Hong Kong Mahjong FAQ

The questions people actually ask — usually with the game paused.

Is this the same as mahjong solitaire?

No, and they are barely related. Mahjong solitaire is a single-player puzzle where you clear a pile by matching identical tiles. This is the original four-player game it borrowed its tiles from: you sit at a table with three other players, draw and discard in turn, and race to complete a hand of four sets and a pair. The tiles are the only thing the two games share.

What is the difference between a pung and a chow?

A pung (碰) is three identical tiles — three East winds, three 5 Dots. A chow (上) is three consecutive tiles in the same suit, like 4-5-6 Bamboo. Honours cannot form a chow: there is no sequence that runs through the winds or dragons.

Can you chow from anyone?

No — only from the player immediately before you, the seat on your left. A pung or a kong may be claimed from anyone at the table. That asymmetry is the reason a pung can jump the turn order and a chow cannot.

What happens when two players want the same discard?

Priority decides it, and a higher number wins:

So a win beats a kong or a pung, and those beat a chow. Only one player can win on a given discard — if two could, the higher priority seat takes it.

Do you have to reveal your pungs?

Only the ones you claimed from a discard. A pung you took off someone's discard is placed face-up in front of you permanently — the act was public, so the set is. Three identical tiles you drew yourself (暗刻, a concealed triplet) stay hidden in your hand and are never announced.

The difference is worth real faan. Claiming costs you 門前清 (1 faan for a fully concealed hand) and disqualifies that set from 三暗刻 / 四暗刻 — worth 2 and 5. It also tells everyone what you are collecting. Claiming is always optional, and often wrong.

Why will the game not let me win when my hand is complete?

Because it is not worth enough. Hong Kong mahjong has a table minimum — the default here is 3 faan (舊章) — and a finished hand below it is refused. This is the single most confusing rule for new players, and it is not a bug.

A hand of ordinary runs and triplets can score zero. "Complete" and "worth something" are unrelated questions. Work out what a specific hand is worth with the scoring calculator, or play at 入門 (minimum 0), where nothing is ever refused.

What are the flower tiles for?

There are 8 bonus tiles — Plum Blossom, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. They are never part of your hand. Draw one and it is set aside face-up and you immediately draw a replacement, so they cost you nothing.

They can be worth faan. A flower matching your seat (正花) scores 1 each, and finishing with an entirely empty tray (無花) also scores 1 — so flowers are luck in both directions, not a plan. Collecting all eight wins the hand outright, immediately.

Is there a dead wall in Hong Kong mahjong?

No. This is a Japanese Riichi feature, and Hong Kong Old Style does not have one — this game's rules set the dead wall to 0 tiles. Play simply continues until the wall runs out, and the tile that replaces a flower or a kong comes from the live wall like any other.

If you learned mahjong from a riichi game and are looking for the dead wall, the dora indicator or the replacement wall, none of them exist here. That is a large part of why Hong Kong is the easier ruleset to learn.

Is there a furiten or "sacred discard" rule?

No. Furiten (振聽) — where you may not win on a tile you have already discarded — is a Japanese Riichi rule. Hong Kong Old Style has no equivalent. Neither does it have riichi declarations, dora or ippatsu. Those four rules are most of what makes riichi hard to pick up, and none of them are here.

What happens if nobody wins?

The hand is a draw (流局) — the wall runs out and nobody has a winning hand. Nobody pays anybody. The dealer keeps the deal and the same hand is played again.

Draws are common at the 3-faan table, which is a direct consequence of the minimum: hands that are finished but too cheap cannot be declared, so they never end the hand.

What are seat winds and round winds?

Every player has a seat wind — 東 南 西 北 (East, South, West, North) — and the whole table shares a round wind. A pung of your own seat wind scores 1 faan (門風); a pung of the round's wind scores 1 faan (圈風). Sitting East during the East round means a pung of East scores both.

East is the dealer. The dealer keeps the deal by winning, so a strong East seat can hold it for several hands.

Who pays when someone wins?

It depends on how the hand was won. On a self-draw (自摸) all three opponents pay. On a discard, the player who threw the winning tile pays for everyone — which is why a careless discard is expensive and why the bots get cautious late in a hand. The dealer pays and is paid double.

The amount comes from the payout ladder, which roughly doubles per faan — the full table is on the scoring page.

Can I play mahjong online with friends?

Yes. You can open a private table and share the link — the people you send it to join that table and nobody else can. You can also play on your own against the computer, with no account and no network at all.

Do I need to download anything or make an account?

No to both, for the single-player game. It runs in the browser, it works offline once loaded, and there are no adverts. An account is only needed to play online against other people, because a shared table needs to know who you are.

Still stuck?

The rules page covers the whole ruleset, the scoring page lists all 30 scoring hands, and the calculator will tell you what a specific hand is worth.

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