The short answer: Mahjong is a four-player tile game from China. Everyone starts with 13 tiles, then takes turns drawing and discarding until someone puts together four sets and one pair — 14 tiles. First one to finish that hand wins.
Mahjong looks way more complicated than it is. You build a wall of tiles, deal them out, and then just trade tiles one at a time — keep one, toss one — until somebody’s hand clicks. The fun (and the depth) is in deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Let’s walk through it.
What do you need to start?
One standard set has 144 tiles: 108 numbered tiles in three suits (dots, bamboos, characters), 16 wind tiles, 12 dragons, and 8 flowers. Four people sit around a square table, and each side of the table gets a wall that’s 17 tiles long and 2 tiles tall.
- The dealer rolls three dice to pick who breaks the wall first.
- Everyone takes 13 tiles to start; the dealer takes a 14th and discards one to kick things off.
- Your goal: build four sets plus one pair.
How a turn actually works
On your turn you draw one tile from the wall and look at your hand. Keep it or not — either way you end the turn by discarding one tile face-up in the middle. Then the next player goes, going around the table clockwise until somebody wins or the wall runs dry.
You can also grab the tile the player before you just threw out, if it completes something in your hand:
- Chow: three consecutive numbers in the same suit.
- Pung: three of the exact same tile.
- Kong: four of a kind — you get a bonus draw after.
- Mahjong! your whole hand is done and you win the round.
How do you win?
Finish with four sets and a pair and you win — either off your own draw or off somebody else’s discard. There’s no target score in basic play; first complete hand takes the round, and most people keep playing a few rounds until the dealer seat has gone all the way around the table.
If all this sounds like more than you bargained for, you might actually be looking for the single-player version: play mahjong solitaire free online and just match pairs until the board is clear. Want the real four-player deal? Try our free American mahjong game — it throws in the Charleston and the yearly card, and it plays exactly like the tabletop version.
For the official wording behind all of this, head to our full mahjong rules page, or brush up on the basics with What Is Mahjong?
Related Questions
How many tiles do you start with in mahjong?
Each player starts with 13. The dealer draws a 14th tile and discards first. American Mahjong deals 13 to everyone, dealer included.
How many players do you need?
Four is the standard. Two- and three-player variants exist, but the tile counts and some rules change, so they play a bit differently.
Is mahjong hard to learn?
Not really — the basic rules take about half an hour to pick up. The tricky part is the strategy: knowing what to discard safely and what the other players are building.
How long does one game take?
A single hand is usually 10–20 minutes. A full match of several hands can run anywhere from one to three hours, depending on how social your group is.