Gambling Slang in Asian Languages: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese Terms

The words at a glance

Mahjong terms every table uses: chow, pung and kong

Almost every mahjong conversation in any language runs through the same three words, because they describe the only three ways tiles can be grouped.

A pung is three identical tiles. You can build one by holding a pair and claiming the matching discard, or by drawing the third tile yourself. A kong is four identical tiles. A chow is three tiles of the same suit in sequence, such as 3, 4 and 5 of characters.

The rules around claiming tiles are where the table talk gets specific. Only the player sitting to the right of the discarder may claim a discard to form a chow, and doing so forfeits that turn's draw³. A player holding three identical tiles may kong when the fourth is discarded. Kongs can be exposed or concealed, and after any kong the player draws one tile from the wall end and discards one, keeping the hand at thirteen tiles³.

Some variants strip this back. In the simple mahjong variant played in Macau, there is no chow and no pung at all. Players may only take a discard in order to win, and a kong keeps the hand at five tiles rather than thirteen³.

A few house rules matter enough that regulars will mention them before the first hand:

• Discarded tiles may not be taken back.
• Declining a pung voids your right to win on that tile.
• Players may not look at each other's hands, and an accidental look bars that player from konging for the rest of the round.
• A winner may only collect up to the amount of money actually in hand³.

Scoring names are the other half of table talk. A pung or kong of any dragon scores, as does a pung or kong of the prevailing wind or your own seat wind. So do robbing an exposed kong, winning on the replacement tile after a kong, an all-pung hand, a chow hand with no dragon or honor pair, mixed one suit, winning on the last tile, little three dragons, little four winds and mixed terminals³. Higher-value hands include the heavenly hand, the earthly hand, a pung or kong of a double-value wind, kong on kong, a mixed one suit chow hand, full flush, thirteen orphans, an all-pung hand with no exposed pungs, big three dragons, big four winds, pure terminals and all honors³.

'Sparrow': where the word mahjong comes from

The name is a bird. In Mandarin the tile game is pronounced má jiàng, and in Shanghainese and the older Ningbo and Suzhou dialects it was mo ziang⁶. The older card game that carried the same name was pronounced má què, which means sparrow⁶.

The tile game is best understood as that card game plus winds, either the four directions alone or the directions plus the tiles known as dragons⁶. So the tile version is not a different game so much as the same game with a fixed set of extra tiles.

The game was known across China under various names from at least the 1870s⁶. By the late 1880s a version called mo ziang had reached prominence in Ningbo and spread to Shanghai⁶. Around 1883 and 1884 it had not yet reached Suzhou, where a different game prevailed⁶. In Cixi, in Ningbo, gambling was described as rather popular in 1885, with the local game taken as a fashion⁶.

The name traveled west with a deliberate spelling. J. P. Babcock applied the word "Mah-Jongg," pronounced "Mah-ZHONG," and trademarked it in the U.S. Patent Office⁶. That is why English speakers say mah-jongg with a hard j sound while Mandarin speakers say má jiàng.

One more piece of old slang is worth knowing because it shows up in nineteenth-century writing. In the novel Haishang hua liezhuan, published between 1892 and 1894, the gameplay was called peng hu, meaning playing for points⁶. And in Xiamen in Fujian, a 1888 reference describes a leaf or card game called zhuo ma que, literally "snatch sparrows"⁶.

Japanese mahjong calls: the ready hand and the riichi declaration

Japanese mahjong has its own vocabulary layered on top of the Chinese terms, and it is the vocabulary you will hear in a Tokyo parlor.

The most important word is riichi, the declaration that your hand is one tile from winning. A player with one tile short of winning is considered to have a "ready hand" and is "waiting" for tiles to complete the hand¹. It is also the name of the modern competitive variant, and it has grown well beyond Japan.

Betting rates in Japanese mahjong are quoted as hundreds of yen per 1,000 points. A rate of JPY 100 is called pin, or tenpin¹. So when someone says the game is tenpin, they mean each 1,000 points is worth JPY 100. That is the number you agree on before the first hand, and it is the number that decides what the evening costs.

The legal position is separate from the slang. Japanese law and case law treat money in gambling as outside the exemption for casual entertainment regardless of the amount, so betting mahjong is in principle illegal at every rate¹. There is one narrow exception: no gambling offense applies where the loser's payment is not made by the player, or where the winner's gain does not reach the player, as in a sponsored competitive tournament with prize money¹. That is why tournament play and cash play are treated so differently.

Three-player mahjong and the sanma vocabulary

Three-player mahjong, called sanma, has its own terms because the arithmetic changes.

A sanma set uses 27 tile types and 108 tiles, excluding the 2 through 8 of one suit². Chi is not allowed under standard rules, to prevent early wins². Some variants relax this: in one common form, chi from the player to your left is allowed, which is why that version is also called "three-player four-mahjong"².

Payment is where sanma gets its own slang. On a tsumo, the winner receives ron-equivalent points from both opponents, doubling the income. This is called baidori, and it is common in Kyoto and Tokyo rules². When a child wins on a tsumo, the dealer covers the absent north player's share entirely; when the dealer wins on a tsumo, the two children split it. That is called oya sanbai kaburi, roughly "dealer pays triple"².

