Welcome to The Mahjong Masters blog! Where we will try to provide information on mahjong. Everything from basics to some tricks that may come in useful!
Five Habits That Win at Western Mahjong
Western mahjong rewards five habits: pick the hand you are already closest to, empty a suit in the Charleston, guard your jokers, and defend by exposures.
A weak deal is a decision, not a disaster. Count your blocks, cut your thinnest suit early, then commit to one route: a fast win, a pivot or a clean fold.
Poker packs its skill into one betting decision; mahjong spreads it across counting, efficiency and defence. Which game is harder, and harder in which way?
Push or Fold in Mahjong: How to Price a Risky Discard
Push or fold is a price, not a mood. The three inputs behind the decision, a matrix for safe and live tiles, and how to rank danger one opponent at a time.
What separates advanced mahjong from merely competent play: counting dead tiles, pricing speed against value, folding on a rule, and drills that make it stick.
Tile material decides how you clean it. The five-minute routine after every game, the twice-yearly deep clean, storage in a humid climate, and what ruins a set.
Where the minutes actually go, how long each format and ruleset runs, how to choose a session length that fits your evening, and how long to book a table for.
Rigged or Random? Online Mahjong Shuffles, Bots and Cheats
Inside an online mahjong server: how the wall is really shuffled, why a fair deal feels rigged, where AI seats belong, and the checks a good platform passes.
Money is optional in mahjong and structural in gambling. The definition the law uses, what stakes do to a table, and how to keep score without any cash.
The mahjong words you need at a table: the calls, the hand states and the scoring units, plus what each one is called in Hong Kong, riichi and American play.
Sichuan bloody, three-player sanma, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino and Shanghai mahjong: what each variant changes, and which ones a standard set can play.
The default habits that quietly cost beginners hands, in the order the game inflicts them: before the deal, in the opening, mid-hand and in the back half.
Online Mahjong: What a Screen Can and Cannot Teach
Which digital rule sets live where, what fast online play genuinely drills, what only a real table teaches, and why mahjong solitaire is a different game.
Chance sets the deal, the wall order and what three other players do. Everything after that is yours: the wait you keep, when you fold, and what you chase.
Teach almost nothing before you deal. The open-hand first hand, which rules to withhold and when, and a session plan that gets a beginner playing unaided.
Siamese Mah Jongg is American mahjong for two players, each running a pair of hands from one set. How it is set up, how it plays, and what to agree first.
Mahjong and Memory: What the Research Actually Shows
Which memory systems a mahjong hand really works, what the Hong Kong dementia trials found and what they did not, plus drills that sharpen recall at the table.
Choosing an online mahjong platform is really choosing a rule set. Where riichi, Hong Kong, Chinese Official and American play live online, and what each costs.
Mahjong in a Small Apartment: Space, Noise and Storage
How to fit a mahjong night into a small flat: the floor space four players need, making a dining table work, keeping the shuffle quiet, and storing the kit.
The Chinese Official scoring patterns, grouped by how the hand is built (chows, pungs, honours, composition, odd shapes and finishes) and what each one takes.
Cat, mouse, rooster and centipede: how Singapore mahjong's animal tiles work, why almost everything else is a house rule, and what to agree before you deal.
How a Hong Kong hand is built, claimed and scored in faan, why the table minimum shapes what you build, and which house rules to settle before the first deal.
Taiwanese mahjong builds a bigger hand and counts in tai. What really changes from the game most players learn first, and what to agree before you deal.
How mahjong scoring actually works: what goes into a settlement, why the way the winning tile arrives changes it, and where the official values are published.
