Mah jong

[khiemtran]

So, you'd like to play Mah Jong? It's easy.




First, clean the lizard eggs out of the box of tiles...



After checking you have a full set, turn the tiles face down and shuffle them noisily. This makes a sound supposedly like the twittering of sparrows. If you ever hear this sound again, you'll know there's a mah jong game in progress.



Next, use the tiles to build a wall. At a point determined by a roll of the dice, the wall is broken and the players each draw their hands.



If you get any Flowers or Animals, declare them and you'll get another piece. Collect them for extra points and sometimes doubles.



The games proceeds a bit like Gin Rummy. Players take turns drawing and discarding tiles. If you can make a set with someone else's discard, you can claim it.



A Kong is four of kind. A Pung is three of a kind. You can also claim a pair, but only if it's to win the game.



A Chi is three in a row. These are three, four and five. Okay, so you may need to learn some Chinese (it's good for you). You can only claim a discard to make a Chi from the person to your left, unless it's to win the game.

>

Earn doubles by collecting tiles with "your" flower or any animal, or Pungs of "your" wind or any dragon. The winner is the first player to turn their whole hand into sets (including no more than one pair) or one of a plethora of special winning combinations which frankly don't come up very often. But watch carefully, in case you accidentally feed someone the winning tile.



And make sure you don't get sharked...

Comments

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

When I was in grad school, we played mah jong once a week. The tile-shuffling sound told the non-players what we were up to.

Never found any lizard eggs, though.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

This is what happens when the box only gets opened when the kids come back from overseas...

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

she looks like a professional gambler, calmly waiting for some pigeon to come along and put his or her money on the table.

Cute kid and a great big chair!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

It's always the calm ones you need to watch...

[julesjones]

Alas, the closest I've ever gotten to mah jong is the solitaire computer game by Nels Anderson...

That's a very pretty tile set. :-)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I used to play that too! We even tried it using actual tiles once, but it's a lot harder to set up than it appears...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Those tiles are so pretty! I imagine the sound of them being shuffled is similar to the sound of shuffling dominoes?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I can't say I've ever noticed the sound of dominoes being shuffled and people used to play in the office quite regularly. So, I'd have to say "no"... :) These tiles are pretty loud when you rake them around...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Ah, then you've never heard dominoes being played competitively by a bunch of old men in a pub in the North of England. :)

Though not a word was uttered because they were concentrating intensely, the game was quite noisy. Not only was there the clatter of the shuffling, but the rapid rat-tat-tat of them knocking in turn (if they couldn't put a domino down) was loud and distinctive.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Cool! Maybe I'll get to hear that too one day...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I suspect that it's impossible to find pubs like that any more. :( It was already a bit of an anachronism when I stayed there as a young geology student back in 1971. The pub may still be there, but if it's still in business, it will have had to go upmarket and turn itself into a gasto-pub or similar. The ordinary working man tends to drink at home in front of the Xbox these days rather than go out to the pub to play darts and dominoes.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm going to check out the sound of sparrows' twittering at the supermarket. You know... so I'll recognize the sound of mah jong tiles when I hear them.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love this entry!! Thanks so much for explaining. Now I want to try. But I'll watch out for the lizard eggs and the shark children.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I made one mistake in the explanations - you can't win without a pair. It's been so long since we last played, it took a while for the rules to come back.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I never knew it was such an interesting game! Thanks for explaining it.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

There seem to be quite a few rule variations, and I made at least one mistake (you can't win without a pair), but it's a simple game at heart. The longer game is all about whether to go for the cheap wins or to build for the big ones.