Mahjong Variants

The variants you will meet at the table

Mahjong looks the same everywhere: four walls of tiles, a dealer, dice, and a race to complete sets. The differences are in the details, and they change how each game feels.

The Mainland and Hong Kong versions are the closest to the classic game: 136 tiles, 13-tile hands, and scoring in fan, the doubles that multiply your payout. Riichi, the Japanese version, keeps the 136-tile set but layers on a declaration bet and concealed-hand bonuses. Taiwanese mahjong deals bigger hands of 16 tiles. Malaysian three-player mahjong is the outlier: fewer players, fewer tiles, jokers, and a higher minimum to win. If you want the shared basics of tiles, turns and melds, see how to play mahjong; for the tiles themselves, see mahjong tiles.

Here is the quick comparison:

Chinese (Mainland) rules: 136 tiles and the classic game

The Mainland game is the baseline most other variants are built on. Four players use a set of 136 tiles: 36 each of bamboos, characters and dots, plus 16 wind tiles and 12 dragon tiles. In northern China, flower and season tiles are left out entirely and the set is just those 136 tiles¹.

Each player draws 13 tiles, with the dealer starting with an extra 14th tile. All 136 tiles are shuffled face down and players build four square walls of 34 tiles each¹. A player wins by assembling four sets (a chow, pung or kong) plus one pair, 14 tiles in total¹.

A few rules shape the flow of the game. An exposed chow may only be declared off the discard of the player on your left, and in some areas of China the chow is not allowed at all¹. Any player completing a kong, four identical tiles, immediately draws an extra tile from the wall before discarding¹.

Stakes at casual tables vary widely. One common description puts a single base at 200 to 1,000, with some games reaching 10,000; a "ping hu" hand might cost 2 yuan while a "clean dragon" can run to roughly 50 yuan per hand⁹.

Hong Kong rules: the three-fan minimum and payment customs

Hong Kong mahjong uses the same 136-tile base set, with 8 flower tiles commonly added⁷. Each player builds a wall 17 tiles long and 2 tiles high without flowers, or 18 tiles long when flowers are in play⁷. Hands are 13 tiles, and the winning hand is the familiar four sets plus a pair⁶.

The rule that defines the Hong Kong game is the minimum: most games require 3 fan to declare a win⁶. A hand that falls short is a "false win," and the offender pays all three other players⁶. Flowers help here: each flower tile (spring, summer, autumn, winter, plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum) counts as 1 fan, though flowers are not counted toward the 3-fan minimum itself and only score after you win¹⁰. The dealer can count at most 1 fan toward the minimum¹⁰.

Tables usually agree on a fan cap before starting, commonly 8 or 10 fan, or no cap at all⁶. Big hands have fixed values: Little Four Winds (three wind triplets plus a wind pair) and Thirteen Orphans are each worth 13 fan, as is Eighteen Immortals, four kongs¹¹.

Payment follows a simple pattern. On a self-draw win, each player pays the same amount; on a discard win, the discarder pays double and the other two players pay single⁶. Under a typical "one-two dollar" stake, a 3-fan self-draw win costs each player HKD 8, while a discard win costs the discarder HKD 16 and the other two players HKD 4 each⁶. For a fuller treatment of fan values, see mahjong scoring.

Riichi (Japanese) rules: the 13-tile start and riichi declaration

Riichi mahjong, the version you will find in Japanese parlors and in most online mahjong apps, also uses 136 tiles, with flower and season tiles omitted⁴.

Each player starts with 13 tiles, and the dealer draws a 14th to begin⁴. The signature mechanic is the riichi declaration: a player whose hand is one tile from winning, fully concealed, may declare riichi and stake 1,000 points on the win. The declaration itself earns extra points; in one casino adaptation of the game, a win after a riichi declaration earns 2 extra points¹². For the full rules around riichi, yaku and dora, see riichi mahjong rules, and for how hands turn into payments, see the riichi scoring system.

Taiwanese rules: 16-tile hands

Taiwanese mahjong keeps the familiar tile set but deals bigger hands: you hold 16 tiles and go out on 17². Everything else scales up accordingly, and the larger hand means more possible combinations and, players say, more dramatic hands than the 13-tile game.

The wall setup matches the bigger hands. Dealing continues until all players have 16 tiles in 16-tile variations, compared with 12 tiles dealt before the final pass in 13-tile variations¹³. The winning structure is the same four sets and a pair, just one set bigger.

Malaysian three-player mahjong: 88 tiles, three walls and the Fly

Malaysia has its own three-player game, and it plays very differently from everything above. The set contains 88 tiles, though only 84 are needed³. The breakdown: 36 dot tiles, 16 wind tiles, 12 dragons, 8 flowers and seasons, plus 4 each of Faces, Animals and Fly tiles³.

There is no North player, so the three players are called East, South and West³. The dealer starts with 14 tiles and the other players with 13¹⁴. Each player builds a 14-tile-long wall, 2 tiles high, so the table has three walls instead of four¹⁴.

