How to Teach Someone American Mahjong in One Night

You cannot teach the whole NMJL card in an hour. You can teach a person to sit at an American table without panic. Give them a rack, a neighbor, and a smaller game than the one you play with your club.

Teach in this order

• What the suits look like, plus Soap, Flowers, and jokers.
• The Charleston: three and three and three, never a joker.
• Pung and kong only. Mention quint after they have called once.
• One exposed line you circled on the card. One backup that shares tiles.

What the teacher should not do

Do not hover and rearrange their rack. Do not play their Charleston. Do not introduce pie, dead hands, and joker exchanges in the first twenty minutes. Sit beside them for the first wall. Let them mis-call once and rewind. The second wall is theirs.

Send them the how-to-play page after they leave. Paper in the box is how people decide the game is impossible. A night at a real table is how they come back.

• The page to send them →
• Beginner habits →