A Quick Look at Mahjong around the World: Zung Jung

Mahjong is, of course, a game with a rich and varied history dating back over a hundred years. Zung Jung is not. Not at all. But it is still a wonderful game that is designed to be the most beginner-friendly form of mahjong!

Zung Jung was invented by Alan Kwan in 1997, and has since become big enough to be the style of choice for the World Series of Mahjong! They've hosted four Zung Jung tournaments (though under the name 'World Series of Mahjong' instead of 'Zung Jung', presumably for copyright reasons), in 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2013, and are going to be hosting another one this year in 2015! What's most notable about these tournaments are the high amounts of prize money you can earn! Though it costs approximately $1250 (USD) just to enter, the total prizes given away are one million American dollars! That's over 1.3 million Canadian dollars! And the first place winner takes home half of that, with the rest being split according to a particular algorithm between 2nd through 32nd position. That makes Zung Jung the mahjong style with the biggest potential pay-out, by far!

Zung Jung is apparently a Confucian doctrine that means 'the middle way', and Alan Kwan chose the name for his style of mahjong because it was designed to be a compromise between the mahjong styles with countless complicated yaku based on aesthetics (such as Mahjong Competition Rules or Hong Kong New Style), and the mahjong styles focused on simplicity and simply making the fastest reasonable win you can (such as Chinese Classical and Hong Kong Old Style). So let's see how it tries to accomplish this.

First of all, let's note that there is one major difference between Alan Kwan's Zung Jung, and World Series of Mahjong style rules (and this may be the only real difference between the two). Basic Zung Jung always allows chicken wins. As long as you have any four melds and a pair, you're permitted to declare a win worth one point on the virtue of winning before anyone else (this is because Zung Jung was designed to be easy for beginners to pick up and learn immediately; because Alan Kwan intentionally encourages players to create multiple open melds in his game, contrary to almost every other mahjong style where opening your hand is a bad strategy in general; and because he notes that players likely won't attempt chicken wins very often, since a single valuable hand can overturn multiple chicken wins). The World Series of Mahjong rules insist that you must have at least one yaku to declare a win (because they, probably correctly, realized that if one player gets ahead of the others, she can keep making fast, worthless hands before anyone else so that they can never catch up to her, which would positively ruin the tournament).

Unfortunately, for all of Zung Jung's successes, it has some significant flaws. Most notably, since this was a game designed for beginners to play and win, the vast majority of the game is dependent on luck: If a single player at the table is going for a chicken win, it becomes almost impossible to score any reasonable amount of points unless you aren't dealt an incredible opening hand.

But let's look at some of the design choices that went into the game to understand the successes in Alan Kwan's philosophy.

• There are no dealer keeps, regardless of who wins or if the hand ends in a draw. Games are always 16 hands long (Though World Series of Mahjong games are 8 hands long instead, to better suit the tournament format).
• There is no such thing as a 'round wind'. Only your seat wind is relevant for scoring.
• A dead wall of 14 tiles is used.
• No bonus tiles are used.
• Discarded tiles are placed in ordered rows of six in front of each player, identically to Japanese Riichi mahjong's ponds. Despite there being no furiten rule, you are still required to rotate your claimed tiles in a manner identical to that of Japanese Riichi mahjong.
• If you make a concealed gong, you reveal the middle two tiles so that the other players know which tile was used in the gong.
• If you self-pick your win, everyone pays you the value of your hand.
• If you win off of a player's discard and your hand was worth 25 points or fewer, everyone pays you the value of your hand.
• If you win off of a discarded tile with a hand worth more than 25 points, multiply the value of your hand by three. The two other players who did not discard your winning tile pay you 25 points, and the player who did discard your winning tile pays you the remainder of this amount.
• If Player A discards any of your winning tiles and you choose not to win off of it, and then Player B discards any of your winning tiles in the same turn (without you getting a chance to draw in between) and you declare a win, it is treated as a win off of Player A instead (but with the tile that Player B discarded, in case that makes your hand more or less valuable).
• This also means if you discard a tile that you could use to win, and then win off of another player's discard in the same turn, it is treated as a win by self-pick with that tile.
• If your hand uses two or more yaku to score over 320 points, it is treated as a hand worth 320 points (essentially, this is a counted limit hand in Zung Jung).
• Alternatively, some yaku are inherently worth more than 320 points. If you can score more than 320 points with a single yaku, your hand scores whatever its most valuable yaku is worth. For example, if your hand was All Honors (worth 320 points) and Big Four Winds (worth 400 points), its total value would be 400 points.
• Each category of scoring contains one or more series, and each series of scoring contains one or more yaku. You cannot score multiple yaku in the same series.
• For example, under the category 'pungs and gongs', one series is explicitly defined as 'gongs'. If your hand has three gongs in it, it does not score the yaku 'One Gong' and 'Two Gongs' and 'Three Gongs': It only scores the most valuable yaku (which is Three Gongs).
• A Seven Pairs hand does not need to be made of seven distinct pairs. As long as you have not declared a concealed gong, you may treat four identical tiles as two separate pairs.

A full example of scoring can be seen on this page.

A Quick Look at Mahjong around the World: American Mahjong

Mahjong was brought to North America in the 1920's, and took the country by storm (Early North American games are notable for having invented the Seven Pairs hand as a house rule). But because we tend to be greedy and impatient, some groups of players were either unwilling to learn the longer, complex rules of mahjong or would insist on always chasing after limit hands, ruining the game. In order to solve both of these problems, the National Mah Jongg League (or NMJL, and yes, they spell 'mahjong' that way) was created, and its rules grew and developed until they became the complicated mess it is today.

