Lanzhou兰州麻将

The tiles: 136 total

The full standard set: three suits 1 through 9, winds and dragons, four copies each. No flowers, no bonus tiles.

No chow

Lanzhou's base mode (两报) drops chow entirely: pong and kong are the only calls on offer. Every meld besides one you build in hand comes from a pong, a kong, or the pre-play toss below.

摔牌: the toss, before the first discard

The moment the deal finishes, every seat may set aside up to three groups of three tiles: a 1, a 9, or an honor in each group, and the three don't need to match each other. Each group becomes a pre-formed meld on the spot, with no replacement draw: tossing one group leaves you playing the rest of the hand with 10 concealed tiles and 1 meld, the same shape as an early pong.

Tossing is entirely optional: 0 groups is a legal choice, and nothing about winning depends on having tossed. Every seat resolves the toss at once; nobody's discard begins until all four are done, however many groups they took.

报章: you must declare to win

No win counts (self-draw or off a discard) until you've declared 报章: you're one tile from complete, and you're saying so. Once you declare, your hand's shape is locked: every discard from here on must leave you waiting on exactly the tile(s) you declared on.

Kongs after declaring

Once declared, only two kinds of kong stay legal: a concealed kong (four in hand) or a turn-corner kong (a fourth tile added to your own exposed pong). An exposed kong claimed off someone else's discard is not allowed. Either legal kind must also leave your wait exactly where it was; a kong that would shift it is refused.

杠开 (winning on the tile drawn to replace a kong) and 抢杠 (robbing a kong someone else is upgrading) are both legal, same as most variants.

漏胡: pass on a win, that tile is blocked

Let a discard go by that would have completed your hand, and that specific tile is blocked from winning you the hand later; nothing else you're waiting on is affected. The block lifts the moment you draw and discard for yourself, or make a call.

漏胡 never touches self-draw: you can still draw the very tile you passed on and win with it.

One winner per discard

If a discard would complete more than one hand at once, only the claimant closest downstream of the discarder gets it; the others are skipped, unless that seat declines.

How a hand is priced

Every win starts at a flat 1-point base. Two things double it, independently: a self-draw, and each complete self-drawn 中发白 dragon set. There's no dealer bonus in either direction; a dealer's win is worth exactly what anyone else's is.

中发白: the dragon set

Draw all three dragons yourself: 中 (red), 发 (green), 白 (white), and the hand's score doubles. A dragon taken by pong doesn't count; it has to be drawn. A self-drawn 幺鸡 (1-bamboo) can stand in for one missing dragon in a set, but only one per set (小鸡满天飞).

The draw

The hand ends in a draw once the wall is down to its final 14 tiles; the last live tile is still drawn and discarded before the hand is called.

Glossary

Base 两报 mode only (no chow). The other four dealer-chosen modes (三报, 悄悄胡, and the 包 liability variants) and the dealer's 叫嘴子 bonus-fan pick, aren't available at this table yet.