Zung Jung mahjong tutorial - furrykef/mahjong GitHub Wiki

This tutorial is a work in progress. It is intended to eventually be integrated into the software.

Dragons

A dragon tile can only combine with copies of itself. It cannot combine with other tiles, not even other dragons. Dragon tiles cannot form sequences, only triplets. This makes them less flexible, but on the upside, you gain points for making dragon triplets. If you can make triplets of two dragon types and a pair of the third type, you get a lot of points, and if you make triplets of all three dragons, you get a lot of points!

Dragon tiles can be good or bad. They are good when you have a triplet of them. A pair of them is okay; they can act as the eyes of your hand or be upgraded later to a triplet. A lone dragon is unlikely to form a set and usually should be discarded.

Winds

Wind tiles are much like dragon tiles, but a wind triplet only scores points if it is your seat wind. If you get three triplets of winds, though, or two triplets and a pair of winds, you still get a lot of points -- not as many as you would with dragons, since there are four winds but only three dragons. You get a boatload of points if you manage to get triplets of all four winds!

Number tiles

Number tiles will usually make the bulk of your hand. You can make triplets of them, but you can also make sequences, which are much easier to make. Number tiles only ever combine with other number tiles of the same suit.

Pung!

If any opponent discards a tile you need to make a triplet, you can call "Pung!" and take that tile to make an open triplet. After doing this, it becomes your turn; you have 14 tiles and so you must discard a tile, and play continues counterclockwise. Any players in between you and the player who discarded the tile you punged miss their turn.

There are a few disadvantages to declaring pung, so you won't want to do it every time it's possible:

It opens your hand, meaning you won't get the 5 points from Concealed Hand.
It reveals part of your hand. This may give your opponents an idea of what hand you're developing and how close you are to completing it. It will also sometimes alert them that a tile they want will now be hard or impossible to obtain.
The set is "locked in". You can't break it up to form different sets.

However, usually it will allow you to complete your hand faster, and this often outweighs the other factors.

Chi!

If the opponent to your immediate left discards a tile you need to make a sequence, you can call "Chi!" and take that tile to make an open sequence. It's exactly like an open triplet, except of course it's a sequence, and it has the same advantages and disadvantages. Remember, though, that you can only call chi on the opponent who acts immediately before you. This is the only call that has this restriction.

Kong!

If you have a triplet on your rack and an opponent plays the fourth copy of that tile, you can call "Kong!" to take it and make an open kong. You cannot turn an open triplet into a kong this way, only a closed triplet.

You can, however, turn an open triplet into a kong if you draw the fourth tile yourself.

If you have four of the same tile on your rack, then, on your turn, you may declare a closed kong. This is face-down and is considered concealed. Note that the four tiles on your rack are not considered a kong until you do this. It would instead be considered two pairs, or a triplet and an extra tile.

Finally, if you have an open triplet and you have the fourth tile on your rack, then, on your turn, you may turn the open triplet into an added kong. Be careful! If an opponent needs that tile to complete their hand, they may declare ron and rob the kong as if you had discarded it. (This is the only time a kong can be robbed. A closed kong cannot be robbed, and if you call kong on a discard and then another player calls ron, the ron cancels out your kong.) It is rare for a kong to be robbed, however, and it's not possible to rob a kong of honors, since your opponents don't have any tiles to meld it with.

All kongs are still considered triplets.

Regardless of how you form the kong, you draw a tile afterward (the fourth tile of the kong does not count toward your 14-tile hand) and take a turn.

What's the point of forming a kong? The most obvious benefit is you get points. Having one kong gives you 5 points. Having two is worth 20 points. Having three is worth 120, and if you somehow manage to make four, that's worth a whopping 480 points! (Aside from this, all kongs are counted as triplets for scoring purposes.)

Another benefit is you get to draw another tile after forming a kong. If you're lucky enough for this tile to complete your hand, you get a bonus 10 points! Even if it doesn't, though, it may improve your hand in some other way.

Tsumo and ron

When you draw a tile from the wall and it completes your hand—usually this means it gives you four sets and a pair—you may call "Tsumo!", declaring yourself the winner of the hand. The hand ends and your hand is then scored according to the various scoring patterns used in the game.

If you are one tile away from a complete hand, and somebody discards a tile you can use to complete your hand, you may call "Ron!" and steal that tile to win the game. Ron is distinct from pung and chi and is not subject to the same rules:

Calling ron does not open your hand; i.e., you are eligible for Concealed Hand if ron is the only call you've made.
You may call ron to complete a pair or an irregular hand.
You may call ron on any player.