The first thing to know about American Mahjong (sometimes called 'Mahjong Bingo' by its critics) is that it barely resembles any other form of mahjong in the world. Every style in the world bares at least a fair similarity to Japanese Riichi or Hong Kong Old Style in enough ways to be playable, except for American Mahjong. For that reason, the McGill Students' Mahjong Club will likely never play this version. Secondly, it's hard for a layperson to understand how to even play the game. Though the NMJL has rules available, you must buy the instructions from them for $10.95

Fortunately, the fact that the internet exists means we can figure out its rules without giving them money.

• American Mahjong uses eight bonus tiles (which they always call 'flowers'), but they are not treated like HKOS bonus tiles. Instead, they're essentially treated as another honor tile. They're kept in the hand, used in melds, and can be discarded.
• They use eight joker tiles, which can be a substitute in any meld (but not as a pair, or as a single tile).
• There is no such thing as a 'chow', but with joker tiles there are such things as 'quints' or 'sextets' (Five-of-a-kind and six-of-a-kind, though sextets are very rare to see in hands).
• In early years of American Mahjong, before the rules were solidified, up to 24 wild tiles were used, and some hands called for septettes and octettes (seven-of-a-kind and eight-of-a-kind).
• Dragon tiles are considered as suited tiles for the sake of hands. The green dragon is part of the bamboo suit, the red dragon is part of the characters suit, and the white dragon is part of the dots suit (except for when it's used as a '0', in which case it has no suit, as we'll explain later).
• The game supports up to five players, but the fifth player doesn't play naturally. Instead, immediately after the opening deal but before the Charleston (which we will explained further down), he gets to look at each player's hand.
• The fifth player (also called 'the bettor') either chooses a particular player that he expects will win, or guesses that the game will be an exhaustive draw. He is not permitted to say anything, and writes his bet down on a paper where no one can see it until the hand finishes.
• If the bettor bet on a player, and that player wins, the bettor receives an equal amount of points as the winning player. For example, if Player A is bet on, and wins 25 points from the other three players, the bettor also receives an additional 25 points from the other three players.
• If the bettor bet on an exhaustive draw, and was correct, all four players pay the bettor 25 points.
• If the bettor bet incorrectly and a player wins by self-pick, he pays an equal amount to the winning player as any other player. If the player wins off of a discarded tile, he pays as much as the players who did not discard her winning tile.
• For example, Player A won off of a tile that Player B discarded, for a hand worth 25 points. Player B pays 50 points to her, and Player C, Player D, and the bettor all pay her 25 points.
• If the hand ends in an exhaustive draw and that was not what the bettor chose, there is no additional penalty to him.
• After the hand, when the winds rotate, he takes the place of the old dealer, who becomes the next bettor.
• A winning hand is not made of 'four melds and a pair'. Instead, a winning hand must come from a specific card that the NMJL creates each year (and therefore, must be bought from them annually to keep playing), all of which are essentially what our styles would consider 'limit hands'.
• Note that the American Mah-Jongg Association (or AMJA, where 'mahjong' is spelt in this second non-standard way) is the other big mahjong company/league in American Mahjong. The AMJA also sells their own annual cards for just $7 (or $3.50 for older, outdated cards), and their cards follow the standard pattern of the NMJL's card.

So let's look at what the 2013 NMJL card looked like as an example of this. (You can view the pdf of the following directly at this location. PDF file courtesy of user GermanTodd from http://www.boardgamegeek.com ).

The card is always split into ten categories as follows

• Year (all hands here include a set of four tiles spelling out the current year, white dragons are used for 0's)
• 2468 (all hands here are based on even numbered tiles)
• Like numbers (all hands here involve the same numbered tile in each of the suits)
• Change-Up (this category changes each year: In the 2013 card, it was 'Seven Hands'. In the 2014 card, it was 'Addition Hands')
• Quints (all hands here include one or more quints)
• Consecutive run (all hands here involve melds of consecutively numbered tiles)
• 13579 (all hands here are based on odd numbered tiles)
• Winds - Dragons (all hands here are based on honor tiles)
• 369 (all hands here are based on the tiles numbered 3, 6, and 9)
• Singles and Pairs (all hands here involve tiles that are not used in melds) 

Each hand would be followed by its value in points (between 20 and 75, depending on how hard the hand was to earn) and an X or a C. A hand with an X next to it implies that you are allowed to make open melds to complete it, but a hand with a C next to it has to be completely concealed (at least until you're waiting).

So let's look at the category '2013', for example.

N  EE  WWW  SSSS  2013          X25
FF  2013  1111  3333                X25 (any three suits)
FFFF  2222  0000  13                X30
FFFF  DDD  2013  DDD              C35 (any two dragons, any two or three suits)

So, we can see immediately that the last hand is worth the most, but must be completely concealed. The first hand must be made of one north wind, a pair of east winds, a pung of west winds, a gong of south winds, and any tiles to form 2-white dragon-1-3 in the same suit (all tiles printed in a single color on the card must always be in the same suit, with the exception of the '0' white dragon, which always has no suit). A joker could be used to replace any of the west winds or south winds only (because jokers can never replace individual tiles or paired tiles, which all of the other tiles are).

