Free Style Ruleset PDFs
Download, print, and keep. No account needed.
Start here
Basic Mahjong 屁胡
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.
Guangdong 推倒胡 — Fixed Ghost
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 推倒胡 — Flip Ghost
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.
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.
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.
Taiwan Traditional 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.
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 山东麻将 (Jinan)
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.
Shandong 山东麻将 (Weihai)
The same 2, 5, or 8 pair ruleset at 136 tiles. No flowers here.
Shanghai 上海敲麻 — Knocking
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.
Reference
Sichuan
Bloody Mahjong — no honor tiles, one suit locked per hand. Not yet playable at the table.
Play a variant we haven’t covered?
Want to play your own local or household style here? Share the details here and we will create it here!