Mahjong styles
Rules, videos and a free PDF for each. No account needed.
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Basic Mahjong
New to mahjong? Start here: every tile face, what a winning hand looks like, how to set up the table, and the four calls of chow, pong, kong, and win.
13-tile hands, 4 melds + a pair, flat-coin payment. The default ruleset running at the table. Read it once, then go play.
Playable at the table
Harbin哈尔滨麻将
112 tiles. Only three suits and Zhong. A win needs a triplet, a revealed meld and a terminal, and calling ting turns up a wildcard the whole table can win on.
Hong Kong港式麻將
144 tiles, with flowers and seasons drawn and replaced as you go. The only ruleset here that prices a hand: dragons, winds, flushes and seven pairs each count for fan, and the total is looked up rather than added.
Taiwanese十六張麻將
The sixteen-tile game as Taiwan actually plays it. Five sets and a pair, not four. Flowers and seasons match your seat, and hands are priced in tai: counted up and added to a base, so every tai is worth what the last one was.
Wanzhou万州麻将
108 tiles, no honors, no chow, and every hand opens with a three-tile swap in a direction a die picks after you have chosen. A plain hand must be self-drawn, except at either end of the wall.
Jilin吉林麻将
All 136 tiles, and a win must span every suit or none. Wind and dragon kongs turn themselves face up at the deal, and the first player one tile away rolls for a treasure only they can see.
Guangdong (Fixed Ghost)推倒胡
No chow, and you only win on your own draw. The White Dragon is wild, kongs pay as they land, and a kong left on show can be robbed.
Guangdong (Flip Ghost)推倒胡
The same game, but a tile flipped at the deal points at the wildcard tile and it is never the exact tile you flipped. A fresh ghost every hand.
Beijing北京麻将
No chow, and you only win on your own draw. A tile comes off the wall once the deal ends and it is wild along with the tile it points at. Neither can be thrown.
Fuzhou福州麻将
144 tiles, and every honor is a bonus tile right alongside the flowers. Only the suits are ever held. A tile flipped off the dead wall once they're all replaced is Jin, wild for the rest of the hand.
Hefei合肥麻将
84 tiles. Just ranks 2 through 8 only, no honors. Nothing may ever be called off a discard, and no hand wins until one suit reaches eight tiles. Every meld is built in hand, priced in 咀.
Baotou包头麻将
144 tiles, flowers included. One call all hand, shared between chi and pong, and it has to leave you tenpai. Pass on a winning tile and you're locked out of discard wins, briefly or for good depending on whether you've called yet.
Lanzhou兰州麻将
No chow, and a toss phase before the first discard sets aside 1s, 9s and honors as pre-formed melds. You must declare tenpai to win, and passing on a winning tile blocks only that tile.
Shandong (Jinan)山东麻将
144 tiles, flowers included. The pair in every winning hand must be a 2, 5 or 8. Declare 明约 for a doubled, self-draw-only stake, and feed one seat three calls and you alone pay their win.
Shanghai: Knocking上海敲麻
Any standard 4-meld-and-pair hand can win, but only after you've formally knocked ready, which locks your hand and obligates you to take the first legal win or forfeit the hand outright.
Changsha长沙麻将 (258麻将)
108 tiles, no honors. The pair must be a 2, 5 or 8 unless the hand is a flush, all triplets, all 258s, or entirely claimed. Five dealt hands pay out instantly and keep playing, one discard can pay several winners, and a bird drawn after the win doubles whoever it points at.
Hangzhou: Fixed Wildcard杭州麻将
You only win on your own draw, and the White Dragon is 财神, wild for anything, and throwable like any other tile. A wildcard in your pair wins on whatever you draw next; two of them, and you can throw one away to double it.
Hangzhou: Flip Wildcard杭州麻将
The same game, but 财神 is settled by dice each hand: count that many stacks in from the dead wall and turn the top tile up. That exact face is wild, not the one after it, leaving three copies in play.
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