The second hand says 'any three suits' next to it. What this means is that you can have a 2-white dragon-1-3 in any of the suits, then a gong of 1's in a second suit, and a gong of 3's in the last suit: It does not specifically have to be a 2-1-3 of bamboo, a pung of 1-characters, and a pung of 3-dots, as the color seems to suggest. Additionally, this hand requires a pair of flowers. A joker could replace any tile except those forming the 2-white dragon-1-3 grouping, or the pair.

The third hand, since it has no parenthetical comment and all of the tiles are printed in the same color, must be made of a gong of flowers, a gong of white dragons, a gong of 2's in any suit, and a 1 and a 3 in the same suit as your gong of 2's. It's all written in one color, so the hand must be completely in one suit (with the exception of the white dragons: Even though those are usually considered to be part of the dots suit in American Mahjong, since the card treats them as a '0' in this hand, this gong is suitless instead). A bit confusing, isn't it? But that's why it's worth more. In this hand, jokers could substitute any tiles in your gongs of flowers, 2's, or white dragons.

And the possibly confusing parenthetical remark in the fourth hand are simple. Even though the dragons are color coded in green and blue, they don't have to specifically be the green dragon and white dragon. Additionally, since the dragons are considered to be suited tiles, this is just their way of saying that your 2-white dragon-1-3 meld does not have to be in the unused suit: It can be the same suit as one of the dragon pungs if you wish. Additionally, you can use jokers in place of any flowers or dragons in this hand.

Look at the linked PDF file for more crazy hands in this game. See which are your favorite, which are the most ridiculous, and if you understand what they all mean (Just in case it isn't clear, 'any 2 consecutive numbers' means your melds could be 1's and 2's, or 6's and 7's, or anything along that line. 'Any like odd numbers' means two melds of the same odd numbers, like a pung of 1's and a second pung of 1's).

So obviously, getting a specific limit hand each time you play isn't an easy thing to do. In fact, in American Mahjong, it is often the case that the game ends in an exhaustive draw, and they have a bunch of safeguards against it! Other than by using jokers, the main way American Mahjong tries to ensure everyone can at least attempt a particular hand is through something called 'the Charleston'.

At the start of each hand, the players pass tiles to each other (always face-down) in order to try to collect new tiles that will help their hand lean towards the composition of one or more hands on the card. Jokers can never be passed in the Charleston, and there is only one circumstance in which the Charleston will be skipped: If immediately after drawing her 14 tiles, the dealer already has any hand that matches one of the winning patterns on the card (essentially the Gift of Heaven of American Mahjong), she reveals it immediately and treats it as a self-picked win, with no special bonuses.

Other than in that rare situation though, here's how the Charleston works:

• First, every player passes three tiles from his hand to the player to his right.
• Next, every player passes three tiles from his hand to the player across from him.
• Finally, every player passes three tiles from his hand to the player to his left. Only during this stage, if you don't want to remove three tiles from your hand, you may use up to all of the three tiles from the ones given to you during this phase to supplement the difference. However, you may not look at which ones you pass. This is called a 'blind pass'.
• So if you want to give up only one tile from your hand, you randomly take two tiles that the player to your right is giving you and include them in your pass, without looking at them. The third tile is still added to your hand.
• Next, only if all four players agree, the Charleston is repeated (except you pass left first, then across, then right: The reverse of the first Charleston). The Charleston can only be repeated once, and if you do repeat it, you are obligated to do all three passes: You may not stop partway through. Additionally, the blind pass can only be done while passing to the right during the second Charleston (so that it is always the final pass of its Charleston).
• Finally, only if the player across from you agrees, you may trade up to three tiles from your hand with her. You must both pass each other the same amount: If one of you wants to pass fewer than the other, the lower number of tiles is passed.

Nice and complicated, isn't it? That's American Mahjong for you. We're almost done though, there are only a few more rules to mention.

• If more than one player wants to use a discarded tile to complete a meld, turn order is used to determine who takes the tile (the same ways Hong Kong Old Style mahjong decides who gets to win off of a discarded tile in case multiple players wish to). Whether the players want to use the tile to complete a pung or gong or quint is irrelevant.
• The same system is used to determine who gets a discarded tile in case multiple players wish to use it to complete their hand.
• Just like in Hong Kong Old Style, using a discarded tile to complete your hand always takes priority over using it to form an open meld.
• There is no such thing as a promoted gong/quint/sextet. Once you make an open meld, you must use that specific meld.
• If a player has made an open meld including one or more jokers, and during your turn you have a tile in your hand that could be used in that meld instead of the joker (e.g., the player has a gong of three red dragons and one joker, and you have the fourth red dragon in your hand), you may take that joker and replace it by adding the completing tile to their set. This is done to de-incentivize the use of jokers in open melds, since you might end up giving them to other players.
• You can also redeem jokers from your own melds in this way, allowing you to reuse them in new melds.
• A discarded joker may never be claimed to make any kind of meld, or to create a winning hand. It is gone forever once it hits the discard pile.
• If your hand is not from the Singles and Pairs category (which by definition cannot contain jokers) and contains no jokers, it scores double. Even if you used a joker in an open meld, as long as another player replaced it with the proper tile before you win, your hand can score this bonus (since it doesn't have any jokers at the time you win).
• If a player breaks any rule (such as a chicken hand, drawing out of turn, making an illegal/incorrect open meld, or having too many/few tiles in her hand), or it becomes apparent from the discarded tiles and that player's open melds that there is no possible hand that she could make (including if she is trying to make a concealed-only hand with open melds), any player may declare her 'dead'. A dead player no longer takes any turns until the hand is completed, and cannot call on any discarded tiles. Any jokers in her (legally made) open melds can still be redeemed. A dead player must still pay the winner the value of his hand.
• If a player challenges that her hand is dead, she may continue playing. Once the hand ends, either through someone winning or an exhaustive draw, she must reveal her hand. If she was dead, she pays 25 points to the challenger. If she was not dead, the challenger pays 25 points to her.
• At this point, if the bettor bet on the player whose hand is dead, he pays 25 extra points to the challenger. If the player's hand was not dead, he receives an extra 25 points from the challenger (And vice versa if he bet on the challenger).
• Jokers may not be replaced from a dead player's open meld, if revealing that meld is what caused the player to go dead (For example, only once that meld is revealed it is guaranteed that there is no hand that player can possible make).
• If you self-pick a win, all three players pay you double the value of the hand. If you win off of a discarded tile, the player who discarded it pays you double, while the other two pay you its face value.
• The bettor matches any wins or losses of points at this moment.
• The winds always shift after a hand (though in American Mahjong, that simply means that the dealer's position shifts counter-clockwise).
• The game continues until a predetermined number of hands have been played, or a predetermined amount of time has passed. There is no convention for the length of one game of American Mahjong.

