April MSMC 2016 Tournament

It's that time of year again: The McGill Students' Mahjong Club is holding our annual mahjong tournament! Registration is 100% free, and you could win small prizes if you make it to the top, so why not spend a day having fun and playing mahjong with us! Whether you're a beginner or an expert, please stop by to have some fun!

The tournament is scheduled for 2:00 PM in the SSMU Blue Room (room 403). We have the room booked until 9:00 PM, but the tournament may end sooner depending on how many entrants we get.

RULES

• The tournament is free to enter for any interested people.
• The amount of rounds we play will depend on how many people attend.
• We will use the standard Japanese Riichi rules of the MSMC. (Check the links in the sidebar for a list of riichi rules if needed)
• Please clearly vocalize all calls. The terms you use should be clear and consistent (Chow/Chi, Pung/Pon, Gong/Kan, Win/Mahjong/Ron/Tsumo)
• Do not stall for longer than necessary. Excessively slowing down the game may be penalized.
• Do not take any tiles from the wall before the previous player has finished discarding. Drawing out of turn may be penalized, even if you do not look at the tile's face.
• Give other players enough time to call on discards. Do not play excessively fast for the purpose of making other players miss their opportunities to call on discards.
• You may take back any call until you have discarded a tile or revealed any tiles from your hand to accept the called tile.
• If you accidentally make an invalid call (e.g., a player discards a 2 dots and you reveal a 3-5 dots and declare 'chii'), you may correct that call if possible before you discard (e.g., putting the 5 dots back into your hand and revealing a 4 dots instead). If you discard a tile first, or do not have the tiles in your hand to correct that call, your hand is dead.
• Once a discard hits the table, you may not take it back and discard a different tile instead. Your turn ends as soon as the tile is discarded.
• The responsibility rule is enabled for the following yakuman: Big Three Dragons, Big Four Winds, All Honors, All Terminals, Perfect Green, and Four Kans.
• No red fives will be used.
• You may not make an open pon and discard the fourth copy of that tile in the same turn, nor can you make an open chii and discard a copy of that called tile in the same turn, nor can you discard any other tile that would complete that chii in the same turn (e.g., if a player discards a 2-dots, you cannot take it to make a 2-3-4 dots and then discard either a 2-dots or a 5-dots in the same turn). This is called kuikae, and is disallowed.
• If two players declare a win off of the same tile, turn order takes priority.
• If the game ends in an exhaustive draw, any riichi bets still on the table go to whoever is in first place.
• A player's wall is inviolable. Aside from when drawing a tile (or flipping over the under dora if you won after declaring riichi), there is no reason to ever touch another player's wall without his or her permission.
• Except when declaring tsumo, ron, or tenpai at the end of the round, do not reveal your hand or give information about it at any time. Your score can be penalized if you reveal your hand after another player declares ron or tsumo, or if you tell people what tiles you were waiting on, how close you were to a yakuman, etc.
• Do not look through the wall or dead wall after a hand, and do not check the under dora unless you won after declaring riichi.

TOURNAMENT PLACEMENT

(The following plans are subject to change as needed)

If we have four entrants, we will skip directly to the finals.

If we have five or six entrants, we will host two consecutive games tabled by random draws. Whoever comes in first (or second, with six entrants) in the first game advances to the finals. Whoever comes in first or second (or third, with five entrants) in the second game also advances to the finals.

If we have seven or eight players, each table will play two consecutive games. Whichever two players from each table have the highest combined final score from their games will enter the finals. A table of three players will be joined by the tournament organizer (who cannot enter the finals, and is only playing to fill in the numbers).

If we have more than eight players, we will determine finalists in another way, to be discussed.

The finals will consist of two (or three, if we had five or fewer total entrants) consecutive games among the four finalists. Placement of the finalists will entirely be determined by their final score after the two (or three) final games.


FINAL SCORING

At the end of each hand, all players subtract 30,000 from their total score. The player in first place adds 20,000 to his score. All players then divide their score by 1000 (rounding up to the nearest thousand if their score is negative, and rounding down if their score is positive).
A placement bonus then happens: Whoever's score is the highest adds 20 to his score. Whoever's score is second adds 10. Third subtracts 10, and fourth subtracts 20. (If there are any ties, the original dealer's score is considered to be higher than anyone he ties with, then the original South, then West, and the original North player loses all ties).
If the scores do not perfectly add up to 0, adjust the first place's score so that they do.

