British Mahjong without the rulebook overwhelm.

British Mahjong can look complicated because scoring combines the tiles in your hand, how they were grouped, how you won, and sometimes what happened during play.

You do not need to memorise all of that. Enter what you can see and what you know happened; the scorer handles the detailed arithmetic and only asks extra questions when the answer cannot be inferred.

A normal Mahjong hand is made from four sets and a pair.

Pung

Three identical tiles

Kong

Four identical tiles

Chow

Three consecutive tiles in one suit

Under British rules, a normal hand can contain no more than one Chow. Some named special hands use different patterns; the scorer checks those separately.

There are three numbered suits: Bamboos, Characters and Circles. Each runs from 1 to 9.

There are also four Winds — East, South, West and North — and three Dragons — Red, Green and White. Winds and Dragons together are called honours.

Characters · 1–9

Circles · 1–9

Bamboos · 1–9

Winds

Dragons

Flowers · bonus tiles

Seasons · bonus tiles

Flowers and Seasons are bonus tiles. They are put aside when drawn and replaced, so they do not form part of the normal playing-hand count.

During normal play, the underlying hand structure contains 13 playing tiles. When you go Mah Jong, the winning tile remains in the hand, giving a 14-tile completed structure.

A Kong contains four identical tiles rather than three. Because a replacement tile is drawn after declaring a Kong, a hand with one or more Kongs can physically contain more than 13 or 14 playing tiles while still having the correct structure.

If you have not won, enter completed groups as sets and put every other playing tile under Remaining tiles. They can be singles, pairs or unfinished runs; you do not need to force them into a fishing shape.

Flowers and Seasons are excluded from that structural total because each is set aside and replaced.

In British Mahjong, every Flower and Season belongs to one Wind. If the tile matches your own seat Wind, it gives an extra double.

east

Matches East

south

Matches South

west

Matches West

north

Matches North

A set is concealed if you made it entirely from tiles you drew yourself.

A set is exposed if you claimed another player’s discard to complete it.

Concealed Pungs and Kongs normally score more than exposed ones, which is why the scorer asks which applies. When the final winning tile creates a special exception, the app asks which tile completed Mah Jong rather than expecting you to know the rule.

British Mahjong scoring happens in stages. First the hand receives basic points, then any doubles are applied, and finally the normal table limit is applied.

A double means the relevant score is multiplied by two.

Examples include some Dragon or Wind sets, having no Chows, using one suit with honours, a fully concealed winning hand, or particular ways of going Mah Jong.

The useful thing for a beginner is not memorising the whole list. The scorer checks the conditions you enter and explains the doubles that actually applied to your hand.

Fishing means your hand needs exactly one more tile to go Mah Jong. You may also hear this described as calling.

Some special hands receive a score even when you were fishing for them when another player went Mah Jong. You do not need to identify the special yourself; enter the tiles you hold and the scorer can look for valid completing tiles.

British Mahjong includes named special hands that do not use ordinary scoring in the usual way.

Some are unusual tile patterns — such as Thirteen Unique Wonders, Knitting, Triple Knitting, Gates of Heaven and Wriggling Snake. Others depend on the circumstances of the win.

The scorer detects these where it can. If it needs information that cannot be seen from the tiles, it asks a short factual question about what happened rather than asking you to identify the special by name.

Scoring the four hands is only the first step. Players then settle between one another.

• The winner is paid their score by each of the other three players.
• The three losing players also settle the differences between their own scores.
• Payments involving East are doubled.

For a draw / wash-out, East remains East. The current project implementation makes no settlement transfers for that hand; this remains documented as a project interpretation while the rules reference is refined.