So that's the Game of a Thousand Intelligences for you.

A Quick Look at Mahjong around the World: Chinese Classical

Though a lot of the history of mahjong may be forever lost to time, there are some few things we know or can reasonably theorize about early mahjong. In other words, Chinese Classical mahjong isn't just any old mahjong variant: It might possibly be the first, original form of mahjong (There is apparently a heavy debate on this subject! Some mahjong scholars, which is allegedly a real thing, contest that our beloved Hong Kong Old Style might be the original form of mahjong, or that the game has evolved so much from other games that it's impossible to pin down a 'first' form of mahjong).

Fortunately, since this version of mahjong is so old (books were written under these rules in America as early as the 1920's, and Chinese Classical mahjong may have been the game played in mainland China and Hong Kong since the 1800's), it's rules are fairly simple overall.

The basic rules of gameplay are identical to Hong Kong Old Style's rules, with some notable exceptions:

• A dead wall of 14 tiles was used.
• A player may declare a concealed gong before his first turn if there is one in his hand, at the same time he replaces any bonus tiles.
• Also, like in Japanese Riichi mahjong, if you make a concealed gong, you must reveal either its outer two or inner two tiles, so everyone can see what your gong is composed of (As far as I can find, though I have read some conflicting information on this).
• Bonus tiles may or may not have been used, the information on these are also inconsistent, so I imagine their inclusion was originally an optional rule.
• Some versions Chinese Classical mahjong did not seem to have a 'round wind', though I am not sure whether using it or not was more common. In those rules, any points or yaku related to the round wind would be ignored.
• You could not win off of a player's discard to complete a pair or chow: Only to complete a pung.
• A hand made up of seven pairs was not a winning hand: A winning hand had to always be four melds and a pair.
• The existence of 'limit hands' seemed to be a common (but not obligatory) rule used in this style. When they were used, 500 points seemed to be a common limit.

But the main difference between this system and the HKOS one is that, unless your hand is dead (such as by having too many or too few tiles), everyone scores points when anyone declares a win! That means that, even if someone else wins with a faster, cheaper hand than you, you might still end up gaining more points than him!

First, when someone declares a win (and only after confirming that the player does indeed have a valid winning hand), everyone reveals their hands and calculates their own scores as follows.

• 4 points for each bonus tile (If used)
• 2 points for each open pung of simple tiles
• 4 points for each concealed pung of simple tiles
• 4 points for each open pung of orphan tiles
• 8 points for each concealed pung of orphan tiles
• 8 points for each open gong of simple tiles
• 16 points for each concealed gong of simple tiles
• 16 points for each open gong of orphan tiles
• 32 points for each concealed gong of orphan tiles
• Non-declared gongs can only be counted as pungs. For example, if someone else wins while you have all of the green dragons in your hand, that only counts as a concealed pung of orphan tiles.

 Then, only the winner adds any of the following points to the value of her hand if she qualifies for them.

• 20 points immediately for winning
• 2 points for a self-picked win
• 2 points if your hand's pair is of dragons, your seat wind, or the round wind
• 4 points if your hand's pair is both your seat wind and the round wind
• 2 points if there was only one possible type of tile you could win with
• 10 points if you won off of a gong's replacement tile
• 10 points if your hand was made of four pungs and a pair.
• 10 points if your hand is made of four chows and a worthless pair, and you have no bonus tiles

 Then, all players double their hand's value for each of the following yaku they earn.

• Pung/gong of your seat wind
• Pung/gong of the round wind
• Pung/gong of any dragon (Double for each dragon pung/gong that you have)
• Having your own bonus tile (Double for each copy of your bonus tile that you have)
• Having all of the flowers or all of the seasons (Double it three times instead, i.e. multiply it by 8)
• Half Flush
• Full Flush (Double it three times instead, i.e. multiply it by 8)
• All Honors (Double it three times instead, i.e. multiply it by 8)
• Gift of Heaven/Gift of Earth (Double it three times instead, i.e. multiply it by 8)

Once the winner has found the final score for her hand, all other players pay her that amount (It doesn't matter if she self-picks her win or wins off of a discard). Then, each loser gets paid the value of his hand by the other two losers (but not the winner). Additionally, any points the dealer scores is doubled, but so are the points he pays to any other player. There is never a dealer keep: The winds always shift after a hand.

