Mahjong Riichi Guide

[Niobe Hennigan]

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.

Riichi mahjong (modern Japanese mahjong) is a game of skill and luck, sharing some similarities with rummy and poker. After learning that riichi is quite popular in Europe, I decided to write a book on riichi strategies for European players. I then ended up splitting the manuscript into two volumes, one for beginners & intermediate players and the other for more advanced players. I have completed the first volume so far. The second volume is coming soon (hopefully by the end of 2019).

I am making my book(s) freely available to any aspiring players. If you'd like to donate a small amount of money, please use the link to the right. All donations will go towards promoting riichi mahjong across the world.

The original forms of these books are LATEX source codes. Compiling these LATEX source codes has the effect of generating a device-independent representation of manuscripts, which can be converted to other formats and printed. The LATEX sources for the books are available below:

The source code depends on the piemf font package (version 2.0.2), developed by Mr. Takayuki Yamaizumi, for printing mahjong tiles. Unfortunately, Mr. Yamaizumi appears to have taken down his website, where I first obtained the package from. I am keeping the package on my website, not knowing if this is completely legal...

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify these books under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. That is, you can freely modify, translate, and redistribute my books for noncommercial purposes, as long as you acknowledge my original contributions.

I am indebted to a lot of friends I have acquainted with through mahjong. In particular, my thanks go to Philipp Martin, Ian Fraser, and Gemma Sakamoto, who have read an earlier draft of the manuscript and gave me feedback and encouragement. Any remaining errors are of course my own.

Tired of reading the same strategy books over and over again? Ever wanted to read more new riichi mahjong content on a regular basis? Here I will list the currently active riichi mahjong blogs and forums available in English.

The Japanese variation is primarily played in Japan, though it is available worldwide through internet sites and video games. Throughout the past 15 years, the game has gained increased prominence in western cultures through mahjong-centric media.

Mahjong as a whole is only a roughly 100 year old game. Originating in China, the game managed to spread across the country, East Asia, and even to the United States during the 1920s. The riichi variant only started emerging in Japan after World War 2. The modern riichi variant played today began in the 1960's, while the addition of red 5's started appearing in the 1980's. Mahjong started out as a gambling game, though playing for fun or sport is also common.

The object of riichi mahjong is to score the most points. At the start of each hand, players draw and discard tiles, competing to be the first to get a winning hand. When a player wins, the hand is scored based on its value. If the hand is won directly off another player's discard, the discarder must pay the winning player for its value. If a player draws their own winning tile, everyone else splits the payment. After a player wins, the tiles are reshuffled, and the next hand starts. Once the final hand ends, the game ends, and whoever has the most points wins first place.

Mahjong is a zero-sum game - whenever a player gains points, the other players lose a total of that many points. Therefore, developing hands quickly and minimizing point losses are important aspects to the game. Sometimes, it is best to give up winning in order to prevent paying for others' hands.

The rules to the game are complex. Japanese mahjong's gameplay is generally similar to most Asia-originated variants of mahjong. For a more detailed overview, see the rules overview page, or the rest of this article.

The game of mahjong has numerous variations across the world, including an attempted standardization of "World Mahjong". Virtually every country in East Asia and the United States has a form of mahjong. While they all have the same general principles, they each have very distinct rule variations.

Of special interest are the terminal tiles - these are the 1 and 9 tiles of each suit. Sequences cannot "wrap around" from 9 -> 1 (i.e. you can't have an 891 sequence), so terminals are harder to use. However, terminals are subject to a few special yaku. Numbers from 2-8 are known as simples.

Modern Japanese mahjong sets also come with four red five dora tiles. One number five character tile, two number five circle tiles, and one number five bamboo tile are replaced with their matching red tiles. These red dora tiles can replace the appropriate number of standard five-tiles. Using the red dora tiles is optional.

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