Conflicting calls

Pung and kong calls take precedence over chi calls. That is, if you call chi, another player may still call pung on the same tile, in which case that player takes the tile.
Ron calls take precedence over all other calls.
If multiple players call ron, the caller closest to the discarder (starting from the discarder's right, going counterclockwise) is the winner.

Winning hands

There are three kinds of winning hands in mahjong:

Regular hands, which consist of four melds and a pair. The vast majority of your hands will be of this type.
Seven Pairs, which consists of, well, seven pairs. Four of a kind counts as two pairs, but only if it is not a kong.
Thirteen Terminals (often known as Thirteen Orphans), which consists of a pair of honor or terminal tiles and exactly one of each of the other kinds of honor and terminal tiles.

After you win the hand, you will earn points depending on various criteria, mostly determined by the various patterns that occur in your hand. Some people these criteria yaku or fan, but we just call them scoring patterns.

If your hand scores 0 points, you are given a token 1-point pattern called Chicken Hand. A chicken hand can be very useful for closing out the game once you've established a strong lead. All other patterns score at least 5 points, though, so a player who only goes for chicken hands is very easy to beat!

Once you are more advanced, you may want to play with a 5-point minimum, meaning you are not allowed to win with a chicken hand.

Blame

When you call ron, the player who discarded the tile gets the blame. What does that mean? It means sometimes they have to pay more than the other players.

If your hand scores 25 or less, all players pay that amount to you. But if your hand scores more than 25, the two losing players who do not take the blame pay only 25 points. The player with the blame pays the rest of the points you're entitled to!

Let's take a look. Your hand will be worth a whopping 125 points if you draw an 8. If you draw the 8 yourself, all three players pay you 125 points, giving you a total of 375 points.

Nope, you didn't get an 8. Throw away that west wind.

Carl discarded the 8! Call ron!

Now Carl gets the blame for giving you a winning hand. You're still entitled to 375 points, which is three times the base value of your hand. Alice and Bob have to pay you 25 points, but Carl is on the hook for the rest of it. He has to pay you a whopping 325 points!

For this reason, you have to think about defense when there is any possibility of a big hand.

Same-turn immunity

If you've played riichi mahjong, you should be familiar with furiten. Zung Jung mahjong doesn't have furiten, but it has something similar called the same-turn immunity rule. The essence of the rule is: if the previous player has just discarded a tile, it is always safe to discard that same tile. Let's take a look at how it works.

We have a ready hand. Let's discard the green dragon, since it's the one tile that doesn't fit into our hand.

Bob has discarded the 7. Hey, we can win on that tile! But we'll still finish in second place if we take it from Bob. It's early in the hand and we have a lot of ways to hit our hand, so let's see if we can win off Alice and steal first place.

Yes! Alice discarded the 7! Call ron!

Ah, wait. Alice has same-turn immunity! Alice saw that Bob discarded the 7, so she discarded it, too, thinking it was safe. The problem is, we could have called ron when Bob discarded the 7, so it is treated as if we had done so. The same-turn immunity rule means we cannot "target" Alice this way. Poor Bob gets the blame even though we initially passed up his discard.

Now, Alice would not have been safe if she had discarded the 7 on a later turn. As soon as we discard something, Alice's immunity from us vanishes.

Nine Gates, and the same-turn immunity rule

We already have a complete hand here, but once again you are very lucky indeed: you almost have the very rare Nine Gates yaku! This yaku has a very special scoring condition: it can only be completed when the concealed portion of your hand consists exactly of 1112345678999 of the same suit, and you draw or claim any tile of the same suit. So if you have 1112345678999 and you draw a 2, you get Nine Gates, but we started with 1112234567899 and drew a 9, so it won't count as Nine Gates. So right now we only have a Concealed Hand with a Full Flush. That's still a good hand (85 points), but not as good as Nine Gates (480 points)!

It's early in the hand and our opponents are probably far from completing their hands, so instead of calling tsumo now, let's try to get Nine Gates. Let's discard the 2.

Aha! Bob saw you discarded a 2, so he discarded another 2. The concealed portion of our hand is 1112345678999, the waiting pattern for Nine Gates, so it should count if we claim Bob's 2. Call ron!

Wait, what? What just happened?

Oh, that's right. We fell afoul of the same turn immunity rule again! You called ron on the same kind of tile you most recently discarded, so your hand is treated as though you had called tsumo before discarding the tile. We should have passed on calling ron for now and waited until we discarded something else -- unless of course we drew one of the tiles we're waiting on!