LIMIT HANDS

• Self-Pick Four Concealed Pungs
• All Honors
• All Terminals
• Perfect Green
• Big Three Dragons
• Big Four Winds
• Nine Gates (Only eligible by winning on a nine-way wait, but is always allowed to be won off of a discarded tile)
• Thirteen Orphans
• Four Gongs
• Gift of Heaven
• Winning off of the dealer's first discard
• Self-pick win with the last tile in the wall, if that tile is 1-dots
• Win Off a Replacement Tile from a gong, if that tile is 5-dots
• Rob a Gong, if that tile is 2-bamboo (The existence of 'robbing a gong' confuses me in a game where you can only win off of a discard to complete a pung. I imagine that winning off of a discard to complete any meld or the pair was later added to the Chinese Classical rules)
• Gong-On-Gong

Most Valuable HKOS Hands

In our Hong Kong Old Style mahjong rules, scoring more than 13 faan will always be worth the limit of points, but because there are a finite amount of yaku, there is a theoretical upper limit of how many faan a hand can score.

FAAN FROM HONOR TILES
Your hand cannot be entirely composed of honor tiles, nor can it have pungs of all three dragons, or it would score a natural limit hand instead (All Honors or Big Three Dragons). So without breaking either of these rules, the most faan possible to earn from honor tiles are having a pung of your seat wind (when that is also the round wind), two pungs of dragons and a pair of dragons.

Pung of Dragons + Pung of Dragons + Little Three Dragons + Pung of Seat Wind + Pung of Round Wind = 6 faan

FAAN FROM BONUS TILES

Since having all eight of the bonus tiles is a natural limit hand, collecting seven of them instead would grant you the most faan. In particular, if you collect both of your own bonus tiles and any five others, you'll get the maximum amount of faan from bonus tiles.

Own Bonus Tile + Own Bonus Tile + All Flowers/Seasons + Seven Bonus Tiles = 6 faan

FAAN FROM COMPOSITION

Even though a Full Flush is worth 3 faan more than a Half Flush, we'd lose the extra 6 faan from honor tiles if we aimed for one of those hands. So instead, aiming for an All Pungs and Half Flush hand gets us the most total faan here. While Seven Pairs would get us the same amount of faan as Half Flush, we'd also lose all our honor tile faan for that hand.

All Pungs + Half Flush = 6 faan

FAAN FROM WINNING

Many of the yaku in this category are mutually exclusive, so there's a lot to look at. Since our hand is All Pungs already, we cannot have both a Concealed Hand and Self-Pick (since this would be the Four Concealed Pungs limit hand). If we end up making two of our pungs into gongs, we can score a Gong-On-Gong and Self-Pick hand (a replacement tile based yaku can never be combined with Last Tile Win, so this is the maximum we can get from this category).

 Self-Pick + Gong-On-Gong = 3 faan

Therefore, the absolute upper-limit for a single hand is to score 21 faan.

Now, if we wanted to see how many points we could score with one hand, we would instead take a look at natural limit hands, and see how many of them can be combined at once. This is fortunately rather easy, since many of these hands are mutually exclusive. We simply need to make a concealed gong of all four winds with a pair of dragon tiles during the eighth dealer keep (Making a concealed gong voids the possibility of earning a Gift of Heaven or Gift of Earth, so you cannot score that and a Four Gongs limit hand at once. Additionally, since you are obligated to declare a win as soon as you draw the final bonus tile, you cannot score that limit hand with most of these either. Of course, you could replace the Four Gongs with a Gift of Heaven to the same effect).

Four Concealed Pungs + Four Gongs + Big Four Winds + All Honors + Eight Dealer Keeps = Quintuple Limit Hand

If you self-pick your winning tile, you'll earn 1.5 times the points compared to winning on a discard, so let's assume that that is the case. A single self-picked limit hand earns 128 points from each other player, so this quintuple limit hand earns you five times that: 640 points from all three other players, for a total gain of +1920 points in one hand.

Good luck scoring that one.

Outdated Hands of Mahjong

Mahjong is an old game, with dozens of variations and hundreds of house rules. There are some old limit hands and other yaku that are no longer used commonly in mahjong (or at least not in Hong Kong Old Style or Japanese Riichi anymore), but are interesting nonetheless.

Original Gift of Earth
While our club uses the rule that a non-dealer winning on his first draw earns the Gift of Earth limit hand, the first known definition for this limit hand was any player winning of of the dealer's first discard (so a more strict form of what is now the Gift of Man). In fact, some other styles of mahjong still use this description for the Gift of Earth limit hand.

Gathering a Plum Blossom from the Roof
It's almost always been worth a faan to win off of a gong's replacement tile, but originally if the winning replacement tile was the 5-dots (which apparently represents a plum blossom), your hand immediately became a limit hand instead.

Scooping the Moon from the Bottom of the Sea
Just like the replacement tile, it's almost always been worth 1 faan to win off of the final tile in the wall. Originally, if the wall's final tile that you win with (by self-pick) was a 1-dots, you would score this limit hand.