Different platforms handle this differently, which is why players argue about it. Some use split payment, some use a north share split, and some use tsumo-son scoring². If you sit down at an online sanma table, check which convention is running before you commit to a rate.

Pachinko jargon: kugi-yomi, todome-uchi and other player skills

Pachinko has the deepest slang of any game in the region, because the machine itself is the opponent and reading it is the skill.

Start with the physical facts:

• A pachinko ball is a steel ball 11 mm in diameter and 5 grams in weight⁴.
• Machines fire one shot every 0.6 seconds, and are-pachi machines fire within one shot every 0.5 seconds⁴.
• The return rate to players is about 85 percent, so the parlor's actual take is roughly 15 percent of ball rental fees⁴.

That single number explains most of the strategy talk you will hear: players are trying to find machines set looser than the average.

Kugi-yomi is the core skill. It means reading the nails. The small metal pins on the board decide how balls fall, and experienced players study their spacing and angle before spending money, looking for a path that feeds the payout pockets more often than the machine's setting suggests.

Todome-uchi is the finishing shot, the deliberate final ball aimed to land in a specific pocket. It matters because the last ball of a session is often the one that decides whether the session ends up or down.

Machine generations have their own labels. One common type is written as 4.7号機, the generation used by the pachislo machine Kaiji¹. Players use these generation names the way car enthusiasts use model years, because the generation tells you what the machine can and cannot do.

Parlor economics have their own vocabulary too. Under the rules for Type 4 adult entertainment businesses, offering prizes based on game results is permitted under certain conditions for pachinko, pachislo, arrange ball machines, jan-kyu machines and some other gaming machines¹. That matters to regulars because it shapes how prizes are exchanged after play.

Santen hoshiki and bainin: the three-shop system in plain words

The three-shop system, santen hoshiki, is the arrangement that lets Japanese players convert pachinko prizes into cash even though cash gambling is not what the parlor is licensed to do.

The structure is simple once you see it:

1. You play at the parlor and win balls.
2. You exchange the balls at the parlor's prize counter for prizes.
3. You take those prizes to a separate business nearby, which buys them back.

The three parties are the parlor, the prize counter and the buyback shop, and keeping them formally separate is the whole point of the system.

Bainin refers to the buyback side of that chain, the businesses that purchase prizes. When regulars talk about where the rate is better, they are talking about bainin, not about the parlor.

For a visitor, the practical version is this: you do not need to understand the corporate structure. You need to know that the balls you win are exchanged for prizes at the counter, and that the prizes have a resale value at a nearby shop. The parlor itself will not hand you cash.

Machine types in Japanese: Amadexi, Middle and Light middle

Pachinko machines are sorted into categories, and the category names are the first thing a regular will tell you.

The categories describe how the machine pays and how it is regulated, not how fun it is. The practical consequence is cost. A machine with a lower payout ceiling will drain a fixed budget more slowly, which is why light middle machines are the usual recommendation for a first session. A machine with a higher ceiling will swing harder in both directions.

The generation label matters here too. A machine written as 4.7号機 belongs to a specific regulatory generation, the one used by the pachislo machine Kaiji¹. Two machines that look identical on the floor can be from different generations and behave completely differently.

Chinese hand names: ping hu and the clean dragon

Chinese mahjong hand names are more descriptive than the Japanese ones, and a few of them are worth knowing because they come up constantly.

Ping hu is the ordinary hand: four sequences plus a pair, with no special tiles. It is the hand you will build most often, and it is worth the least.

The dragon hands are where the names get vivid. A pung or kong of any dragon scores, and the "clean" versions refer to hands built around a single dragon or a single suit without mixing in unrelated tiles. Little three dragons and big three dragons are the two-step versions of the same idea, and they are scored separately³.

The old slang for the game itself is worth one line. In nineteenth-century Shanghai writing, playing was called peng hu, playing for points⁶. That is the ancestor of the modern scoring vocabulary.

What the slang does not change: betting laws in Japan and China

The vocabulary is shared across borders. The rules are not.

In Japan, mahjong gambling is illegal regardless of the place or the name of the venue, including mahjong parlors, mahjong teaching facilities, homes and inns⁵. The amount of money does not change that¹. Online casino gambling is also illegal: connecting from Japan to gamble on an online casino is a crime even if the operator is legally run overseas, and this applies to free versions and free bonuses as well⁷. Police treat it as a priority⁸.

In China, gambling is prohibited by law and regulation⁹. The line that matters in practice is between a social game and a betting game. Games among relatives with money stakes and no profit motive are not punishable, and games with small stakes among non-relatives and no profit motive are also not punishable¹⁰. A court applied exactly that reasoning when it held that a small-stakes mahjong game among relatives and friends did not constitute gambling and revoked the penalty¹⁰. Outside that line, the position is strict: gambling abroad, online gambling, and providing funds or technical support for gambling all violate Chinese law⁹.

In Hong Kong, all gambling is illegal except regulated horse racing, football betting and the Mark Six lottery, licensed activities such as mahjong parlors, and exempt social gambling¹¹. That is why the mahjong parlor is a licensed, ordinary part of the city while an unlicensed game is not.