What Is American Mahjong?
American Mahjong is a tile-based game for four players, built around collecting a hand of 14 tiles that matches one of the hands on an official card. If you've never played, don't worry — by the end of this page, you'll know what's going on the first time you sit down at a table.
The basics
Four players sit around a table, each with a rack to hold their tiles. Instead of cards, you play with 152 tiles. There are three suits — Bams, Dots, and Craks — numbered 1 through 9. You'll also find Winds, Dragons, Flowers, and Jokers.
You'll start with 13 tiles on your rack (the dealer starts with 14). As the game goes on, you draw and discard tiles until your hand matches one of the official hands for the year. (At the very start, you'll also trade some tiles in a phase called the Charleston.) Match one, and you call "Mahjong" to win.
The card
Here's the biggest difference from other tile games: you're not free to build any hand you like. Every year, the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) — the group that sets the rules most American players use — publishes a card listing the exact hands you're allowed to make and how many points each one is worth. Most players keep a copy at the table and check it constantly, especially when they're starting out. That's completely normal.
Because the card changes every year, the game stays fresh even for people who've been playing for decades — there's always a new set of hands to learn.
How it's different from other mahjong games
If you've heard of mahjong before, it may have been the Chinese game, or Japanese Riichi. American Mahjong is its own game: it uses jokers freely — Chinese and Riichi mahjong don't. And instead of building any hand you like, you're working from that annual NMJL card. Even the scoring and the way people talk at the table feel different. If you've played one of those other versions, expect a genuinely different game, not just a new coat of paint on the one you know.
Where to go from here
Once the basics above make sense, the Beginner Guide walks through your first game step by step, and the Terms glossary is worth bookmarking — you'll hear a lot of new vocabulary at your first table.