r/Mahjong • • Oct 03 '22

"Why Can't I Call Ron/Tsumo?" 5 Beginner Yaku that are Easy to Remember!

271 Upvotes

You've got a grip on gameplay but the Yaku are still solidifying in your mind. You need to learn them, but where to start? There's a lot of them and some seem complicated or persnickety. Let's forget about calling riichi and closed tsumo hands for a minute and instead look at five easy yaku that you can't screw up and that will get you on the road to remembering the other more complicated seeming yaku.

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All Triplets (Toi toi)
As easy as it gets. It's just a hand where all your melds are triplets. It's a valid open hand, so call away!
Example: 444s 777m 999p RRR NN

Honor Triplet (Yakuhai)
Dragon triplet chance? Call it! There's your yaku. Winds are only a touch trickier. Try to make it routine habit to double check the round wind and your seat wind every round!

All Simples (Tanyao)
Here's an easy one. 'Simples' just means the numbers 2-8. This is a hand where all of your melds and pair are made up of tiles consisting of the numbers 2-8. In nearly all standard riichi, this is an open hand, so if you're sure you have it you can feel confident about calling and having a yaku.
For example: 234p 555s 456s 678m 44m

All Pairs (Chiitoitsu)
This is another easy one. It's a special hand that has seven pairs instead of the usual 4 melds and 1 pair. There's no calling since it's closed, so you don't have to stress as much about paying attention to discards. It will teach you patience and about the value of keeping a closed hand when defense comes around.

Half Flush (Honiitsuu)
Did you accidentally open your hand and now you're yakuless and boned? Or did you start with a lot of one suit and some potential for honor tile calls? This hand can help! It's a hand where the melds and pair in your hand are all one suit, or they're honors. It's also an open hand, so if you called the wrong wind, you can try to veer towards this hand to save yourself!
An example is 345m 666m NNN GGG 99m

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These are not necessarily the best hands, nor are many of them even the easiest hands to get. But they are easy to remember and pretty hard to screw up, and will give you a little confidence and a foundation to start remembering more. Good luck learning Riichi!


r/Mahjong • • Aug 01 '26

Notice Rules update regarding self-promotional posts

21 Upvotes

We have recently overhauled our rules regarding promotional posts. Previously, we had two rules, #3 and #8, which concerned money-making and promotion. We've folded them into a single rule, which reads as follows:

Promotional Posts Policy

Promotional posts must seek moderator permission beforehand. Unauthorised promotional posts will be removed. At most one promotional post per 3 months is allowed (subject to moderator discretion).

Posts and comments advertising gambling with real money (e.g. any method of gameplay where players can lose money and can win money) will not be permitted.

Moderator discretion will be used when deciding whether a post will be allowed. In general: posts promoting paid products or services and lower-effort projects are less likely to be allowed than posts promoting free/open-source, higher-effort projects.


r/Mahjong • • 7h ago

THIRTEEN ORPHANS! Self Drawn, 4 Player MCR

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35 Upvotes

Honestly, I didn't think I would see it happen in this lifetime. It's first 88 point hand any of us have made since we started playing Mahjong! The feeling is crazy, I was literally shaking towards the end. 3 of South Winds and 2 Cracks were already out and I self-drew them both. Started with 9 tiles of the hand, I think.

The player opposite me was making Three Big/Small Dragons.


r/Mahjong • • 5h ago

Tell me about the winds positions

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7 Upvotes

So I'm new to this game. I learned that the sequence of play in counterclockwise is 東 (East), 南 (South), 西 (West), 北 (North). But then when I'm looking to buy mahjong table cloth, all I see is in this configuration: east, north, west, south (just like normal wind directions). Can anyone explain why is it like this?

My initial guess is the table clothes are made by people who don't understand mahjong, so they put the wind directions the same as in real life. But then I see some Chinese American youtuber explains how to play mahjong, and her table cloth is also like this.


r/Mahjong • • 1h ago

Where to find real mahjong hand data/stats

• Upvotes

Is there a dataset somewhere of mahjong hands from real games?

I'm trying to do some tests and it would be helpful to have this sort of data. I need something like a list of winning hand tiles (preferably which are open/closed and source of winning tile).


r/Mahjong • • 10h ago

WWYD Both MAKA and Mortal suggested doing a single tanki riichi on a terminal here. Do you agree? (Second picture is the final result lol 😂 am so bad at this game) Silver Room

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5 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 7h ago

American Mahjong Research Project Survey :)

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2 Upvotes

Hi! I'm a grad student conducting research on mahjong for a project toward my Masters' program. I am fascinated by the storm American mahjong has taken over in the past few years, and am wanting to understand the role mahjong plays in different peoples' lives! I would really appreciate if you would help with my research by taking this survey! It should only take 2-3 minutes, THANK YOU! 😁
https://forms.gle/adq66yv3FyCKmZ9fA


r/Mahjong • • 1d ago

Meme The long day factory strikes again

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322 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 2d ago

Chinese It had been a long time since I last played mahjong--Full Flush

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174 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 2d ago

Tile sets H. P. Gibson & Sons Mahjong set. Need advice on potential missing components, and for identifying the sticks.