The current total is added to each player's 'final score'. In this way, a player who doesn't get a lot of points but is able to frequently take second place may have a higher final score than a player who wins an incredible amount of points one round but busts out early in another round.

When the finals begin, each finalists 'final score' is reset to 0. At the end of the final rounds, whoever has the highest final score is the tournament winner!


SCORING

Please check our standard riichi scoring list for an explanation of how scoring is done. The following changes to scoring are in effect for the tournament:

• The Eight Dealer Keeps limit hand cannot be scored.
• The Gift of Man low-limit hand cannot be scored.
• The Chariot limit hand cannot be scored.

PENALTIES

CHOMBO

The following penalties happen whenever the game is forced into an state from which it cannot be recovered. If the dealer is penalized, she must pay 4000 points to all other players.
If a non-dealer is penalized, she must pay 4000 points to the dealer and 2000 points to the other two players.
If a chombo and win happen at the same time (including a Pool of Dreams), the win takes priority and the chombo is ignored.
When a chombo occurs, the seat winds do not change, but no repeat counter is added to the table. Any riichi bets that were placed on the table during that hand are returned to their owners, but any riichi bets that were already on the table from previous hands remain there.

• Revealing enough tiles from the wall that the game cannot fairly continue, or that the wall cannot surely be restored (up to the discretion of the tournament organizer).
• Revealing any amount of tiles from another player's hand.
• Declaring a win when you have no yaku, or when you do not have a legal hand. If you do not reveal your hand, this is not considered a chombo, but is instead considered a dead hand.
• Declaring a ron while you are in furiten. If you do not reveal your hand, this is not considered a chombo, but is instead considered a dead hand.
• Declaring riichi when you are not in tenpai. This chombo only happens if the hand ends in a draw.
• Making an invalid kan after declaring riichi. This chombo only happens if the hand ends in a draw.

DEAD HAND
The following penalty happens when one player makes a small error that makes it impossible for her to have a winning hand. A player with a dead hand may not declare riichi, pon, chii, kan, ron, or tsumo. She must simply draw and discard every turn, hoping not to feed another player. If the hand ends in an exhaustive draw, a player with a dead hand is never considered tenpai and cannot earn a Pool of Dreams.

• Having the wrong amount of tiles in your hand.
• Making an open meld, and not taking the tile from your opponent's pond within two discards.
• Making an invalid call. For example, revealing a pair of 3-dots and declaring 'pon' when an opponent discards a 5-dots. If you correct this error before discarding a tile, your hand is not dead.
• Declaring ron or tsumo in error, but neglecting to reveal your tiles. If you do reveal your hand, this becomes a chombo instead of a dead hand.

SCORE PENALTIES
The following penalties do not affect your in-game score, but instead deduct points from your final score (a total of points earned from all games in the tournament). Unlike chombos, no one else at the tournament gains points when you are penalized in this way. All score penalties are ultimately up to the sole discretion of the tournament organizer.

• If you accidentally drop a tile onto the floor, there is a penalty of 2 points to your score for every tile you drop.
• If you arrive late or must leave before the end of the tournament, there may or may not be a penalty to your score, depending on the amount of players we have.
• If you discuss the state of the game, there is a penalty of up to 10 points to your score depending on the severity and context. This is because your words may disadvantage another player by drawing attention to them or to their hand.
• Examples of allowed discussion:
• "You're supposed to draw from this point here" (as a player draws the wrong tile from the wall)
• "Don't forget to take that tile" (as a player makes an open meld but doesn't take the appropriate tile from his opponent's pond)
• "Hey, that's the wrong tile" (as a player reveals an invalid meld)
• "You have too many tiles in your hand"
• Examples of penalized discussion:
• "Don't discard anymore honors!" (as a player has three open melds of honor tiles)
• "He's close to a Pool of Dreams!"
• "Orphans aren't dead, be careful"
• "Do you have All with Terminals or Three Colors, One Chii?" (thinking aloud about another player's yaku)
• If you reveal your hand except when required to (declaring ron, tsumo, or tenpai during an exhaustive draw), or tell people about your hand or its waits, there may be a penalty of up to 5 points to your score (up to the discretion of the tournament organizer).
• If you look at tiles from the wall at the end of a hand (whether you're checking the wall, dead wall, or under dora), there will be a penalty of 2 points to your score for every tile you reveal.