Scratching a Carrying Pole
In the old rules that use this, if you rob a promoted gong of the 2-bamboo, your hand would become a limit hand suddenly. I can't imagine why anyone would ever make a promoted gong with this tile if it was an automatic risk for paying into a limit hand, mind you.

Twofold Fortune
This hand is essentially identical to our Gong-on-Gong, except our yaku doesn't necessarily require the first replacement tile to be the one used to make your second gong (if you already have the tiles available in your hand to create two gongs in one turn, it will still qualify for Gong-on-Gong if you win that turn), while Twofold Fortune specifically requires the first replacement tile to create the second gong. Of course, the main difference is that Twofold Fortune was considered a limit hand in games it was used in.

Concealed Purity
If your hand was a Full Flush with no open melds and won by self-pick, it would score this limit hand in older games. Some rule sets that didn't normally treat this as a limit hand would treat a Seven Pairs Full Flush as one (Though even in our rules, this would score a minimum of 10 faan).

The Wriggling Snake
This is an odd hand. Some older rules I've read define it as a Full Flush containing a pung/gong of 1's, a pung/gong of 9's, two chows and a pair using all of the other tiles in that suit (such as a pair of 2's, and a 3-4-5  6-7-8 chow). So essentially a Nine Gates hand where the spare tile must be a 2, 5, or 8, but where open melds are allowed.
Other places seem to rule this hand as a Concealed Hand containing one copy of all nine tiles in one suit, one of each wind, and any matching tile.

Knitted Pairs
This limit hand required you to have the tiles from 1 to 7 in two suits, and for your hand to have no open melds.

13 Dealer Wins
Yes, originally the dealer not only had to win multiple times in a row (any draws would reset the cumulative win counter to 0), but had to win 13 consecutive hands, not just 8, to make this a limit hand.


NON-LIMIT HANDS


Unique Golden Chicken
In some regional rulesets, if your hand has four open melds (so your waiting pattern is just a single concealed tile) and you win by pairing that last tile, and it happens to be the 1-bamboo, your hand is scored as a low-limit hand.

Triple Guest Winds
If your seat wind is the round wind and you have a pung of all three other winds, you get three faan for this yaku.

Sudden Reversal
There are two variations of this local yaku, but both of them are worth one faan. In Hong Kong Old Style rules, this irregular yaku is won if you win off of a player's discard made immediately after she draws a replacement tile (whether for a gong or a flower). In Japanese Riichi mahjong, it can be earned by winning off of a player's discard that he attempts to use to declare 'riichi'.

Hong Kong Old Style Visual Scoring Guides

Here are two pages that can be printed off and brought to mahjong games as a reminder of all the yaku we use in our Hong Kong Old Style mahjong games. Hopefully beginners will find the game less intimidating with these available, and even non-beginners might be able to better analyze their hands' options with these visual aids. The McGill Students Mahjong Club will have prints of these pages available at our meetings for players who need them. Click the images to see their full size.

And another for Limit Hands

Simple Hands for Mahjong Beginners

When you're new to the game (and even for when you're more advanced), starting your hand can be a bit intimidating. With our Hong Kong Old Style rules of a 3 faan minimum requirement, and the Japanese Riichi one yaku minimum requirement, you need to have some idea of the final shape of your hand from the beginning. Here are some common hands that you can aim for.

HONG KONG OLD STYLE HANDS

All Pungs and Seven Pairs
All Pungs and Seven Pairs are very similar hands in a lot of ways, and it's hard to say whether one is better than the other or not. Generally, Seven Pairs is considered a more 'advanced' or 'skilled' yaku to aim for (All Pungs is treated as a very simple, novice yaku), but both have their advantages or disadvantages. Generally, you'll go for one of these two hands if your opening hand has at least four pairs, or a couple of concealed pungs.

Now, you'll have to decide which way to take that hand the first time someone discards a tile to turn one of your pairs into a pung. If you take the call, your hand is entirely forced to be All Pungs, and that's probably all your hand will score (except maybe if you're lucky enough to have a pung of dragons or valuable winds, or your own bonus tile). If you ignore the discard, your hand has a bit more versatility, but is slowed down if you go for All Pungs later. However, one huge benefit of a Seven Pairs hand is that it always inherently gets an extra faan for having a Concealed Hand.

Seven Pairs is also generally faster than All Pungs. If you open with five pairs, you only need to draw one of nine tiles from the wall (pairing up one of the three unpaired tiles in your hand) and you'll be waiting. If you open with two concealed pungs, you still need to create two more pungs and another pair. Even being able to call on tiles for pungs generally doesn't make up for the inherent slowness of an All Pungs hand.

Half Flush and Full Flush
Half Flush and Full Flush are the most common hands to aim for in Hong Kong Old Style mahjong, because of how simple and intuitive they are. If your opening hand seems biased towards one suit (at least five or six, plus a few honor tiles), it's could be a good idea to go for one of these hands. Within the first few turns, you should have an idea of who's going for one of these hands by paying attention to their discards: Anyone who discards honor tiles early on is likely going for a different hand (or far less likely, putting all their hopes on a Full Flush), and anyone who discards two different suits over the first few turns is likely making a hand based on the third suit.

