How to play American mahjong
American mahjong is a four-player tile game where you race to build one of the hands printed on that year's card. Here is the whole game in the order you will play it.
Checked and updated October 31, 2026
This guide follows the common National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) way of playing. Many groups have house rules, so ask your table before you start. The League's own rulebook, Mah Jongg Made Easy, settles disputes.
What you need
- An American set with at least 8 jokers and 8 flowers. Check yours here.
- Four racks with pushers, one per player.
- A current card for each player. The National Mah Jongg League publishes a new one every year, and you can only win with a hand on it. More about the card.
- Two dice and something to keep score with, such as coins, chips or a notepad.
The tiles
There are three suits, each numbered 1 to 9, with four copies of every tile.
- Dots (also called circles or balls), bams (bamboo) and craks (characters): 36 of each.
- Winds: North, East, West and South, four of each, 16 in all.
- Dragons: red, green and white, four of each. The white dragon is called a soap and can also stand for a zero in year hands on the card.
- Flowers: 8. All flowers count as the same tile.
- Jokers: 8. They stand in for other tiles, with limits explained below.
Each dragon is paired with a suit: red with craks, green with bams, and the soap with dots. The card uses this pairing in many hands.
Setting up and dealing
In more detail: how to set up and deal. Fewer than four players? See 3 players or 2 players.
- Turn every tile face down and shuffle.
- Each player builds a wall two tiles high and 19 tiles long in front of their rack.
- Roll the dice. The highest roller is East and deals first.
- East rolls again to decide where to break the wall, then players take tiles in turn until everyone has 13 and East has 14.
- Sort your tiles on your rack where others cannot see them, and look at your card for hands that fit.
The Charleston
Before play starts, everyone swaps unwanted tiles. This is the part most beginners find confusing, so it has its own guide and a practice tool. In short:
- First Charleston (required): pass 3 tiles right, then across, then left.
- Second Charleston (optional): left, across, right. It only happens if every player agrees.
- Courtesy pass (optional): you and the player across may swap 0 to 3 tiles, the same number each.
- You can never pass a joker.
A turn
- East starts by discarding one tile face up in the middle and saying its name.
- Play moves to the right. On your turn, take a tile from the wall, then discard one, so you always end with 13.
- When you discard, say the tile's name out loud, for example "four bam".
Calling a discard
When someone discards a tile you need, you can call it, even if it is not your turn, but only in two cases:
- To complete a group of 3 or more identical tiles (a pung, kong or quint), which you then lay face up on top of your rack. This is called an exposure.
- To win, if that tile completes your hand.
You cannot call a discard to make a pair or a single unless it wins you the game. After you call and expose, you discard and play continues to your right, so players in between lose their turn.
Jokers
Jokers can replace any tile in a group of three or more identical tiles. They can never be used in a pair or as a single tile. A discarded joker is dead and cannot be called. If you hold the real tile that a joker is standing in for in any exposed group, you can swap it for the joker on your turn. Joker rules in full.
Winning
You win by completing, exactly, one of the hands on the current card, using your concealed tiles and any exposures. Call "Mah Jongg", lay your tiles face up, and let the other players check the hand against the card before anyone touches the tiles.
If someone exposes tiles that cannot fit any hand on the card, or declares Mah Jongg wrongly, their hand can be called dead. They stop trying to win but keep discarding until the game ends. If the wall runs out before anyone wins, it is a wall game and nobody pays.
Paying
Each hand on the card has a value. Many groups play for small change, and the usual rules are:
| How you won | Who pays |
|---|---|
| Off someone's discard | The discarder pays double the hand value; the other two pay the hand value |
| By drawing the winning tile yourself | All three pay double |
| With no jokers in the hand | All payments double again, except for singles-and-pairs hands, which never use jokers anyway |
Scoring with examples and a payment calculator.
Some groups add extra rules, such as the discarder paying for everyone when the winner had three exposures. Agree on money before you start.
Where to go next
- The complete rules, with the "can you…" questions
- Printable cheat sheet
- How to read the card
- The Charleston, step by step
- Practise the Charleston
- Find a beginner class near you
Sources: Wikipedia: American mahjong; Tom Sloper's American mah-jongg FAQ; The Mahjong Line on scoring and money.