Hangzhou: Flip Wildcard杭州麻将

The tiles: 136 total

The full standard set: three suits numbered 1–9, four copies each (108 tiles), plus seven honor tiles, four copies each (28 tiles). No flower or season tiles.

The shape of the game

13 tiles in hand, 14 to win, and a complete hand is 4 melds + 1 pair, or seven pairs. Chow, pong and kong may all be called. Play passes counterclockwise and the dealer goes first.

财神: the wildcard

One tile is wild: it stands in for whatever a hand needs to finish. Unlike most variants' wildcards it is an ordinary tile in every other respect: it may be drawn, held, thrown, ponged and konged. There are two ways of settling which tile it is, chosen before play starts.

1. Fixed wildcard. The White Dragon, always. Known before anyone sits down, and all four copies are live.
2. Flip wildcard (翻财神). Settled fresh at the start of every hand, by dice (see below).

Flipping for 财神

Once the tiles are dealt, roll one die. Count that many stacks in from the dead-wall end (the end kong replacements are drawn from, opposite the break) and turn the top tile of that stack face up.

That exact tile is 财神 for the hand. It stays face up where it sits and is never drawn, so the other three copies are the wild ones in play. Roll a 3 and turn up 7饼, and every 7饼 still in the game is wild.

Careful if you know Guangdong: there the flipped tile only points at the wild one. Here the tile you turn up is the wildcard.

抱头: a wildcard in the pair

The hand below is four melds and a single wildcard. There is nothing left to wait for: the next tile you draw, whatever it is, pairs with the wildcard and the hand is complete. That is 抱头 (bàotóu), and it doubles what the hand pays.

The White Dragon is the fixed-mode wildcard. Draw 3饼 and the pair is 3饼 + wildcard; draw East and the pair is East + wildcard. Every tile in the wall wins.

财飘: throwing a wildcard away

Now suppose your pair is two wildcards. The hand is already complete: you could win this instant. Instead you may throw one wildcard away and win by 抱头 on your next draw, for twice as much. That is 财飘 (cáipiāo), the variant's signature move.

Nothing else explains throwing a wildcard, so the throw is the declaration: there is nothing to announce. Draw a second wildcard afterwards and you may float again: twice is 双财飘, three times 三财飘, and three is the limit.

Kongs: 杠花 and 连杠

A kong draws a replacement tile from the dead end of the wall. Winning on that replacement is 杠花 (gānghuā) and doubles the hand. Kong again off the replacement, and again, and the doubling compounds: a win on the last of a run of kongs is 连杠 (liángāng).

An ordinary draw from the front of the wall breaks the run. Kongs pay nothing when declared here; their whole value is in the multiplier.

Seven pairs (七对) and its deluxe forms

Fourteen tiles in seven pairs is a winning hand, honors included. Hold four copies of a face and they count as two of the seven pairs: 豪华七对 (deluxe seven pairs), and each further four-of-a-kind doubles again.

What a hand is worth

A plain win (平胡) is ×1. Every bonus below multiplies it, and bonuses from different rows multiply each other: 杠花 on a 抱头 hand is ×2 × ×2 = ×4 (杠抱), and on a floated hand ×2 × ×4 = ×8 (杠飘).

Paying up

Everyone starts with 50 points (40 or 60 are equally common house settings). A plain win moves 1 point per share, multiplied by everything above.

• The dealer self-draws: all three opponents pay the full amount each.
• A non-dealer self-draws: the dealer pays double, the other two pay the normal amount each.

The dealer's seat (庄) and streaks (连庄)

• The dealer keeps the seat by winning, or when the hand draws.
• A non-dealer who wins takes the deal for the next hand.
• A dealer holding the seat two hands running multiplies the whole settlement by ×4; three or more, by ×8. This stacks on top of the hand's own multipliers.

The hand is a draw (流局) once the wall is down to 20 tiles with nobody out. No points change hands, and the dealer keeps both the seat and the streak.

Documented, but not yet at this table

Hangzhou has a further layer that only switches on after the dealer wins three hands running (三连庄). It is written down here for completeness; the table in this app does not run it yet.

• Discard wins open up, but only between the dealer and a non-dealer, never between two non-dealers.
• 三放承包 / 反承包. Feed one opponent three calls off your discards and you underwrite their win alone; win yourself instead and they pay double.
• 抢打. Once a wildcard is discarded, everyone else is locked out of claiming it, and a locked player who must throw has to throw the tile they just drew.
• 漏胡 / 漏碰. Pass on a tile you could have won or ponged, and you are locked out of that same tile for the rest of the round.