Southern Sparrow

There is No Second Place in mahjong!

So if you’re not going to win, you need to change your strategy from “try to win” to “try not to lose!” Your goal moves from completing your own hand to holding discards that could help your opponent complete hers.

It means you may start to throw tiles that your hand needs for mahjong just so you don’t accidentally discard a tile your opponent can call to win mahjong.

How to Play Mahjong for Money! A great way to up the level of competition in your next mahjong game is to add some extra steaks to the game. You can do this by playing for money. In mahjong, following the NMJL rules, we play for coins to represent the point value of your hand. There are ways for you to double this win either from one player or from all the players at the table and ways for you to also win double double! Let’s talk about how to keep score when playing for money, how much money you’ll win no matter what when you mahjong, and how to win double and double double payouts from your opponents.

One of the things I love about playing for money in Mahjong is that it’s not very high stakes so you’re never going to walk away from a game having lost a bunch of money, but even when you’re playing for $0.50, it can feel much more competitive than if you and your group normally don’t keep scoring you’ll find that your strategy when you’re playing will change ever so slightly when you decide to play for money because you’ll possibly make different decisions around Joker exchanges, etc. We’ll talk to all of that in this video.

this way of keeping score is slightly different from the way you’ll keep score when playing in a tournament, usually. I’ve linked the video for how to keep tournament style score following National Mah Jongg League rules below.

A lot of you have told me you want to step up your mahjong game to play in a tournament, so let’s talk about how to prepare for your first tournament and things you should be doing with your regular group before tourney day!

Start by taking out your Blanks and extra Jokers. Playing with Blanks really does change the strategy, and while they’re something we love for social play, you’ll need to get used to playing without them for your tournament.

I keep hearing from players that they’ve been taught not use ever use Jokers as a Flower or a Dragon or a Wind. There’s some real rule confusion that may be leading folks to believe this Joker myth…so let’s talk about when you can use Jokers to represent these tiles and when you can’t!

Comment “Jokers” to get my full Joker guide to your inbox!

Let’s talk about how to set up for a game of American Mahjong. Comment “Mahj 101” to get the full free lesson series in your inbox!

Welcome to Episode 4 of our complete beginner’s mahjong lessons, Mahj 101. Let’s learn how to set up a Mahjong table for a game and how to deal the tiles in American Mahjong.

Equipment you need: 4 racks with pushers, 4 NMJL Cards, 1 American Mahjong tile set, and dice

Start by shuffling all of the tiles and placing them face down on the table. Then all players will build the wall: 19 stacks, 2 tiles high, in front of each rack.

What is the wall? The wall in mahjong is a communal draw pile used throughout the game. Each player will draw the next tile in line from the pushed out wall on their turn.

What is the East Seat and how do you determine who is East? The East Seat is the player who begins the deal and who begins the game by discarding the first tile. To determine East, all players roll dice, highest is East seat (dealer).

Why do we break the wall? The wall is broken just like a deck of cards is cut, to randomize the first tiles dealt out. East rolls again to see where to break the wall and then begins the deal by taking two stacks of tiles for herself.

Dealing tiles: East starts, everyone gets 13 tiles, East gets 14

Watch the full series to learn exactly how to play mahjong with step by step instructions following the National Mah Jongg League rules