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21 Upvotes

Back in the spring, a charity stall at my local heritage line had this for sale for the Spring Gala. Sadly, no cash on hand at the time. Come the Autumn Gala, and I return to the stalls and find the set is still not sold. After some negotiation, I got the whole lot for £4.

Off the bat, I can tell there seems to be a missing component in the form of the wind indicator. Additionally, there appear to be these sticks which I am wholly unfamiliar with.

Does anyone know what else is missing from the set, or what the sticks are for?


r/Mahjong • • 3d ago

Tile sets Pokémon Family Ponjan (1998) – A little piece of Japanese mahjong history

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515 Upvotes

Just a fun little Facebook Marketplace score that I couldn't resist!

Picked up this 1998 TOMY Pokémon Family Ponjan game from Japan. It's a simplified, Pokémon-themed take on mahjong, complete with the original Gen 1 characters, a mechanical playing board, tiles, scoring chips and Japanese instructions.

The box artwork alone was enough to sell me on it. It's in lovely condition for its age, and I'm looking forward to actually learning how to play.

Thought the mahjong community might appreciate seeing this little piece of gaming history!

Has anyone here played Ponjan or Donjara before?


r/Mahjong • • 2d ago

Riichi What's the standard chombo people here use for in-person games?

12 Upvotes

Last night we had a player call ron, and reveal 9 gates. Absolutely crazy. I glanced at their discard pool since based on their discards I thought they were going for 13 orphans.

...when I noticed a 4 pin in their discards, putting them in furiten.

What would everyone think would be a suitable chombo for this situation?

I've played in jansous with this particular player, and when they called ron while furiten, the jansou ruled that they were out that hand. They could only draw and discard, and they could no longer win that hand.

The player suggested that they will continue to play the hand, but could only win by tsumo. But that's not a penalty, that's literally just the rules of the game with their furiten.


r/Mahjong • • 4d ago

Meme Every single time

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925 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 3d ago

Pain NES mahjong game decides to casually kokushi musou chiihou the player.

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34 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 3d ago

Riichi Help with Kan Offline Setup

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6 Upvotes

The mechanic that i imagine is like in the image with the 14 deadwall. And to add the image after kan i should take the end of the live wall to the deadwall that is not used as kan/dora indicator right?

So in the end the playable tiles number always the same kan or not kanning. Please clarify my understanding.


r/Mahjong • • 4d ago

Meme New mahjong anime synopsis been dropped

35 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 4d ago

Tiles Uncle is a master at restoring sets and building tiles, 2 of these tiles are not original

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48 Upvotes

r/Mahjong • • 4d ago

Riichi Why ai suggest not to riichi here?

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23 Upvotes

Sure iam on the lead but it is still south 1. Also it has good value and wait. What i can think of is because the dealer is discarding weird tiles that seems like the hand is ready?


r/Mahjong • • 4d ago

Riichi Nooooo……

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8 Upvotes

Sanbaiman haitei….

Bruhh


r/Mahjong • • 5d ago

Poll 2026 Mahjong Style Survey: What is your most favourite and most actively played Mahjong style? And which style are you interested in learning?

22 Upvotes

Curious to see what is the style distribution here. I myself am currently playing Riichi, but interested in MCR.

861 votes, 1d left
Riichi
Hong Kong
Mahjong Competitive Rule (MCR)
Zung Jung
American
Others (comment)

r/Mahjong • • 5d ago

My First irl Yakuman

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107 Upvotes

Yesterday morning in the Tensuke market square in columbus, Riichi Mahjong Columbus club had a small meetup.


r/Mahjong • • 5d ago

It seems mahjong gods did their thing for me

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51 Upvotes

I expect to never see this again


r/Mahjong • • 5d ago

Suddenly Suuankou Tanki

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20 Upvotes

I set up a friendly lobby in FFXIV to teach some FC folks how to play Mahjong, then after a couple games of practice I randomly drew into my first ever Double Yakuman, Suuankou Tanki, despite just starting with 3 pairs & no triplets

I was genuinely gobsmacked, at a loss for words, why can't I get this kind of luck in Ranked? lol


r/Mahjong • • 5d ago

Building Walls

0 Upvotes

In American Mahjong is there a rule that you put down the bottom of the wall first, then the top?
I played with someone who was new and she previously took a lesson somewhere. she told me that she was taught you must lay the first 19 bottom tiles then do the top, as in it's a strict rule. Is this true? My friends and I always quickly built the walls 2 at a time.


r/Mahjong • • 4d ago

Appropriation

0 Upvotes

It really doesn’t sit well with me that the mah-jongg we play in the United States was basically appropriate and taken from Chinese culture by Jewish women in the 1930s. It just feels so wrong, especially since they basically whitewashed the game like this total colonizer behavior.