Sanma: Japanese Riichi 3-Player Variant

Often, it happens that only three people are available to play. Fortunately, there is a variant of Japanese Riichi style designed for three players. Here are how the rules differ from the regular Japanese Riichi rules:

• All of the character tiles are taken out, except for the 1-characters and 9-characters. This means All Terminals and Thirteen Orphans can still be scored.
• All of the yaku from regular Japanese Riichi style rules are still included, except for 'Three Colors, One Chii', which is impossible to score due to the missing characters tiles.
• The three players each build a wall 18 tiles long and 2 tiles high.
• After dealing the opening hands and separating the dead wall, flip over the fifth tile from the left of the dead wall instead of the third: This is your dora indicator tile.
• No player is the North Seat: They simply rotate between East, South, and West.
• Each player starts with 35000 points. The West Round is never played.
• Any turn after drawing, if a player has a north wind in his hand, he make declare 'north' and meld it as if it were a flower, drawing a replacement tile from the dead wall. This is called a 'north dora' and is worth 1 fan, but does not contribute to the 1 yaku minimum needed to win.
• Doing this does not open your hand if you were already concealed.
• You may meld a north wind that you draw after declaring riichi.
• If a player is waiting on a north wind, he may declare a win off of a player melding a north dora. This does not earn you the 'Rob a Gong' yaku.
• If the dora indicator is a west wind, every north dora is worth 2 fan instead of 1.
• If a player melds a north dora while another player has just declared Riichi, that player may no longer earn One-Shot.
• If you draw your winning tile after melding a north dora, you earn the 'Win off of a Replacement Tile' yaku.
• There is no abortive draw for "Four Players Riichi" or for "Same Four Winds", because there are only three players.
• You may not make any open chiis, except to declare a win. You may still make closed chiis, or open pungs and gongs.
• The same score table from regular Japanese Riichi style rules. This means that winning by tsumo is worth fewer points than winning by ron.

A Quick Look at Mahjong around the World: Vietnamese Mahjong

Vietnamese Mahjong definitely beats out any other style for the greatest tile count. Even American Mahjong can't compare to its massive tile count: 160 for classical sets, and 176 for more modern versions. In order to reach this ungodly amount of tiles, the Vietnamese have included significantly more bonus tiles and Jokers than any other style!

In addition to the four flowers and four seasons, there are eight special bonus tiles that were apparently once called 'fairies', but are usually translated as 'kings' and 'queens' now. Much like how there is essentially no difference between flowers and seasons in Hong Kong Old Style mahjong, the kings, queens, flowers, and seasons are almost interchangeable in Vietnamese Mahjong.

The four kings (top) and four queens (bottom). The character on the kings means 'emperor' and on the queens means 'empress'. Image taken from http://www.sloperama.com

So from the 16 bonus tiles, along with the regular 28 honor tiles and 108 suited tiles, we have a total of 152 tiles. The other 8 (or 24 for modern sets) all come from special Joker tiles!

Unlike in American Mahjong, where a Joker can replace any tile in a meld, the Joker tiles in Vietnamese Mahjong have very specific purposes! Also, just like how flowers and seasons are treated as separate groups for the purposes of scoring, the eight Joker tiles are separated into two groups of four. There are four Blue Jokers as follows:

• The Emperor Joker can be used in place of any other tile, including a bonus tile.
• The Dots Joker is treated as any dots tile.
• The Bamboo Joker is treated as any bamboo tile.
• The Characters Joker is treated as any characters tile.

And four Red Jokers:

• The Suited Joker is treated as any dots, bamboo, or character tile (or bonus tile, according to some rules).
• The Wind Joker is treated as any wind tile.
• The Dragon Joker is treated as any dragon tile.
• The Flower Joker is treated as any bonus tile (which would usually be your own, since that's the only one that gets you points).

