How to read the mahjong card
In American Mahjong you win by making one of the hands printed on a card. Each line is a hand of exactly 14 tiles. Here is how to read one.
Sections
Hands are grouped in sections that share an idea: the year, even numbers (2468), like numbers, addition, quints, runs, odd numbers (13579), winds and dragons, 3-6-9, and singles and pairs. Once you know a section's idea, its hands are easy to recognize.
Addition hands print a sum, such as FF 1111 + 4444 = 5555. The plus and equals signs are not tiles; they only show how the numbers add up.
Groups
A hand is written as groups separated by spaces. Each group is a set of identical tiles:
| Written | Name | Tiles |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Single | one tile |
| 11 | Pair | two identical tiles |
| 111 | Pung | three identical tiles |
| 1111 | Kong | four identical tiles |
| 11111 | Quint | five, which takes at least one joker (except flowers) |
Letters and the zero
- N, E, W, S are the four winds.
- D is a dragon. Each dragon belongs to a suit: Red with Craks, Green with Bams, White with Dots.
- F is a flower. All eight flowers are interchangeable.
- 0 in a year hand such as 2026 is the White Dragon, often called Soap.
Colors are suits
Card hands are printed in up to three colors. The colors don't name a suit; they say which groups share one. Groups in the same color are in the same suit, and different colors mean different suits. You choose which suits.
FF 1111 1111 11 DD
A hand from Tilesday's own card: two flowers, then the same number in all three suits (a kong, a kong and a pair), and a pair of dragons. The dragons are green like the first kong, so they belong to its suit: if that kong is Bams, the dragons are Green Dragons. "1" stands for any one number you choose, the same in every group.
Value, and concealed or exposed
Every hand shows its value in points; harder hands pay more. A hand marked as concealed must be built from the wall and your own tiles: you may only call a discard for the very last tile, the one that wins. An exposed hand lets you call discards to complete its groups of three or more and lay them face up.
Practice reading
Tilesday's lessons 7 and 8 walk through all of this with real tiles, and the card in the app shows how many tiles each hand is from your rack while you play.
Tilesday plays with its own original card of hands. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Mah Jongg League or any card publisher.