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Home Introduction Preliminaries The Winds & "the Oya" Bonus Tiles Playing the Game Building a Hand - The Basics Building a Hand with Special Combinations How to Complete a Hand Interrupting Play with Pon and Kan Special Cases Mistakes Points and Payments Yaku Table Other Stuff News Acknowledgements Mahjong in Japan Books on Mahjong Mahjong Sets & Accessories Links Drop me a line |
Building a Hand - The BasicsThe aim of Mahjong is to complete a hand before any other player does. The most common method of completing a hand is to collect four sets of three tiles - either "Three-of-a-Kind" or "a Run-of-Three" - and a "Head" of two similar tiles.
Each tile within a set of three must be of the same type - the same suit, the same dragon, or the same wind. For example:
A hand can consist of a mixture of sets, so a completed hand of 14 tiles might look like this:  Or this:  Or this:  Next |
Note 1: Although not every completed hand consists of four sets of three tiles, with but one exception, no hand is complete if it lacks a "Head" of two similar tiles. The Exception: If a player goes "Kan" four times he automatically completes his hand even if it lacks a head. Note 2: In the Three-Player game a Run-of-Three can only be made with tiles from the Bamboo or the Coin suits! |
