Hefei合肥麻将

The tiles: 84 total

Three suits, but only ranks 2 through 8: no 1s, no 9s (斩幺九). No winds, no dragons, no flowers. Four copies of each of the 21 remaining faces: 3 × 7 × 4 = 84 tiles.

A small deck means a short wall: after the deal there are only about 27 draws left across all four players. Expect quick hands.

The wall

The deck doesn't split evenly four ways. The dealer and the seat opposite each build 11 stacks (22 tiles); the other two seats build 10 stacks (20 tiles): 22 + 22 + 20 + 20 = 84. Two dice pick the break, same as any other wall. Play passes counterclockwise, and the dealer goes first.

No calling, ever

There is no chow, no pong, and no exposed kong. Every meld is built in your own hand. The only thing you may ever take off someone else's discard is the winning tile itself.

八枝: the suit gate

This is the rule the whole variant is built around. However well a hand is shaped, it cannot win at all unless one suit reaches 8 or more of the 14 tiles. Four melds and a pair, perfectly formed, still loses to this check if no single suit clears eight.

Eleven characters out of fourteen tiles: comfortably past the gate, and every extra tile past eight is worth something (see “How a hand is priced” below).

Winning shapes

• Standard: 4 melds (runs or triplets) + 1 pair, same as any other variant.
• 七对 Seven pairs: legal here too, but still has to clear the suit gate above.
• 缺门: a hand using only two of the three suits, missing the third entirely. Different from the gate: this is about excluding a suit, not concentrating in one.

缺门 and the suit-gate bonus stack freely: a hand can be missing a suit and also be deep into another one at the same time.

海底: the last four tiles

The wall's final four tiles are drawn one each, in turn, but nobody discards after taking one. Win off one of these draws and it's 海底; nobody wins by the time they run out, and the hand is a draw. No kong may be declared once the wall is down to these four.

How a hand is priced: 咀

Every win starts at a flat 15 咀, then bonuses stack on top.

Settlement

• Off a discard: only the discarder pays the full total.
• Self-draw: all three opponents each pay the full total, in full, not split three ways.
• 连庄: while the dealer is on a streak, their win adds +4 咀 per streak (self-draw) or +2 咀 per streak (discard) on top of the total above, added after any 杠上开花 doubling. When someone else wins instead, the dealer alone pays that same surcharge on top of their ordinary share.

卡 (single-tile-wait bonuses: closed, edge, or pair waits) and 一炮多响 (one discard satisfying more than one hand at once) are documented here but not yet live at the table, along with an optional house rule that auto-passes the dealer after two straight drawn hands.