The Shape of a Winning Hand

In the last lesson you learned chows, pungs and the pair. Now let's put them together. Winning at mahjong means getting your tiles into a winning shape, and the good news is that the shape almost always follows one formula.

The formula: four sets and a pair

You normally hold 13 tiles. When you get a 14th and the hand splits into:

4 sets + 1 pair = 3 × 4 + 2 = 14 tiles

you've won. Japanese, Hong Kong, Sichuan and Chinese Official (Guobiao) mahjong all use this.

Sets can be chows or pungs in any mix:

Taiwanese mahjong: five sets and a pair

In Taiwanese mahjong everyone holds 16 tiles, so you need one more set:

5 sets + 1 pair = 3 × 5 + 2 = 17 tiles

Same idea, one more set.

Special hands: seven pairs and thirteen orphans

Two hands break the formula but still win:

Seven pairs: seven pairs, 14 tiles. Allowed in Japanese, Sichuan and Guobiao mahjong. Japanese mahjong needs seven different pairs; Sichuan and Guobiao let four identical tiles count as two pairs.

Thirteen orphans: one each of the 1 and 9 of every suit plus all seven honors, with one of them doubled. Allowed in Japanese (where it's called kokushi musou), Hong Kong and Guobiao mahjong.

Basic Taiwanese rules allow neither. Sichuan has no honor tiles, so no thirteen orphans. Our Hong Kong game counts thirteen orphans but not seven pairs. American mahjong is a different world: you build one of the hands printed on that year's card.

Practice: split the hand

With 14 tiles, find the pair first, then check that everything else splits into sets.

Take the two 2s of characters as the pair. The 3-4-5-6-7-8 characters split into 3-4-5 and 6-7-8. Add 3-4-5 dots and 6-6-6 bamboo:

Now a tricky one:

If you make 1-1-1 a pung, you're left with 2-3, which isn't a set. Try again: 1-1 as the pair and 1-2-3 as a chow, and it wins. If a hand won't split, pick a different pair and try again.

Now you can spot a winning mahjong hand. In the next lesson we'll walk through a whole hand of mahjong from start to finish.

Quick quiz