Images of the eight Joker tiles in order. The characters read, in order: altogether, barrel (dots), woven thread (bamboo), ten-thousand (characters), combined, happiness, element (dragon), flower. Image taken from http://www.sloperama.com

In classical sets, one copy of each Joker is used. In modern Vietnamese Mahjong sets, three copies of each Joker are used. However, one copy of each Joker is drawn with a circle around the Chinese character on the tiles, one set is drawn with a rectangle around the character, and one with a diamond around the character.

• No dead wall is used.
• You must reveal and replace all bonus tiles dealt to you in your opening hand, just like in Hong Kong Old Style mahjong. However, flowers drawn during later turns can kept in the hand and discarded or claimed during any of your later turns.
• If you discard a bonus tile (including the Flower Joker) while any other player is waiting, that player may treat your bonus tile as her winning tile, and win off of your discard.
• When replacing bonus tiles during your opening hand, you may (but do not have to) reveal any Jokers in your hand and treat them as bonus tiles. During later turns, you may only treat the Emperor Joker and the Flower Joker as bonus tiles.
• There is a huge bonus payable to a hand that wins without any Jokers, bonus tiles, or honor tiles called the 'No Flowers, No Leaves' hand. However, the rules around this hand seem to be incredibly complicated and obscure (you must not have any bonus tiles in your opening hand, you must immediately discard any bonus tiles you draw from then on without adding them to your hand, there are special bonuses for discarding all four Blue Jokers, or for discarding six bonus tiles...), so I cannot provide a full description of this hand.
• Discarded tiles are thrown randomly into the discard pile, like in Hong Kong Old Style mahjong.
• Discarded Joker tiles can be used to create open melds, or for another player to declare a win.

Unfortunately, the rules of this style seem to not be very easy to find on the internet, so I cannot provide a more detailed perspective on scoring than 'it seems to be identical to Chinese Classical scoring, except only the winner's hand is scored (in most rules, but the little information I can find on this is inconsistent)'. In addition, you also double the points your hand scores for every set on king tile and queen tile you have with a matching number (even if it does not correspond to your seat position).

A Quick Look at Mahjong around the World: Mahjong Competition Rules

China is the origin of the oldest styles of mahjong that exist, and also of the most recent notable variation. Mahjong Competition Rules, also known as Chinese Official or as Guobiao Mahjong was created by the Chinese government in 1998 in order to foster a more healthy and safe public perspective towards mahjong.

This game is notable for having one of the largest yaku count in all styles (with a total of 81 different yaku), as well as for having all official rules overseen by the China State Sports Commission (to clearly distinguish 'official' rules from 'house' rules, which almost no other mahjong style can do). Unfortunately, some of its rules are overly complicated and are still debated between official referees and between players, meaning that it inevitably requires casual players to come to agreements over particular rulings.

