Online Mahjong Rules – How to Play

Mahjong Rules are a bit more complicated than other Online Casino Games as this is pretty much a skilled game that requires tactical thinking.  The goal of the game is to arrange your 14 tiles into sets of certain combinations, which will either be Pon, Chii or Kan.

These are as follows;

Pon: A set of three identical tiles.

Chii: A a set of three tiles of the same suit and consecutive numbers  Dragon or Wind tiles cannot be used in Chii.

Kan: A set of four consecutive tiles.

Casino Mahjong Hands, Rounds & Matches

In Mahjong a “Match” consists of four rounds.  In each round at least four hands are played and each round is named after its prevailing wind.  The Prevailing Wind is always set to East when starting.  In the second round the prevailing wind is south etc.

In each round, each player takes turns being the dealer. As dealer, this player assumes the position of the east wind. It is important not to confuse the prevailing wind with the seat wind as these are distinct. There are four rounds (with their prevailing winds) and in each round each player plays all four seat winds.

Mahjong Tiles and Layouts

Learning How to Play Mahjong starts with learning the character tiles.  A normal set of Mahjong tiles will contain 136 or 144 tiles (could be more in sets from Japan).  The set is divided into several categories:

Character Tiles

In Chinese, numbers can be represented either by the numerals 1-9 or by Characters.

Circle Tiles

Bamboo Tiles

Bamboo Tile “number one” is often referred as “The Sparrow” and it is different to the rest of the Bamboo Tiles so that players cannot cheat by adding more “strokes” to the tile.

Dragon Tiles

Referring to the Dragon Tiles in the illustration below, the tiles can be identified as follows;

Red – Hong Zhong; Green – Qing Fa; White – Bai Ban.

The Wind tiles

Wind Tiles can be identified in the following order that corresponds with the tiles;

East, South, West, North.  The tiles are sometimes marked “N” – North, “S” – South, “W” – West, “E” – East.

The Season tiles

Season Tiles, shown in the below image, sometimes have Chinese characters that represent the Seasons, and (Like this image) sometimes have the 1-4 numbers in Chinese characters.

The Flower tiles

Flower tiles, Plum, Orchid, chrysanthemum, Bamboo,

Mahjong has been played for centuries and was originally invented by a female royalty and the game has a rather fascinating history.  Mahjong is truly a game of skill, intelligence, strategy, calculation and luck.

YourCasinoWorld.com explains the fundamentals of Online Mahjong Rules and provides our readers with information on How to Play Mahjong.  So for a better understanding of the game and how to play it, read our section on Mahjong Rules.