Unfortunately, since there are four players but only three different suits, it's incredibly common for two or even three players to be trying to make a hand based on the same suit. If the player to your left seems to be going for the same suit as you, your hand will be much more slow to develop: Since you can't expect her to discard any tiles in that suit until her hand is almost complete, it'll be almost impossible for you to make any open chows. On the other hand, if the player to her left is going for a different suit, he'll naturally end up feeding her all of his spare tiles. In cases like this, it might pay to go for a different hand or to just focus on playing defensively, hoping someone else discards her winning tile in the end.

The other main downside of these hands are how easy it is to defend against them. Once you see a player make two or three open melds of a suit, it's best to stop discarding tiles in that suit (even at the cost of completing your hand), and the other player will have to rely on a self-picked win. In addition, since the Full Flush hand is liable for the responsibility penalty, you should always be cautious about discarding tiles if a player has three open melds in that suit, or else you might have to pay for the entire value of her hand.

Of course, Half Flush is much easier to get than a Full Flush, but the Full Flush is worth twice as much (neglecting any dragon or valuable wind pungs in the Half Flush), so it's sometimes worth slowing your hand down a bit if you can spare it.

Other Common Hands
Sometimes, your opening hand won't have lots of pairs, and won't be biased towards one suit. In these cases, you just have to try to mix multiple cheap yaku together and scrape together a 3 faan win.

The most common, easy yaku to get is an All Chows hand. Chows are much easier to make than Pungs since instead of waiting on one of two tiles to complete the pung, open-ended chows can be completed with one of eight tiles.

Another really common yaku for these cheap hands is having a Concealed Hand. As long as you get a waiting hand without making any open melds, you're guaranteed one faan for that. Though it might be tempting to try to make pungs of dragons or valuable winds, keep in mind that by doing that, you're losing any opportunity to get All Chows, or to get Fully Concealed if you make an open pung, so it's a net loss of one faan overall.

Your third faan can come from any number of sources. Usually, you'll be hoping that you don't draw any bonus tiles before you make a quick win, but sometimes the odds will be against you. If you can't get a faan for no bonus tiles (or for getting one of your own bonus tiles), you'll have to hope on winning by Self-Pick, All Chows, Concealed Hand for a 3 faan win.

On the other hand, if you're lucky enough to get both copies of your bonus tiles, you can either make a Concealed Hand with pungs or an open All Chows hand. Get even more bonus tiles, and you might not even have to worry about those qualifiers.

JAPANESE RIICHI STYLE HANDS

Riichi
Riichi is by far one of the easiest yaku to get in Japanese Style mahjong, and it can combine with virtually any other yaku. Though there are some risks in declaring riichi (defense becomes impossible and a chance at losing your 1000 points bet), the fact that you get access to the under dora and a chance at One-Shot generally makes up for these risks. Riichi is essentially identical to a Concealed Hand in Hong Kong Old Style mahjong, so just try to get your hand to a waiting position as fast as possible without calling on any tiles. Before you do declare riichi though, double check all of your discards to make sure you're not in furiten! If any of your discards could possibly be your winning tile (even ones the other players called on for an open meld), you won't be permitted to win off of any discards, and you can't change your hand to fix that once riichi is declared.

As a note, beginners should never expect their only yaku to be Fully Concealed: If you can declare riichi, you probably should unless someone else at the table has an obviously valuable hand. More advanced players will know when to declare riichi and when not to (and those that don't still will almost always have some yaku beyond just Fully Concealed).

Pon of Dragons, Seat Wind, or Round Wind
If your opening hand comes with a pair of any of these tiles, you're guaranteed a yaku to make a cheap win if you want one. Of course, this would be an incredibly cheap hand, so unless you have some other yaku or a couple dora tiles to combine with it, it's often better to keep your hand closed and go for riichi than to open it to take the honor tile pon.

All Simples
This yaku is so fast and cheap that some house rules don't even allow it to be earned if you have any open melds (The McGill Students' Mahjong Club is NOT one of these groups, feel free to make an open All Simples hand here). It's incredibly easy to make since you can call any chiis or pons you want, as long as you don't use any honor tiles, 1's or 9's. Conversely, the All With Orphans hand (which is basically the opposite of All Simples) is an incredibly bad hand for new players to go for, with a high-risk/low-return play style.

On the other hand, it can sometimes pull your hand into furiten (if your final meld is a 2-3 dots and you draw a 1-dots, you can't win with it since your hand will no longer be All Simples, and once you discard it you can no longer win with another player's discarded tile). Pay attention to your 2-3 and 7-8 potential melds for this reason.

In any case, this hand is also incredibly cheap, so you're often better keeping it closed and going for riichi unless you can score some other yaku with it or need a cheap, quick win.

Peace
Peace is a complicated hand for beginners to understand, but it can combine really easily with many, many different hands (commonly All Simples; Riichi; Large Straight; Three Colors, One Chii; Pure Double Chii...). It's important not to think of it as identical to Hong Kong Old Style mahjong's All Chows hand, but it does play very similarly to a cheap All Chows and Concealed Hand.

1. Keep your hand concealed. You can't score Peace if you have any open melds.
2. Your pair can't be dragon tiles, your seat wind, or the round wind. Change them out for anything else.
3. Your final hand must be waiting on at least two tiles, and it must be to complete the chii. For this reason, it's more important to have a pair early than a chii, so sacrifice sets like 4-6 earlier than pairs (especially since closed waits like that invalidate Peace).
4. You must keep your winning tile separate if your self-pick it. This is always a good idea in Japanese Riichi mahjong, but if you mix the tile in with your hand before revealing it, you will lose your chance at Peace (since it can't be proven that you were waiting to complete the chii with one of two tiles).

