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.