dots from the player across from me, I rotate the middle tile of that open pung. If I call chow on a 2-bamboo, I rotate the 2-bamboo and place if to the left of that open chow to show that it came from the player to my left). This way, you can tell what each player discarded at a glance.

If any of your potential winning tiles are in your discards, even if that tile would mean your hand is worth 0 faan, you are not allowed to win off of a discard of any tile! For an example, imagine the only tiles left in your hand are a pair of green dragons and a pair of 1-dots. Even though you need a green dragon to complete a one faan minimum hand, you are forbidden from winning off a discard if there is a 1-dot already in your discards. Instead, you have to hope to draw the green dragon yourself, or change your hand to remove the 1-dots from it.

8. Riichi
Japanese Riichi mahjong is called 'riichi mahjong' because of this rule. The most common fan in Japanese Riichi mahjong is 'Riichi'! If you hand is fully concealed and waiting on at least one winning tile, you can declare riichi. You bet 1000 points that your hand will win first! From then on, you must discard every tile you draw until you draw your own winning tile or until another player discards it. If you win, you get your 1000 points back, but if someone else wins first, they take those points!

The main upside to riichi, aside from the extra faan, is exclusive access to the Under Dora tiles. If you declared reach and won, flip over the tiles underneath the dora indicator and revealed gong dora indicators. All of these tiles count as more dora indicators for your winning hand, so your hand's value can jump up unexpectedly!

9. The Rounds and Draws
Japanese Riichi mahjong only plays East and South rounds traditionally. In addition, there are six ways for a hand to end in a draw.

Exhaustive Draw: There are no more tiles left, aside from the dead wall. All players who are waiting for a winning tile reveal their hands. Any player who is not waiting pays a penalty. If three players are waiting, the other player pays them each 1000 points. If two players are, the other players pay them 1500 points. And if only one player is waiting, all three players pay him 1000 points (So no matter how many people are waiting, except 0 or all 4 players, 3000 points will be exchanged in total).

Abortive Draws

• If on your first turn you have at least 9 terminal or honor tiles, and no one has made an open meld or concealed gong yet, you may declare the hand a draw.
• If all four players discard the same wind tile as their first discard (without any concealed gongs being made), the hand is a draw.
• If four gongs are made by one person, anyone else who makes a gong ends the hand in a draw. If the four gongs are made by more than one person, the hand is immediately declared a draw.
• If all four players declare riichi, the hand is a draw.
• If all three other players try to win off of the same discarded tile, no one wins it and the hand is a draw.

10. Double Limit Hands
In Japanese Riichi mahjong, some limit hands are inherently worth twice the limit on their own. Generally, they're all rarer versions of other limit hands.

• Big Four Winds (Compared to Little Four Winds)
• Pair Wait on Four Concealed Pungs (Compared to normal wait on Four Concealed Pungs)
• 13-Way Thirteen Orphans Wait (Compared to normal wait on Thirteen Orphans)
• Pure Nine Gates (Compared to normal wait on Nine Gates)
• Seven Pairs All Honors (Compared to normal All Honors)

Thursday Night Mahjong!

Last night was a wild and crazy night of mahjong for us! We opened the night at 6:00 with 5 people wanting to play, and within half an hour that number jumped up to 6, then 8, then even 10! (Granted, one of those ten had never played mahjong before, and one needed a refresher of the rules since it had been so long) Unfortunately, I was in the middle of our awesome game so I couldn't leave to teach them, but it looked like Mila did an excellent job of that! Including two other people who were interested in playing but had other stuff to do instead, we theoretically could have had three games going at once!

At our table, the veterans of the mahjong club sat down for four rounds of the game, and Ray definitely made a comeback from his losing streak last week, winning almost half of all hands that night! On the other hand, he made a false declaration of win, which caused us to agree to the punishment for that mistake: If any other player self-picks their win, he has to pay for all three players. If a player wins by discard, he pays half of the cost for the hand (Though we never really decided whether or not it was possible for him to win that hand afterwards). For the record, this is the same as our 'insurance rule' if you deal into the final open set of a limit hand or a Full Flush.