Large Straight and Three Colors, One Chii
These yaku are rather similar in Japanese Riichi mahjong. Both of them are simple to make easily, but become cheap enough to be almost worthless on their own if your hand has any open melds. Large Straight has the benefit of being fairly easy to combine with a Half Flush or Full Flush, whereas Three Colors, One Chii can easily combine with All Simples, All With Orphans, or All With Terminals. If your opening hand has a few almost-chiis to make either of these hands, consider working towards them. However, be aware that these hands have to risk playing around furiten for the same reason as All Simples, so closed waits are far safer for these hands if you open them (A 1-3 bamboo is guaranteed to win with a 2-bamboo, but you might lose your chance at Large Straight if you draw a 4-bamboo with a 2-3 bamboo already in your hand)

All Pons and Seven Pairs
Unlike in Hong Kong Old Style mahjong, Seven Pairs is generally seen as objectively superior in Japanese Riichi mahjong. Since the game is more defensive and the dead wall limits the tiles available, it becomes much easier to make a Seven Pairs hand than an All Pons hand, and the former also is easier to take apart and defend with if you need to. But there are still some hands that can easily go for All Pons, and if you can get Three Concealed Pons with one as well, you can easily get a big hand. Concealed pons are also good for fu, while a Seven Pairs hand's biggest weakness is the heavily limited amount of fu it has, meaning it's hard to make it valuable without declaring riichi.

Half Flush and Full Flush
Just like in Hong Kong Old Style, these are always valid hands to go for, but a Half Flush is generally considered too slow and not subtle enough to compare against most other hands in Japanese Riichi mahjong. By the time you open your second meld, any other player might have finished her All Simples hand, or might have an open pon of dragon tiles to run away with a cheap win. And since it's as easy to defend against as it is in Hong Kong Old Style, you usually have to pray for a self-picked win (or someone in riichi being forced to discard your winning tile).

The Responsibility Rule

'Responsibility', also known as 'pao' (パオ) is a penalty applied to a player who takes unnecessary risks around incredibly valuable hands. In general, the basic reasoning behind 'responsibility' is "If I know a player is close to a limit hand and I still give him the tiles he needs to advance his hand, the limit hand on the table is entirely my fault."

In our Japanese Riichi rules, 'responsibility' applies to the following limit hands:

• Big Four Winds (for the fourth wind pung)
• Big Three Dragons (for the third dragon pung)
• All Honors (for the fourth honor pung)
• All Terminals (for the fourth terminal pung)
• Perfect Green (for the fourth 'green' meld)
• Four Kans/Gongs (for the fourth gong)

In our Hong Kong Old Style rules, 'responsibility' also applies to Full Flush and Ruby Dragon hands.

'Responsibility' occurs when a player is only missing one meld (and possibly the pair) to complete her high value hand, and all of their other melds are open and visible. For example:

• Player A has an open pung of the green dragon and the red dragon, so it's expected that the players should be wary about discarding the white dragon, to prevent a limit hand.
• If Player B later discards a white dragon, and Player A does call it for a pung/gong, Player B becomes liable for the responsibility penalty.
• If Player A self-picks her winning tile while Player B is liable for the responsibility penalty, player B must pay the entire 384 (HKOS) or 32000 (Riichi) points for the hand (it is still scored as a self-picked win, but Player B must also pay the shares for Players C and D).
• If instead, Player A wins off of Player C's discard, both Players B and C pay 128 (HKOS) or 16000 (Riichi) points to Player A (it is scored as a win by discard off of Player C, but Player B has to split the cost).
• If, despite 'responsibility', Player B, C, or D win the hand, the lucky Player B does not suffer any further penalty.

There are a few other details about the responsibility rule.

• Even if the Perfect Green hand has four open 'green' melds, it is possible that the pair is not 'green' and that the hand would not be a limit hand.
• If Player A declares a win with a hand like this, the responsibility penalty is ignored.
• But if Player A changes her pair to be 'green' tiles before declaring a win, the responsibility penalty applies.
• The All Honors and All Terminals hands are treated the same way, as are the Full Flush and Ruby Dragon hands in our HKOS rules.
• The Four Gongs hand only qualifies for the responsibility penalty if both of the following conditions are met.
• Player A has three melds of gongs already visible at the time of the open gong taken from Player B. None of her gongs can be undeclared in her hand at the time, and an open pung that Player A turns into a promoted gong some time after taking the open gong from Player B does not qualify (The responsibility penalty is never applied retroactively).
• Player A calls an open gong off of Player B. If Player A instead calls an open pung and later upgrades it to a promoted gong, Player B is not liable for the responsibility penalty.

There is one final rule that is considered part of the responsibility penalty, but occurs under very different circumstances. If Player A discards a tile that Player B uses for an open gong, and then Player B immediately wins off of his replacement tile, it is treated as a win by discard off of Player A (but the yaku for Self-Pick still applies).

In Japanese Riichi style, a concealed gong is treated as an open meld for the purposes of responsibility. For example, if player A has a concealed gong of green dragons and a concealed gong of red dragons, and then later uses player B's discarded white dragon to complete a pung, player B is still 'responsible' for this hand. This does not occur in Hong Kong Old Style, since the tiles used in player A's concealed gongs are not visible in this ruleset.