Shandong (Jinan)山东麻将

The tiles

Jinan (the reference build here) plays 144 tiles: three suits 1 through 9, winds and dragons, four copies each, plus 8 flower tiles. Weihai's own build (荣成麻将) drops the flowers for a leaner 136-tile deck, same rules otherwise.

二五八将: the defining rule

Every winning hand needs four sets and a pair, same as anywhere else, except the pair must be a 2, 5 or 8, in any of the three suits. Pair on a 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 or 9 instead and the hand simply can't go out, however complete the four sets are.

The two shapes outside the pair-and-sets model

小二五八 (All 258): every tile in the hand is a 2, 5 or 8, in any suit; these can stand as loose pairs rather than needing to form sets, so a hand of nothing but 258s wins even when it can't be read as four sets and a pair the ordinary way. 十三幺 (Thirteen Orphans): a terminal in each suit plus every honor, with any one of them paired, the same shape most regional rulesets carry.

明约/暗约: declaring at tenpai

Once you're one tile from a win, you may (but don't have to) declare which way you're playing it:

Declaring 明约 locks your wait the same way most declared-ready rules do: only a kong that leaves the wait exactly where it was stays legal afterward.

拿分: three calls, one liability

Feed one seat three calls (any mix of chi, pong and kong) over the course of a hand, and a liability link forms: if that seat goes on to win, you alone pay their full win, self-draw included, and the other two players are excluded entirely.

Calls and kongs

Chi only from the seat to your left, pong from anywhere, kong (concealed, exposed, or added) as usual. 抢杠: if a player pongs and then draws the fourth copy to kong it, and someone else was waiting on that exact tile, the win takes priority, and the kong-declarer alone pays the full win. 杠了: if a kong built straight off your discard then wins for its declarer off the replacement tile (杠上开花), you alone are on the hook for it, the same way 抢杠's declarer is.

Scoring: (base + flowers) × fan

Every hand starts at a flat 5-point base. Flower points (one per kept flower, plus points per kong) are added to the base, and the sum is multiplied by however many fan the hand's patterns add up to.

Qualifying patterns stack additively: a hand that's both 混一色 and 七对 counts 2 + 2 = 4 fan, not one or the other.

Kong flower-points

荒庄: the dead-hand streak

No win by the time the wall is down to its last 12 tiles (each declared kong moves that up to 2 tiles earlier, up to 6 tiles total) ends the hand in a draw, and the dealer passes to the next seat. Consecutive drawn hands double the stake for the next hand played (2×, 4×, 8×, 16×, 32×, capped), reset the moment anyone wins. A fourth kong declared in one hand ends it in a draw outright, unless that same kong just won.

After three consecutive drawn hands, the dealer additionally pays each other player one flat point before the next hand begins, separate from the stake-doubling.

Glossary

清幺九 (all terminals) has no sourced fan value in any Jinan source and isn't scored here. 一炮多响 (more than one winner off a single discard) ships off; the closest eligible seat counterclockwise from the discarder takes it instead.