A mahjong cheat sheet is not a lesson, it is a referee. Its job is to settle the four questions that stop a hand mid-flow: who may take the discard, what counts as a set, what a finished hand looks like, and which house rules this particular table is using. Everything below is written for Chinese and Hong Kong-style play with 144 tiles, and the whole thing fits on one side of a printed page — download the printable version here.
The lines that do the work
If you copy nothing else onto an index card, copy these. Almost every question that interrupts a hand is answered somewhere in this list.
- 144 tiles: three suits of 1 to 9, four winds, three dragons, four flowers, four seasons.
- Four copies of every suit and honour tile.
- Win with four sets and one pair.
- Chow: three in a row, same suit, from your left only.
- Pung: three of a kind, from anyone.
- Kong: four of a kind, draw a replacement.
- Priority: win first, then pung or kong, then chow.
- Flowers and seasons: expose and replace.
- Declare mahjong out loud and turn your hand face up.
Who gets the discard: claim priority
This is the argument that stops play most often, and the order is fixed rather than negotiable.
- A declared win beats everything.
- A triplet or quad claim (pung or kong) beats a run.
- A chow is available only to the player sitting on the discarder’s right, the one whose turn comes next.
Pung and kong never compete for the same discard, so no order between them is needed: a kong claim requires three matching tiles in hand and a pung requires two, and only four copies of any tile exist.
Every claim needs a deadline. Most tables treat a discard as dead once the next player has drawn from the wall, but the cut-off is a convention rather than a universal rule, so agree it before the first deal instead of relitigating it at midnight.
The four shapes that count
Only four groupings are legal. Everything else in your hand is raw material waiting to become one of them.
The table below runs in claim-priority order rather than by size, because that is the order you will need it in when two people reach for the same tile.
| Grouping | What it is | Example | Claim it from | Special effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kong | Four identical tiles | 7 Circles four times | Any discard, or your own draws | Take a replacement tile |
| Pung | Three identical tiles | Green Dragon three times | Any player’s discard | Turn jumps to you |
| Chow | Three consecutive tiles in one suit | 5-6-7 Bamboo | The player on your left only | None |
| Pair | Two identical tiles, the eyes | North Wind twice | Cannot be claimed, except to win | Exactly one per hand |
Honour tiles (the winds and dragons) have no sequence, so they can only ever form pungs, kongs or a pair. Flowers and seasons form nothing at all: expose them and take a replacement tile.
What a complete hand looks like
A standard win is four sets plus one pair, which comes to fourteen tiles at the moment of victory.
A worked example: 3-4-5 Circles, 5-6-7 Bamboo, 9-9-9 Characters, East Wind three times, and a pair of 2 Circles. Four sets, one pair, hand complete.
That count is variant-specific and belongs on your card, because it is the first thing that trips a visiting player. Taiwanese play needs five sets plus a pair, and American mahjong abandons the generic shape entirely — hands must match a pattern on the annual card issued by the National Mah Jongg League, which is reissued every year.
Settle these house rules before the first deal
Most mid-game arguments are not rules disputes at all. They are assumption clashes, and they are cheap to prevent.
- Minimum score. Many Hong Kong tables require a hand to reach an agreed value before it may be declared.
- Bonus tiles. In play or set aside, and worth what.
- Who pays. Whether all three opponents pay a self-drawn win, and whether the discarder pays alone.
- Robbing the kong. Allowed or not.
- Dealer continuation. What happens to the deal after a dealer win or a washout.
- False mahjong. The penalty for declaring a hand that is not complete.
- Chow. A few tables disallow it entirely to speed the game up.
- Stakes. Points only, or something on the table.
Write the answers on the back of the sheet. A table that has agreed its minimum score in advance never has the argument that ruins the last hand of the night.
Tournaments codify all of it in advance. The European Mahjong Association has organised European championships under international rules since 2005, with a separate championship under Japanese riichi rules since 2008, and every entrant knows the ruleset before they sit down. A house sheet is the domestic version of the same idea.
