Elaine Sandberg - Winning American Mah Jongg Strategies: A Guide for the Novice Player -Learn the Secrets of Success to Strategize, Excel and Win at Mah Jongg

APPENDIX

Chinese Mah Jongg vs.
American Mah Jongg

A ll the variations of Mah Jongg, including the American version, are direct descendants of the parent Chinese Mah Jongg. The offspring, while retaining the core of the parent, not surprisingly, are all different. The question then is How does the American version differ from its parent? How is it the same?

American Mah Jongg is basically a simplified version of the Chinese gamestill as challenging as the original. But in Chinese Mah Jongg, the goal is not just to win. In the Chinese game a winning hand is scored, so the goal is to win with the highest scoring hand possible and to maximize its points.

A basic Chinese winning hand consists of any three Kongs and any Pair, called Eyes. But it may also contain other combinations of any Pungs, Kongs, Pairs and/or Chows. Chows are runs of numbers in the same Suit2,3,4, 5,6,7, etc.

The number of points a winning hand can score varies, according to who is the winner (East position gets bonus points for winning), what kind of tiles are used for a winning hand, Dragons, Winds, (called Honor tiles), all odd or even numbers, what combinations (Pungs, Kongs, all Pairs, Chows (worth fewer points than Pungs or Kongs), one Suit (Clear Hand) vs. 2 or more Suits (Mixed Hand). Points are assigned for exposed (melds) vs. concealed combinations the winning hand contains, point values may be doubled or tripled. There are Special hands, and Limit hands that limit the points the hand is worth. The winner adds up all the points he/she can muster and then translates them into money per point, so a winner could potentially be a BIG winner if the hand scores lots of points.

Being an accountant is a good background to have to play Chinese Mah Jongg.

Another feature of the Chinese game is that the Flower tiles, called Bonus tiles, are worth extra points, if a player has one or picks one. But they are not included as part of the hand. There are eight of these Bonus tilesdivided into four Flower and four Season tiles. And there are no such things as Jokers or a Charleston. Chinese mah jongg is played with 144 tiles and do not come with racks. The tiles stand upright in front of each player.

The biggest changes to American Mah Jongg occurred when the National Mah Jongg League created a one size fits all scoring system that set a specific Value for each hand and invented the card, a unique idea, not found in other variations. It limited the number of hands that a player could play, not a rule in the Chinese game. The kinds of handsWinds, Dragons, consecutive numbers, odd, even numbers, etc. were organized into distinct groups (sections) and the League ingeniously devised a logical and simple way to describe the specific combinations required for each hand within each group using color coding. The early Mah Jongg Leagues rules incorporated the eight bonus tiles as part of a hand. The designation of honor tiles was eliminated. And there are no Chows in American Mah Jongg. The first League sets came with upwards of 18 to 22 Flower tiles, some of which were used as Joker. Gradually, Quint, Year hands, Singles and Pairs as well as Equation handsaddition and multiplication, appeared on the card and by the mid-1960s, the number of Flower and designated Joker tiles were fixed at eight each. Strangely, as it turns out, in simplifying the game, the American version is more restrictive than the original.

Although many of the Chinese games rules and procedures have been modified or eliminated, we still retain much of the parent in the American game. The kinds of handsodds, evens, Wind/Dragon hands, consecutive run, Like numbersare all part of both games. The combinations of Pairs, Pungs, Kongs, one, two and three Suited hands again are in both versions. Building the Wallseen as the Garden Wall, the City Wall, or the Great Wall of China, breaking the Wall, picking 13 tiles for the hand, retaining East as the designated starter with 14 tiles, the rules to Call, the procedure to Expose, the direction of play from the right of East vs. new Walls from the left of East, and many more constraints, all stem from the original. And you still need 14 tiles to win.

So even though the two games are different, they still are basically the same. Indeed, now you know why we play with eight Flower tiles and four of them are sometimes designated with the Seasons.