Micheal made a mistake midway through the game, forgetting to replace one of his bonus tiles and making his hand short. It was a beautiful hand too, with both of his bonus tiles, so that might have cost him a bit. On the other hand, his self-picked Thirteen Orphans in the west round more than made up for that, sealing his win by a long shot!

Felix was really off of his game today, apparently having wasted all of his luck coming out on top last week! His score was the lowest I'd ever seen, and the only hand he won was the very last hand of the night!

I didn't play my best either unfortunately, just barely leaving the game in the red. On the other hand, I set a new personal best towards limit hands by being one-away-from-waiting for a Thirteen Orphans hand. After checking the wall, if Micheal hadn't discarded Ray's winning tile on that turn, I would have drawn the twelfth orphan too.

FINAL SCORE

• Chad   -24
• Felix   -648
• Michael   +472
• Ray   +200

Let's Look at Unofficial Yaku (That we will never use)

There are literally dozens of variations of mahjong with hundreds of optional yaku that can be used, so today I want to introduce you all to some 'house rule' yaku that other people occasionally use. Note that these are NOT used in our McGill Students' Mahjong Club Hong Kong Old Style games (Though some of them are used in our Japanese Riichi style games).

Three Chained Pungs (+2 Fan)
Having three consecutive pungs in the same suit, such as pungs of 2-dots, 3-dots, and 4-dots.
Four Chained Pungs (Limit Hand)
Obviously having four consecutive pungs in the same suit.
Great Chariot (Limit Hand)
Sometimes this yaku is called 'Big Circles'. A concealed Seven Pairs hand, where the pairs are the 2 through 8 of dots. The McGill Students' Mahjong Club now treats this as a valid limit hand.
Lesser Chariot (+2 Fan)
A concealed Seven Pairs hand of dots, but the pairs are either 1 through 7 of dots, or 3 through 9 of dots.
Bamboo Forest/Numerous Neighbors (Limit Hand)
These hands are identical to Great Chariot, only in the bamboo/characters suits instead.
Red Peacock (Limit Hand)
The opposite of a Perfect Green hand, this hand is made up of only the red dragon and bamboo tiles that contain red in them (1, 5, 7, and 9). The 'peacock' in the yaku's name represents the 1-bamboo.
Perfect Black (Limit Hand)
A hand containing only the wind tiles and the dots tiles traditionally done in black ink (2, 4, and 8).
One Million Years (Limit Hand)
A Full Flush of characters where the total value of your tiles adds up to at least 100 (For example, if you had a gong of 9-characters, the value of that gong would be 9 x 4 = 32). This yaku gets its name from the fact that each character tile represents X0,000, so if X is at least 100, your hand would represent 1,000,000.
Thirteen Unconnected Tiles (Limit Hand)
Your opening hand contains at least 13 tiles that cannot form any melds with any other tiles in your hand (So they are not pairs or are too far away to combine into any chows). Must be declared on your first turn as a self-pick win before discarding, and cannot be earned if any open melds or concealed gongs are made before your first draw.
Plum Blossoms in the Moonlit Snowstorm (Limit Hand)
A hand containing a pung of 5-dots (representing plum blossoms), 1-dots (representing the moon), white dragon (representing the snow), and the seat wind or round wind (representing the storm). This gets points for being the most specific yaku I've ever heard of, but at least it's poetic!
Beauties of Nature (Limit Hand)
Yet another unnecessarily complicated hand! The Chinese characters for this hand are literally 'flower-bird-wind-moon', so this hand needs a pung of 5-dots, 1-bamboo, the seat or round wind, and the 1-dots.
The Tohoku Shinkansen (Limit Hand)
A concealed hand containing one of each bamboo tile and a pung/pair of the east wind and north wind. The Japanese town 'Tohoku' is literally written as the Chinese characters 'east-north'.
The Tohoku Express (Limit Hand)
An all pungs hand containing the east wind, north wind, 2-dots, 4-dots, and 6-dots (The dot tiles here allegedly represent motorcycles, cars, and large trucks respectively).
American Civil War (Limit Hand)
A concealed hand containing pungs of the south wind and north wind. The remaining eight tiles must be any tiles of the numbers 1, 8, 6, 1, 1, 8, 6, and 5, and do not need to match suits. The American Civil War between the north and south lasted from 1861 to 1865. The more you know.
Golden Gate Bridge (Limit Hand)
A hand whose four melds are all chows in the same suit, and the chows are 1-2-3, 3-4-5, 5-6-7, 7-8-9.
Five Families (+2 Fan)
An All Pungs hand containing dots, characters, bamboo, dragons, and wind tiles.
Seven Pairs with Honor (+1 Fan)
A Seven Pairs hand that either has three pairs of dragon tiles or four pairs of wind tiles.
Pure Run (+1 Fan)
A hand containing the chows 1-2-3, 4-5-6, and 7-8-9 in the same suit.
Broken Pure Run (+1 Fan)
A hand containing a chow of 1-2-3 in one suit, 4-5-6 in a second, and 7-8-9 in the third.
Reflective Tiles (+1 Fan)
A hand composed only of tiles that have vertical symmetry (2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 bamboo, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 dots, and white dragon).
All Simples (+1 Fan)
A hand that does not use any terminal or honor tiles.
Double Chow (+1 Fan)
Using two identical chows in your hand (i.e., 2-3-4 bamboo and 2-3-4 bamboo).
Three Colors, One Chow (+1 Fan)
A hand that has the same chow in all three suits (i.e., 6-7-8 in dots, bamboo, and characters).
Three Colors, One Pung (+2 Fan)
A hand that has the same pung in all three suits (i.e, 1-1-1 in dots, bamboo, and characters).
Three Gongs (+2 Fan)
This should totally be a valid yaku in Hong Kong Old Style, I'm just saying.
Three Concealed Pungs (+2 Fan)
Just like the Four Concealed Pungs limit hand, you won't score this yaku if the third pung is made with your winning tile unless you self-pick it.
All With Orphans (+1 Fan)
Every meld in your hand (including the pair) contain a terminal or honor tile. That means that your hand is made of pungs of terminal/honor tiles, or chows of 1-2-3 or 7-8-9.
All With Terminals (+2 Fan)
Every meld in your hand (including the pair) contain a terminal tile. That means that your hand is made of pungs of terminal tiles, or chows of 1-2-3 or 7-8-9.
All Orphans (+2 Fan)
Every tile in your hand is a terminal or honor tile. That means that your hand is made of pungs and a pair of terminal or honor tiles.