The tile inventory, for when someone insists a tile does not exist
Every argument about whether a fifth copy of a tile is possible ends with this table. A standard set contains 136 playing tiles plus eight bonus tiles.
| Group | Distinct tiles | Copies of each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circles (dots), 1 to 9 | 9 | 4 | 36 |
| Bamboo (sticks), 1 to 9 | 9 | 4 | 36 |
| Characters (wan), 1 to 9 | 9 | 4 | 36 |
| Winds: east, south, west, north | 4 | 4 | 16 |
| Dragons: red, green, white | 3 | 4 | 12 |
| Flowers | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Seasons | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Full set | — | — | 144 |
Wikipedia’s reference page on mahjong tiles sets out the same composition tile by tile, which is a useful second opinion when you are checking a secondhand set for completeness.
Two consequences deserve a line on the card. No tile exists more than four times, so a tile you have already seen four times can never complete anyone’s hand.
And 144 divides neatly into four walls of eighteen stacks two tiles high, which makes an uneven build the fastest way to spot a missing tile before the deal rather than after it.
The order of play, in six lines
- East discards first, face up in the middle, announced out loud.
- Anyone may claim that discard under the priority rules above.
- If nobody claims it, play passes counter-clockwise and that player draws from the wall.
- After drawing or claiming, that player discards one tile.
- Kongs and bonus tiles trigger a replacement draw from the tail of the wall.
- The hand ends when someone declares mahjong, or when the wall runs out and the hand is a washout.
Table vocabulary
- Pond: the pool of discarded tiles in the centre.
- Dead wall: the reserved tiles at the tail used for replacement draws.
- Ready: a hand needing exactly one more tile.
- Self-draw: winning on a tile you drew yourself, usually worth more.
- Washout: the wall exhausted with no winner.
- Seat wind and round wind: your own wind and the wind of the current round, both of which can score.
Scoring is the one area a single page cannot cover honestly, because it varies more than any other part of the game. Wikipedia’s overview of scoring in mahjong shows how far the systems diverge, and our rundown of the basic scoring hands in mahjong is the companion page for that.
Printing it, and what to leave off
Reference material and teaching material are different things. Nobody halfway through a hand needs the origins of the game; they need to know whether a run can be claimed across the table.
Keep the sheet to counts, groupings, priority and house rules. Anything needing more than a line belongs in a walkthrough such as our guide to how to start and play a mahjong game.
Print four copies, one per player, and put them beside the racks rather than passing a single sheet around. A beginner will consult a sheet sitting in front of them and will not ask for one placed across the table.
For the physical set-up (seating, dice, breaking the wall and dealing) follow our step-by-step on how to set up and deal a mahjong game, and our full guide to hosting a mahjong night at home covers the rest of the evening.
No set at home yet? We hire complete 144-tile Size 40 Green Chinese sets across Greater Sydney from A$20 for a weekday booking, with tables and stools when the group outgrows the dining table. Collect from Brodie Spark Drive in Wolli Creek or have it delivered, and every set is cleaned before it goes out — dates and prices are on our hire page.
Cheat sheet questions, answered
Which version of mahjong does this cheat sheet cover?
Chinese and Hong Kong-style play with 144 tiles, which is the most widely played family and the easiest starting point. The other families differ too much for one sheet to cover them all — Wikipedia’s overview of mahjong maps the main variants, and the National Mah Jongg League issues the American card annually.
Can I claim a chow from any player?
No. A run may only be claimed from the player immediately to your left, while triplets and quads may be claimed from anyone’s discard.
What happens if nobody wins the hand?
Once the live wall is exhausted with no declared mahjong, the hand is void and no points change hands. Shuffle everything back in and build again. Whether the deal moves on or stays put is one of the house rules to settle in advance rather than at the moment it happens.
Do flowers and seasons count towards a winning hand?
They never form part of the four sets and a pair. Expose them as they arrive, take a replacement tile each time, and count them at scoring if your table has them in play.
Is one cheat sheet enough to teach a complete beginner?
It is enough to keep a beginner playing, but not to explain why a discard was right or wrong. Pair the sheet with one experienced player at the table and most people are self-sufficient by the third hand.
Learning on a proper table helps. Rent a complete mahjong set — tiles, table and racks, delivered ready to play across Sydney.
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