The Fly is the game's joker, and it drives most of the strategy:

• The Fly can represent any tile in making a 3-tile set³.
• You use 1 Fly to chow a discard, and 2 Fly to chow counts as a pong; you may also use 2 Fly to pong a discard¹⁴.
• You cannot pong with 3 Fly, and a Fly cannot appear in a gong set³.
• A Fly can act as a flower, contributing 1 fan when you are short of the minimum¹⁴.
• Each Fly is worth 50 points on its own³.

The minimum to win is 5 fan, much higher than Hong Kong's 3³. Fan comes from many small sources: one face, one animal, four animals, four flowers, four seasons, your own flower or season, a pong of North or East wind, a pong of your own wind, a pong of a dragon, a mixed one-suit hand, all chows with a dot pair, seven twins, stealing a gong, and winning on a loose tile are each worth 1 fan; all pong/gong hands and a dealer's East wind pong are worth 2 fan; two pongs and a dragon pair and a pure single suit are worth 3 fan³.

Hands that hit "Max Fan" double the score: 13 Unique Wonders (only with all three suits), Nine Gates, a pong of four winds, four gongs, four Fly, winning on the first or last tile, sixteen flowers, or a hand of 10 fan or more³.

Rounds are quick, about 5 to 15 minutes each, and there are no round winds and no fixed number of rounds; the game ends when two or more players agree to stop³. Malaysia also has a four-player version with 164 tiles, including 24 flowers and 4 jokers¹⁵.

Scoring and payouts compared: fan, points and who pays

Every variant answers three questions differently: how the hand is valued, who pays, and how much.

In Hong Kong mahjong, fan convert to points and then to money at a stake the table agrees on beforehand. In the old-style game, on a discard win the discarder pays the winner double the hand's points and the other two opponents pay single; on a self-draw win each player pays double¹⁶. In the old-style table 3 fan is worth 8 points, and 64 points is 8 fan¹⁶, and one Hong Kong rulebook pays 6-fan hands at 128 points on a discard or 64 from each player on a self-draw, and 8-fan hands at 256 or 128 each, with a 10-fan cap and limit hands always counting as 10 fan¹⁷.

Riichi pays by formula from a shared pool of points, with the hand's han and fu converted into fixed payments; the details are worth a page of their own at riichi scoring system. Malaysian three-player works in raw points instead: winning itself carries a base of 100 points, a concealed gong costs 100 points from both losing players, a revealed gong 50, and a Max Fan hand doubles the score to 200 points³. On a self-draw win, each player loses double the winning points to the winner³.

When two players call the same tile

Disputes over a discarded tile are settled by a fixed order of priority. In general, "Mahjong" beats everything, then kong, then pung, then chow¹⁸. If two players can win on the same discard, the win goes to the caller whose winning set ranks highest: kong before pung, before pair, before chow¹⁸.

A round is drawn, with no scores taken, when the last 14 tiles remain in the wall¹⁸. A player who needs only one tile to win is said to be "fishing"¹⁸. A full game runs four rounds named after the winds, a minimum of 16 winning hands¹⁸.

Playing for money: where the law draws the line

Money is where the variants' home jurisdictions differ sharply, and it is worth knowing before you sit down.

In Japan, betting mahjong is a crime regardless of the place or the name of the venue, including mahjong parlors, teaching facilities, homes and inns¹⁹. That is why Japanese parlor mahjong is played for table fees and ranking points rather than cash pots.

In mainland China, the official position distinguishes recreation from gambling: relatives playing mahjong or poker with money at stake, without a profit motive, are not punished, and the same applies to small-stakes games among non-relatives²⁰. Small gatherings of relatives and friends, not for profit, with tiny sums and purely for leisure, are treated as legal entertainment²¹. In practice mahjong is widely viewed as a recreational activity rather than gambling, though it remains subject to sanctions when real gambling is involved⁹.

In Hong Kong and Macau, mahjong is treated as a game of chance that is legal to offer in licensed venues under official rules. Macau's regulator publishes the exact game rules for its legal mahjong: two variants, Traditional Mahjong and Simple Mahjong, with defined equipment of 136 tiles, one dealer marker, three dice and a standard table²². The official payout rules there mirror the folk game: a winning dealer is paid double by all three players, and when a non-dealer wins, the two other non-dealers pay single while the dealer pays double²². For a fuller picture across the region, see where Asian games are legal.

Other styles you may meet

A few more variants round out the picture. Vietnamese mahjong adds eight tiles to the usual flowers and seasons: four kings and four queens join the set, making 16 bonus tiles in all, and you must reveal and replace all bonus tiles dealt in your opening hand, though flowers drawn later can be kept and discarded²³. Filipino mahjong uses the standard 144-tile set and runs four rounds, extendable to taste; the only tile that cannot be discarded is a flower, since flowers must be exchanged from the flower wall²⁴. Western and British mah-jongg uses 144 or more tiles, with optional jokers¹⁵. And in a curious hybrid found in some regions, a card game called Daun Tiga replaces the 10s, jacks, queens and kings of a deck with wind tiles, East, North, West and South respectively²⁵.