• There are no dealer keeps in MCR. The game always lasts exactly 16 hands.
• After the end of the south round but before the beginning of the west round, the seats are randomly changed.
• No dead wall is used. A draw only occurs when the live wall runs out of tiles without any players declaring a win.
• When a concealed gong is made, all four tiles are placed face-down with your open melds. They are not revealed until the end of the hand.
• 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.
• 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.
• You do not need to reveal bonus tiles right away when you draw them. You may keep them in your hand to reveal at a later point, or discard them for a guaranteed safe turn (discarded bonus tiles may never be claimed by other players).
• You may reveal a bonus tile or create a gong when there are no more tiles left in the wall. If you do so, the game ends in an exhaustive draw (but if you created a promoted gong, other players have a chance to rob the gong before the draw occurs).
• No bonus exists for a Gift of Heaven, Gift of Earth, or Gift of Man.
• Certain yaku can allow you to create 'knitted chows'. These involve having three consecutive tiles in three separate suits (such as a 1-bamboo, 2-dots, 3-characters). More specifically, hands that require knitted tiles require melds of 1-4-7 in one suit, 2-5-8 in a second suit, and 3-6-9 in the third suit.
• Knitted chows are always scored as chows for the sake of making yaku, but are only permissible in hands that score the yaku Knitted Straight, Lesser Knitted Honors, or Greater Knitted Honors.
• An open knitted chow is never permitted. You must self-pick all of the tiles to make the knitted chow, unless the tile needed to make the knitted chow is used to declare a win (Just like with the Thirteen Orphans hand, you are always permitted to win off of a discarded tile to make irregular hands).
• As this is an official government sanctioned sport, the official rulebook includes formalities such as an obligation to bow to your opponents before starting the first hand, or a rule forbidding the naming of a tile as it is discarded. None of these rules are binding in casual games, of course.
• To quote from the English translation of the official rulebook, "There should be a sign on the east wall, bearing the Chinese character "East"; on another wall, a sign bearing the Chinese character "Quiet" to remind everybody to keep the noise down; and on another wall, a sign bearing the Chinese character "Pin" to show to encouragement of moral merit." To my knowledge, very few casual MCR games include these signs.
• Additionally, severe rule breaking is (according to the rules) to be followed by "severe criticism". I would assume many casual games follow this particular rule.
• A player's hand must score at least 8 points in order to declare a win.
• If you self-pick your win, all other players pay you the value of your hand, plus 8 additional points as a bonus for winning.
• If you win off of a discarded tile, the player who discarded it pays you the value of your hand, plus 8 additional points as a bonus for winning. The other two players pay you simply 8 points.
• There are five notable principles for scoring your hand in MCR.
• The Non-Repeat Principle: If a single yaku inevitably implies a less valuable yaku (For example, a Seven Pairs hand will always be a Concealed Hand), only the more valuable yaku is scored: The implicit ones are ignored.
• The Non-Separation Principle: Essentially, you must decide on one particular layout for your hand. You could not treat a 1-1-1-2-2-2-3-3-3 dots as both three pungs and three chows for the purposes of scoring: You must choose one or the other.
• The Non-Identical Principle: Once a meld has been used with one other meld to create a yaku, it cannot be used with a second different meld to score the same yaku again (For example, if you have 1-2-3 dots, 1-2-3 dots, 4-5-6 dots, and 7-8-9 dots, you can only score Large Straight once. You cannot use both of your 1-2-3 dots to score two separate Large Straights).
• The Freedom of Choice Principle: If you can use a meld to score one of two (or more) separate yaku, you're free to choose to score the more valuable yaku.
• The Account-Once Principle: This principle is by far the most complicated. Once you have chosen the first yaku you wish to score that uses two or three melds (after scoring any yaku that relate to four melds, or the hand as a whole, such as All Pungs or Full Flush), any melds not used to score that yaku can only be used once for scoring other yaku. Here's an example to clarify this very confusing rule:
• Your hand has a 1-2-3 dots, 4-5-6 bamboo, and 7-8-9 characters that you use to make a Large Mixed Straight yaku. If your remaining meld is a 7-8-9 bamboo, you can either make a Small Straight (with the 4-5-6 bamboo) or a Two Colors, One Chow (with the 7-8-9 characters), but you are not permitted to make both.
• Additionally, the Account-Once Principle only relates to the elements of your melds, not whether or not they are concealed. Any yaku exclusively based on concealed melds (such as Concealed Gong or Two Concealed Pungs) ignore the Account-Once Principle.
• If a player tries to declare a win with a hand that does not score at least 8 points, he instead must pay each other player 10 points, and may not declare a win for the remainder of the hand.
• If a player tries to declare a win with a hand that does not meet the requirements for a winning hand (four melds and a pair, seven pairs, Thirteen Orphans, or knitted honors), he instead must pay each other player 20 points, and may not declare a win for the remainder of the hand.
• Unlike most other rulesets in which doing so is considered bad etiquette, if you win off of another player's discarded tile, you are obligated to take that tile out of her pond and add it to your hand before scoring. Failure to do so is treated as a false declaration of win (and therefore subject to paying 20 points to each other player).

A full example of scoring, organized in the order of the yaku's value to help determine uses of the Non-Repeat Principle, can be seen here. Another full example of scoring, organized in categories similarly to all other scoring systems on this blog to help players determine what yaku their hands score, can be seen here.

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