Elaine Sandberg - Beginners Guide to American Mah Jongg: How to Play the Game & Win

APPENDIX A
Mah Jongg Sets:
Where to Purchase a Set
& How to Update Old Sets

STANDARD SETS

You may see and purchase a standard American mah jongg set at:

www.americanmahjonggforbeginners.com

You may also e-mail your comments or questions about American mah jongg.

MAKING AN OLD SET USEABLE

Your set needs eight Joker tiles to be useable for American mah jongg. Unfortunately, sets manufactured before 1965 did not contain the necessary number. Sometimes people used the extra Flower tiles that came with their sets to convert into Jokers, but many times extra tiles were gleaned from other sets. These Jokers were converted by putting random stickers on them or they were sometimes marked with a blob of nail polish. These extra tiles many times did not match the sets they were used with.

Replacement tiles must always match the back-side color and the size of the other tiles of your set. Otherwise, you can easily tell which are the Joker tiles. If your old set does not have eight Joker tiles that match the back-side color and the size of your other tiles, you need to replace them with ones that match.

These replacements, called orphan tiles, may be available through the Internet; some sites to try are www.charlisstickers.com and www.mahjongtiles.com. The National Mah Jongg League also provides this service (see Appendix B). These sources also provide Joker stickers you may need.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Mah jongg is an exciting game, loads of fun, and many people who play it get addicted to it. But learning the game can be challenging.

This book is key to ensuring that your learning experience is easy. It starts with the basics and introduces new information, chapter by chapter, in clear, simple to follow steps. Finally, the last and more complicated chapters help you put together everything youve learned so you can play the game and win.

A Beginners Guide to American Mah Jongg is structured so that you play as you learn. There are Do It icons throughout the book that lead you through the procedures, lots of illustrations and examples to clarify concepts, exercises to give you practice doing the things you need, and summaries and short quizzes to help you focus on important information in each chapter.

You will gain greater and faster benefits from the book if you do the practice exercises and the quizzes; you will find youre able to integrate the information more easily.

Many beginners find that reading the book a second time is very helpful. They discover concepts that were missed during the first reading, and procedures that seemed complicated at first, become simple.

In addition, I recommend that when you begin the process of learning mah jongg, you plan to set aside a few (fun!) hours at a time for it. If you allow yourself more than a few days break between chapters, you have a greater tendency to forget what you learned in the previous sections. You will find that learning the game is much easier if you simply plan your time regularly, on a consistent schedule. It sounds like a lot, but I must tell you that all the reports I have received from new players are the same: they were anxious to get to the next chapter because they found the game to be such fun. I hope you will too.

As well as being a how-to guide for the beginner, this book is useful for those who may have played the game in the past and wish to refresh their skills. Many players use it as a reference. Instructors may want to use it as a text, as I do, in addition to their other teaching tools. The book is written so that the reader can learn on his or her own to play the game, but it assumes four people will be learning and playing the game simultaneously.

In order to learn the game, you will need an American mah jongg set. Information on where to buy a set is available in Appendix A.