Riichi Mahjong Tutorial

[Breanna Mangels]

Riichimahjong is a Japanese variant of the ancient Chinese game of mahjong. It is a tabletop game that is played by four players, with each player having a hand which they must try and complete to win points from the other players. It shares similarities with Rummikub, and card games such as gin rummy and poker.

Riichi mahjong does not use the flower or season tiles found in Chinese sets, nor the joker tiles used in American Mah Jongg. As an optional rule, riichi mahjong can also be played with one five from each suit being replaced with a red five tile.

After a set has been called, the tiles are placed face-up to the right of the player who called them. The called tile is rotated so that it is sideways, and is positioned to indicate which player discarded it, e.g. if the right tile is turned sideways then it indicates the player to the right discarded it. For example, the sequence meld below indicates that the player to the left discarded the 6 sou tile in a 567 set.

A winning hand consists of 14 tiles (excluding kans), which will almost always be four sets plus one pair. A crucial condition for the player is that the winning hand must contain a yaku. A yaku is something special about the hand which increases its value. This is a key difference to Chinese mahjong and serves to stop players from winning quickly with extremely cheap hands, meaning that higher scoring hands are more plausible, increasing the strategy and excitement in the game. For beginners, the easiest to remember and aim for are:

A player who has called riichi can only call ron on their first opportunity. They cannot wait for their winning tiles to be discarded by specific players if they have already been discarded by somebody else (see furiten below).

While the disadvantages of riichi can seem worse than the advantages, the additional yaku and reverse dora are generally far more valuable, and it is usually more beneficial for the player to call riichi than to not, unless they have a hand which would be worth a lot regardless, or another player may have a high-value hand which would be bad to deal into.

The final main difference between riichi mahjong and other variants is the presence of dora. The dora is indicated by a face-up tile in the dead wall, which will mark the next tile in the suit as the dora. For example, if the face up tile is 3 sou, then 4 sou is the dora tile. A 9 tile indicates the 1 tile of the same suit, so 9 pin would indicate 1 pin as the dora. Winds and Dragons cycle as follows:

Some variants of mahjong have red fives in play. One 5 sou, one 5 man and one 5 pin will be coloured entirely red, and these red fives are one dora. Again, they do not count as yaku, and only make a difference after the hand has won.

If a player wins after declaring riichi, then the tiles in the wall under any displayed dora indicators also become indicators themselves (called ura-dora), doubling the number of possible dora for the winning player. This is one of the main advantages of declaring riichi.

It is also worth noting that tiles which have been discarded and called by another player still count towards furiten discards. For this reason called tiles are typically rotated and placed to indicate the seating of the player that discarded them (left tile is rotated for player to the left, right tile to the right, middle tile for opposing player).

Scoring is a complicated aspect of the game, and unless playing with physical tiles, the computer will do it for you. Guides already exist on how to score in detail. As a rule of thumb, the following chart is good enough for beginners to estimate what a winning hand will be worth:

A fairly common but optional rule is that if no players are over 30,000 points by the end of South, then the game will continue into West round, and keeps going until any player gets above 30,000 points.

It is worth noting that the conditions for ending the game will depend on the exact rules being played to. For example EMA Tournament rules will allow players to continue with negative points, and the game ends at the end of South round regardless of the score situation.

Once the tiles are shuffled, each player forms a wall in front of them which is two tiles high, and seventeen tiles long, keeping the tiles face down. Once each player has built their wall, these are pushed together at the centre of the table to form a rough square.

Once the tiles have been dealt, the 14 tiles (27) to the left of the point at which the wall was broken form what is known as the dead wall. The top tile, 3 from the right hand side of this is then flipped over to become the dora indicator.

East then starts play by picking up his tile from the wall, at the point where he finished dealing the tiles (East can take this tile while dealing if he wishes). He then discards a tile, and play continues as described above until somebody wins, or all the tiles except for those in the dead wall have been dealt, at which point the game is drawn. Once the game has been won or drawn, all the tiles are shuffled and the wall and dealing proceeds as for the first round, with dealership having been passed on if required.

For those who have never looked much into the game "mahjong" in America is a puzzle-game where stacked Mahjong tiles are placed in specific patterns and you match pairs to take them off of the stack until you run out of options or tiles.

...but that's not the actual game of Mahjong. Mahjong is suppose to be a complex, fast-pace game built on these tiles. I'm intrigued but instead of slogging through documents, I'd actually like to see if I can fin a Mahjong game that was actually made for the West and intended to teach American's how to play the game.

If anyone has found a game like this, I'd appreciate a recommendation. Working through a game and tutorials works way better for me than trying to figure out the rules, especially without a set of tiles.

I'd be interested in a game like this as well. For me, the issue is the game needs four or whatever number of players to play, so trying to find that many sympathetic players at once when you're learning is difficult, unlike something like chess where you just need one other player.

Last year if you recall when I contribute to the finds post some dude game into a game exchange, they refused to take some items, something I ended up with for $10 was 2 for $5 for F1-Race and Mahjong(CIB) for Famicom, then a damaged shell majora collectors cart too. Surprised me.

Been trying to figure out how to play it and the faq file that exists blows, it's over my head. I'd love to get some game that walks you through how to do it, how the groupings work, points are valued and the rest. It looks like some serious thought out fun with a bit of luck given there is the random poker type gambling angle to what may or may not pop up on the tiles.

Yeah those are interesting, and the circles are strange, but those classic tile sets do look fairly nice. Problem though is still going back to having no clue how the hell to play it, cluster groupings, what the points are.

There's a translation patch on Romhacking.net so the text will be in English. It doesn't teach the game, but at least you don't have to learn Japanese as well. It's also a super cheap repro to make, as its a simple NROM game, if you wanna go that route.

I don't know that there is a good riichi tutorial game. Almost certainly it won't exist in English. I tried doing some cursory Japanese search but could not find anything (this could be my bad as well, I'm only at a basic level in Japanese). I would recommend just watching the videos online of people explaining riichi in english and then just try playing online. Tenhou.net is the best option IMO. It's free and is very good, online-enabled, and well-loved by serious players. It has an AI-only practice mode and you can also play it on almost anything made in the last decade. Everybody who knows riichi should know about this game. Here's a direct link to the windows browser version: Click the top-right button on the title screen to switch the language.

Otherwise I'm not sure what to tell you. It's a "simple" game that is absurdly complex to master. Scoring is itself a pain in the ass, and it's a plateau that I have not yet bothered to climb (I let the computer do it for me ). Good luck learning, though, because gripes aside, it is a really fun game.

If closing the tab or even the whole browser doesn't do it, go into the "privacy" settings of your browser, look for that specific website under cookies, clear them, then reload. That should take care of it if nothing else does.

True enough. If I knew the rules I'd stay on that site and play away as the english interface is great. I just didn't see a practice option to try and brute force my way through figuring out the scoring and grouping of tiles to clear/score off of them. I think it's a fascinating game to watch but trying to learn it with no physical help or a good instruction set to figure out is a big barrier.

Click on the middle hyperlink that says "Webで開く" and it will launch the web version (alternatively, the link on the left will launch the web 4K mode version, and the right link will let you download the desktop version which may run better for you).

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