Now that we know how to set up the game, we can now play. I will assume that you are familiar with all the tiles (They are easy enough to interpret, except maybe for the Chinese numbers and the honors).
Since I found my portable Mahjong set, I can construct the full wall to remind you of the previous post:
Now we follow the procedure after setting up the wall and we end up with this:
The dealer has 14 tiles (hard to see from a bird's eye view) while the other players have 13. The players then take their tiles and place them in front of them like so:
They should look something like this; in other words, a random distribution. Now is the time to organize your tiles to make life easier for you.
The general order (Not a written rule per se, but most follow it) of tile arrangement is 1-9, Man (Chinese numbers), 1-9 Pin (Circles, coins, buckets, etc), 1-9 Sou (The bamboo sticks. The funny looking bird is the 1 Bamboo stick), Wind tiles (East, South, West, North) and Dragon tiles (White, Red, Green). And yes, I did put red before white, but again, unwritten rules are unwritten.
The simplified objective of the game is to create a hand with 4 melds, and a pair of eyes. Melds are either three of a kind triples, or sequences (1,2,3; 4,5,6, etc) of the same suit (Suits are the Man, Pin, and Sou previously mentioned).
As the dealer, you have one extra tile, so you discard one. Then each player takes turns drawing from the wall and discarding a tile.
When you draw a tile, place it horizontally on top of your hand. If you don't want it, place it in the discard zone. If you want it, then replace it with one in your hand and throw that to the discard zone. The procedure is arbitrary and you don't need to follow it. Again, this is just how Japanese people play.
Make an appropriate gap for where the tile falls into the sequence.
Put the tile in, and then remove a tile to discard:
In this case I removed an end tile, so separation and fixing my hand was not necessary. Discard the tile.
In Japanese Mahjong, you organize your discards in this fashion. Each row contains 6 tiles, and then a new row is created under it. There are a maximum of 3 rows, and if the third row reaches 6 tiles, then that row continues until the game is over.
Throughout the game players may discard tiles that you want. If they deal a tile that you have doubles of, you can declare "Pon" and take that tile, thereby forming a triplet.
The basic procedure is you declare Pon, reveal your own tiles, then take all three and put them on your right. You then discard one of your tiles, because your hand should always remain at 13, except when after drawing and when you win.
To indicate the person you took the tile from, you flip that tile in the direction that your opponent is in. In this case, I took from the opponent that was to the right of me.
In the special case that you initially have 3 of a certain tile, and a fourth one is discarded, you declare "Kan" and follow the same procedure. Except this time, you get to draw a new tile from the
dead wall, which is on the opposite side of the active wall. After drawing, you discard as usual and the game continues.
You can also take a discard if it forms a sequence, which is called a "Chi". However, since the probability of obtaining a sequence from a discard is much higher than obtaining a triplet, to compensate you can only declare Chi if the player on your left discards the tile.
Once again notice that the tile I took, 3 Bamboo, is pointing to the left, the opponent I took it from. You should show the meld in the logical sequence (1,2,3) but priority is given to the indication tile (The tile you took which points to the opponent you took it from). So in this case the sequence would be 3 (Indication tile pointing left), then follows normal sequence 1,2.
As the game progresses, someone may declare Riichi, and discard their tile horizontally. This indicates that they are in Tenpai (One tile away from winning). It may seem dumb to tell your opponents you are about to win, but it all becomes logical when we go into the theory and point system. For now, just assume that doing this is more advantageous than disadvantageous.
If your hand is in Tenpai, and someone discards the tile you need to win, you declare "Ron" and show your hand. Then the person who discarded the tile will pay you points based on how good your hand is. If your hand is in Tenpai and you draw the winning tile, then it is called "Tsumo" and each player will pay you.
The game ends either when someone wins, or the dead wall is reached (Remember you can't draw from the dead wall unless you get a Kan). In the case that no one wins, if you are in Tenpai, you show your hand. Players who are not in Tenpai (Or do not show their hand for other reasons; again a theory topic), must pay those players who are in Tenpai points. The general rule of thumb is either win, or if you can't for various reasons, get Tenpai.
Two players are in Tenpai (Myself, and the player across from me). The other two players would then have to pay points to us, because they failed to produce a Tenpai hand.
This is the general game play of Japanese Mahjong. Mechanics, points, and theory (Many, many topics I could cover) will be separate posts, but with the way school is progressing, don't expect these comprehensive posts for a while.
