Mahjong Basics: Tiles, Sets and How to Win

Mahjong is a family of games built from one shared deck. Once you know the tiles and the two ways to form a set, every regional variant becomes readable.

The tiles

A full set contains 144 tiles in three suits, two honour groups and a small number of specials. The suits are dots (circles), bams (bamboo) and characters (craks), each running from one to nine in four copies – 108 tiles in total.

The honours are the four winds (east, south, west, north) and the three dragons (red, green, white), each in four copies, taking the total to 136. Eight further tiles – four flowers and four seasons – are included in most sets and usually act as bonus tiles rather than part of a hand.

The two shapes of a set

Every winning hand is built from melds, and there are only two kinds. A pung or triplet is three identical tiles. A chow or sequence is three consecutive tiles of the same suit – a four, five and six of bamboo, for example.

The win condition for the most common forms is four melds plus a pair, making fourteen tiles in total. Honour tiles can only form pungs, never sequences, which is why winds and dragons are awkward to keep and valuable to hold.

Drawing, discarding and calling

Players take turns drawing a tile and discarding one, so the discard pool is a shared resource. You may claim another player's discard to complete a meld: a chow only from the player to your left, while a pung or a kong – four identical tiles – may be claimed from anyone.

Claiming exposes part of your hand, which tells opponents what you are collecting and removes some of your flexibility. Concealed hands are worth more in most scoring systems because they are harder to complete.

Frequently asked questions