How to Play American Mahjong

American Mahjong is a four-player game built around a yearly National Mah Jongg League card. You are not chasing one hidden winning pattern. You are building one of the hands printed on that card, using a 160-tile set (including blanks) and a social passing round called the Charleston.

What is in the set

A standard American set has 160 tiles (including blanks): Bams, Craks, and Dots numbered 1–9 (four of each), Winds, Dragons, eight Flowers, Jokers, and blank replacement tiles. Most tables also keep racks, a card holder, and dice. The current year’s card tells you which combinations count as a complete hand.

• Suits: Bams (bamboo), Craks (characters), and Dots.
• Honors: East, South, West, North, plus Dragons (usually Red, Green, and White/Soap).
• Flowers: eight tiles that many card lines treat as their own category.
• Jokers: wild tiles that can stand in for most tiles inside a pung, kong, or quint — never in a single or a pair, except where the card says otherwise.
• Blanks: unmarked replacement tiles. The 160-tile count includes them.

Deal the wall

Players build four walls, two tiles high. East rolls the dice, breaks the wall, and deals. Each player starts with 13 tiles; East takes a 14th and discards first. Keep tiles on your rack, face toward you. The card sits in front of the table so everyone can see the legal hands.

The Charleston

Before regular play, American Mahjong runs the Charleston: a set of mandatory and optional three-tile passes. You pass three tiles right, across, then left. After a courtesy pass across, the table may agree to a second Charleston (left, across, right). You may never pass a Joker. Use the Charleston to dump tiles that do not fit the families you are considering, and to collect tiles that appear on several card lines.

Play a turn

On your turn you take the next wall tile, or you claim the most recent discard if you can expose a matching set. Then you discard one tile, calling it out so the table can hear it. The next player may pick it up only if they can immediately expose the set that uses it. East’s first discard starts the table; after that, play moves to the right in American style.

• Pung: three identical tiles. You may call a discard to complete one and expose it.
• Kong: four identical tiles. Calling a discard for a kong leaves you one tile short, so you take a replacement from the back of the wall.
• Quint: five of a kind, which always needs at least one Joker on most cards.
• Pair and singles: usually collected quietly on your rack. You cannot call a discard for a pair except to declare mahjong.

Jokers and exchanges

Jokers are the engine of American Mahjong. They fill pungs, kongs, and quints. If another player exposes a set that contains a Joker, and you hold the natural tile that Joker is standing in for, you may exchange that natural tile for the Joker on your turn — a powerful way to rescue a stuck hand. You still cannot use a Joker as a single or as one half of a pair.

Going mahjong

You win by completing one exact line on the card: the right suits, numbers, exposures, and concealed or exposed pattern. Call “mahjong” when the last tile arrives, either from the wall or as a claimed discard. Some lines pay more when they stay concealed; some require no jokers. If the wall runs out before anyone completes a hand, the game is a wall game and nobody is paid.

Read the card as a menu, not a puzzle with one answer. Pick two or three nearby lines after the Charleston, then let the wall tell you which one is still alive. That is the American game: social passing, a shared card, and a table that stays up past midnight.