Experiences Teaching(?) Mahjong: Day Two

After an early closure of the Games Club for the night, myself and four other friends stopped off to toss around some tiles. It began with the four of them at a table: Mila and Joseph were already pretty skilled at the game, but Oliver and Shabab had never even seen mahjong before, so we had to spend a few minutes introducing the game to them. Fortunately, they both seemed to pick it up quickly after the first explanation. Even though they didn't get a chance to really learn about fan, they enjoyed the game and got the basics quickly, and everyone got a chance to finish a hand.

After their first game, in which I helped advise the new players on what to discard, two more members from the old mahjong club showed up and we began a separate 3-player game that didn't last very long. Though I got the first win, Felix took the lead before we stopped to invite Mila to our table. We only had time to finish one more hand (which Felix won) before Shabab and Oliver had to leave, and the other four all joined into one table for the night.

Sadly, we didn't have any limit hands tonight, though there were several times when players were at least aiming for Thirteen Orphans. The game lasted about 6 hours with only four dealer keeps, and though Mila and Joseph both put up a strong fight, Felix dominated in the end with a final score of +232

The most exciting hands of the night were probably when Felix drew six bonus tiles and one was left in the wall, but sadly that hand ended before he could draw it and have that incredibly rare yaku (Not so sad for him though, since he got 8 fan with that hand). Another exciting one was Mila's almost-Perfect Green, when she was only two tiles away from that beautiful limit hand. And the last hand of the night, when Joseph drew five pairs in his opening hand and won a Seven Pairs hand within six draws.

FINAL SCORE

• Felix   +232
• Joseph   +24
• Mila   +24
• Ray   -280