Rules

Setup

You need four players, a set of 152 tiles, four racks, and the current year's card from the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL), which lists the hands you're allowed to build and their point values.

All four players build the wall together: everyone stacks their tiles into a double row in front of them, and together you push the four rows into a square in the middle of the table.

Dealing

One player becomes the dealer — often by rolling dice, or however your group prefers. Tiles are dealt from the wall until each player has 13 tiles, and the dealer has 14 — the dealer always starts with one extra tile, since they discard first.

The Charleston

Before anyone draws or discards, players pass tiles to each other in a set pattern to improve their hands. See the Charleston guide for the full walkthrough — it's involved enough to deserve its own page.

Gameplay

1. The dealer discards a tile to start play.
2. Going around the table, each player draws a tile (from the wall, or by calling another player's discard) and then discards one.
3. If a discarded tile completes a pung, kong, or quint you're building, you can call it out of turn instead of waiting to draw it. Calling exposes that group face-up in front of your rack.
4. Play continues, tile by tile, with everyone working toward one of the hands listed on the card.

Winning

When your 14 tiles fully match a hand on the card — using any exposed groups plus what's left in your hand — you call "Mahjong." The other players check your hand against the card before the win counts. See the Scoring guide for how points are worked out from there.

Wall games

If the wall runs out of tiles before anyone completes a hand, the round ends with no winner — this is called a wall game. Play resets for the next hand, and in most groups the same dealer deals again, since no one won that hand.