Hong Kong Mahjong Rules
Real four-player mahjong — not the tile-matching puzzle.
If you searched for mahjong and found a game about clearing a pile of tiles by matching pairs, that is mahjong solitaire, and it is a different game. This page is about the four-player tile game that solitaire is named after: four seats, a wall of 144 tiles, and a race to complete a hand before the other three do.
The tiles
A set is 144 tiles: 34 distinct faces, four copies of each, plus 8 bonus tiles that are one of a kind.
- Three suits, numbered 1 to 9 — Characters (萬), Dots (筒) and Bamboo (索).
- Four winds — 東 南 西 北 (East, South, West, North).
- Three dragons — 中 發 白 (red, green and white).
- 8 flowers and seasons — Plum Blossom, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. These never form part of a hand. Drawing one sets it aside and draws you a replacement, and some of them are worth faan.
What a winning hand looks like
Four sets and a pair. A set is either a pung (碰, three identical tiles), a chow (上, three consecutive tiles in one suit) or a kong (槓, four identical). A handful of special hands — thirteen orphans, nine gates — do not follow that shape at all; they are listed on the scoring page.
⚠️ Completing that shape is not enough to win. The hand also has to be worth the table minimum in faan. See below.
The turn, and claiming a discard
Play passes to the right. On your turn you draw a tile and discard one. The part that makes mahjong mahjong is that a discard is not safe: any of the other three can interrupt to claim it.
When more than one player wants the same discard, the engine resolves it by priority — a higher number wins:
| Claim | Priority |
|---|---|
| win | 3 |
| kong | 2 |
| pung | 2 |
| chow | 1 |
So a win beats a kong or a pung, which beat a chow. A chow can only be taken from the player immediately before you; a pung or a kong can be claimed from anyone, which is what lets a claim jump the turn order.
The minimum — the rule that decides whether a table is fun
A completed hand that is not worth the table minimum in faan cannot win. You sit there holding a finished hand and the game refuses it. This is the single rule that most often stops a beginner enjoying Hong Kong mahjong, and it is why this game offers three tables rather than one:
| Table | Minimum | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 入門 Learner's Table | 0 faan | Every legal hand wins. Nothing is ever refused. |
| 新章 New Style | 2 faan | A real bar, low enough to clear while you are learning. |
| 舊章 Old Style | 3 faan | The authentic Hong Kong minimum. Around a quarter of hands draw. |
Why Hong Kong is the easiest real mahjong to learn
Compared with Japanese Riichi — the variant most Western players meet first — Hong Kong Old Style has no riichi declaration, no dora, no ippatsu and no furiten. Those four are most of the rules load that stops beginners, and none of them exist here. What is left is: build four sets and a pair, clear the minimum, know roughly what your hand is worth.
That is a genuinely short list, and it is the reason this ruleset is the one to learn first if you want to sit down at a real table with a real set.
Scoring
The 30 scoring hands, the payout ladder and the 10-faan limit have their own page: Hong Kong mahjong scoring — all 30 faan. To score one specific hand, use the scoring calculator.
Play it
Free in the browser, no download and no account, against opponents that play the real rules. Every hand ends by showing you what everyone was holding, what you were waiting on, and exactly how many faan short you were.