Riichi Mahjong 3 Player Rules

[Mandy Geise]

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.

Japanese Mahjong scoring rules are used for Japanese Mahjong, a game for four players common in Japan. The rules were organized in the Taishō to Shōwa period as the game became popular. [citation needed]

The scoring system uses structural criteria as well as bonuses. Player start scores may be set to any value. Usually, it is set to 20,000 to 30,000 points. Scores are counted using sticks of 10,000 points, 5,000 points, 1,000 points and 100 points. A game often ends when all the points of a player are lost, which is a situation called hakoten,[nb 1] dobon,[nb 2] buttobi,[nb 3] etc. However, some settings allow the game to continue, even if a player's score dropped below zero.

In the case of a draw, points are transferred according to the nō-ten bappu rule. In the event of a penalty, such as claiming a win with an illegal hand, then points are transferred via the chombo rule.

The actual points given are rounded up to the nearest 100. Even if the values of han and fu are the same, the points received for self-draw wins often slightly deviate from those received for discard wins because of rounding.

The method of calculating a winning hand's score in mahjong is quite tedious. Instead, hand values are fixed into a scoring table. Expert and professional players have this table memorized and can thus tell the value of a hand at a glance. Each of the table's point values is derived from the scoring equation and procedure with each corresponding han and fu values.

To use the table, simply look up the values that correspond to the han and fu counts of the hand. The top numbers in each cell indicate the payout from a player who discards a winning tile. The numbers in brackets indicate the payout for each player in the event the winning tile is self-drawn. If the winner is the dealer, each player pays the same amount. If the winner is a non-dealer, then the other two non-dealers pay the smaller number, while the dealer pays the larger number.

On plenty of occasions, a hand ends with all tiles drawn and the 14 tiles in the dead wall remain. Yet, no player wins the hand. This is the exhaustive draw. In this case, points may be exchanged barring any tenpai hands vs nōten hands. After each exhaustive draw, the counter increases by one.

In most rules when a dealer's hand is nōten, the dealer changes and the game wind may change. But if it's the last hand of the last round, in some rules, a game does not end if the dealer declares nōten.[2]

The dealer keeps count of the number of continuous dealer wins and draws by placing point sticks on the table. While point sticks are usually used for scoring, here they are used merely as counters, a visual aid. The initial count is zero. The number of counters increases by one when:

In the case of (1) or (3), the dealer remains the same. In the case of (2), when the dealer cannot declare tenpai, the dealer changes, but the number of counters increases regardless of whether the dealer declares tenpai. In all other cases, namely when only a non-dealer wins, the count is reset to zero.

Other settings for chombo apply point penalties after the game's conclusion. This is especially the case under tournament settings. Under this method, players do not benefit with any point gains. Instead, the infracted player solely takes a point deduction. The deduction may be set to any specified number.

At the end of the game, the final scores may be calculated. Under casual game settings, this calculation is not necessary. However, under more formal settings, it may be required. This calculation takes the game's scores and adjusts them according the setting of oka and uma, which were predetermined before the game. The calculation for each player is as follows:

In the optional rule wareme (割れ目, ワレメ; fissure, split), the player in front of whom the wall was split to indicate the end of the dead wall, acquires and pays double the normal points. They are doubled after the points for counters are added.[6] It is often especially called oya-ware (親割れ; parent's wareme) when the player is the dealer.

In 1924, a soldier named Saburo Hirayama brought the game to Japan.[1] In Tokyo, he started a mahjong club, parlor, and school.[1] In the years after, the game dramatically increased in popularity. In this process, the game itself was simplified from the Chinese version. Then later, additional rules were adopted to increase the complexity.[2]Mahjong, as of 2010, is the most popular table game in Japan.[3] As of 2008, there were approximately 7.6 million mahjong players and about 8,900 mahjong parlors in the country. The parlors did 300 billion yen in sales in 2008.[4] There are several manga and anime devoted to dramatic and comic situations involving mahjong (see Media).[5] Japanese video arcades have introduced mahjong arcade machines that can be connected to others over the Internet. There are also video game versions of strip mahjong.

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