Shanghai: Knocking上海敲麻
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.
- 13 tiles, 14 to win
- 4 melds and 1 pair, with seven pairs excluded
- Chow upstream only, pong and kong standard
- Knock to declare readiness: it locks your hand and you must take the first legal win
- Miss a win after knocking and you forfeit the hand
- Dragons act as flowers alongside the 8 flowers
Rules
The tiles
144 tiles: three suits 1 through 9, winds and dragons, four copies each, plus 8 flower tiles: 春夏秋冬 and 梅兰菊竹. The signature twist: the three dragon tiles (中发白) play as flowers too, alongside the usual eight. Winds stay ordinary tiles; only dragons move.
Dealer draws 14, everyone else 13. Starting with the dealer and going around, each player exposes every flower and dragon they were dealt and draws a replacement from the back of the wall, the same as any flower-and-season deal, just with dragons joining in.
Two claim restrictions
Forgo-then-reclaim: pass on a discard and you can't claim a later copy of that same tile (as a chow, pong, or kong) until you've drawn again yourself.
Swap-calling: you may not immediately discard the tile you just claimed, nor, for a claimed chow, the tile that would complete the run's other end.
Already in hand
Claimed
敲: knocking ready
Any standard hand (four sets and a pair, no shape restriction) can win, but only after you've formally knocked (signalled at the table, e.g. stacking one flower tile on another). Once knocked, your hand is locked: no more reshaping it, though flower/dragon replacements keep happening as normal.
The mandatory kong
Once knocked, you must extend an exposed pung into a kong the moment you're able to, unless a self-draw win is sitting right there instead, which always wins out over the compulsion. The upgrade is exposed the same way any kong is, so a ready opponent may rob it and win on the spot.
What's excluded
Seven pairs (七对) does not win here, even though every other standard shape does; it's specifically banned as too easy under this variant's already-loose win condition.
No dead wall, and dealer rotation
Play runs until someone wins or the wall is fully exhausted: there is no reserved dead wall to stop short of. The winner deals the next hand, whoever they were; on a draw, East stays dealer.
抢杠 (robbing the kong) is live: any kong that exposes a tile (including the mandatory upgrade above) may be intercepted by a seat waiting on it, who wins on it instead.
Scoring: hua × 2^doubles
Every hand starts at a 1-hua base for going out. Hua are then added for flowers/dragons kept and for pung/kong tiles, and the whole sum is doubled once per qualifying double below. A hand with no hua beyond the base is instead a flat 10-hua fig (无花果).
| Element | Hua |
|---|---|
| Going out (base) | 1 |
| Each flower / dragon-as-flower | 1 |
| Plain-suit pung | 0 |
| Plain-suit exposed kong | 1 |
| Plain-suit concealed kong | 2 |
| Wind pung | 1 |
| Wind exposed kong | 2 |
| Wind concealed kong | 3 |
Doubles
| Feature | Doubles |
|---|---|
| 大挑车: melded down to a bare one-tile wait, self-drawn | 1 |
| 门清: fully concealed hand | 1 |
| 杠开: won off a kong or flower replacement draw | 1 |
| 碰碰胡: all pungs | 1 |
| 混一色: half flush | 1 |
| 清一色: full flush | 2 |
抢杠 (robbing the kong) pays a flat ×3 on top of everything above: it is a payment multiplier, not a double, and isn't part of the 2^doubles term.
What's not on this table
一炮多响 (multiple simultaneous discard wins, each paid in full) ships off: the same call every other regional variant here makes. "Super Random" table add-ons (a wild-dice/draw-counter multiplier, 飞蝇) are optional extras in the source itself and aren't included. 黄庄, mentioned but never priced in any source's own hua table, isn't scored either.
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