Riichi Mahjong Rules

What is riichi mahjong?

Riichi mahjong is the standard form of mahjong played in Japan, where it is simply called mahjong (麻雀). Compared with the Chinese classics it grew out of, three things set it apart: the riichi declaration, which lets a player announce a ready hand in exchange for extra rewards; dora tiles, which inflate scores and drive most of the drama; and the yaku requirement — a hand can only win if it contains at least one recognized scoring pattern.

Games are played by four players over one or two rounds, East and South. Each round consists of at least four hands, and everyone starts with the same stake of points — typically 25,000 — which shifts from loser to winner every hand.

The 136 tiles

The set contains 34 distinct tiles in four copies each, with no jokers. Three number suits — characters (manzu), circles (pinzu) and bamboo (souzu) — run from 1 to 9. The honor tiles are the four winds (East, South, West, North) and the three dragons (white, green, red). Ones and nines, together with the honors, are called terminals and honors, and they matter for several yaku.

Many tables also play with red fives (aka dora): one five of each suit painted red, which counts as a bonus dora tile wherever it ends up.

The goal: four sets and a pair

A complete hand is fourteen tiles arranged into four sets and one pair. A set is either a run — three consecutive tiles of the same suit, such as 4-5-6 of circles — or a triplet of three identical tiles. A quad, four identical tiles, also counts as a set and has its own rules. The pair is any two identical tiles.

You hold thirteen tiles and win by drawing or claiming the fourteenth. A hand that needs exactly one more tile is called tenpai.

Here is the rule that defines the whole game: a complete hand is not enough. To win, your hand must also contain at least one yaku — a recognized scoring pattern such as riichi, tanyao or a triplet of dragon tiles. Hands without a yaku cannot go out, no matter how neatly they are assembled.

How a turn works

On your turn you draw one tile, then discard one face-up in front of you. Play passes counterclockwise, and each player's discard pond stays visible for the rest of the hand — it is the main source of information in the game, telling you what opponents are collecting and which tiles are safe to discard.

The wall of undealt tiles shrinks as the hand goes on. The last fourteen tiles are set aside as the dead wall, used for replacement draws after kans, and the hand ends when the live wall runs out.

Calling tiles: chii, pon and kan

Instead of drawing, you can claim a tile another player has just discarded. A chii claims the tile for a run and is only allowed on the player to your left; a pon claims it for a triplet and a kan for a quad, and both can be claimed from anyone. After a kan you draw a replacement tile from the dead wall.

Calling comes at a cost: the moment you claim a discard, your hand is open, and every yaku that requires a concealed hand is off the table for the rest of the hand. Fast, cheap hands are usually built open; expensive ones stay concealed. Knowing which race you are in is most of riichi strategy.

Dora tiles

At the start of each hand one tile is revealed as the dora indicator, and it points to the dora: the tile immediately after it in the set order. Every dora tile in your winning hand adds one han of bonus value. A new indicator appears after each kan, and a player who declared riichi is also paid for the hidden ura dora indicators revealed underneath after a win.

Doras are not a yaku. They inflate a hand that is already legal — you still need a scoring pattern for the win to count.

The riichi declaration

Riichi is the rule the game is named after. When your concealed hand is tenpai, you may declare riichi: you pay a 1,000-point stick to the pot, your hand and discards are locked, and from then on you cannot change your wait or demand a tile you passed up earlier.

In exchange, riichi is itself a yaku — it makes almost any ready hand legal — and it opens the door to two bonuses: ipatsu, a win before anyone calls in the next go-around, and the ura dora under the revealed indicator. The 1,000-point stick goes to whoever wins the hand.

Furiten: the discard trap

If any tile in your own discard pond could complete your hand right now, you cannot win by ron — a state called furiten. It applies even if you never wanted that tile: the wait matters, not the intention. Furiten wears off once your wait changes.

After a riichi declaration the state becomes permanent: your hand is locked, so a win you let slip by keeps you unable to ron for the rest of the hand. Check your pond before declaring — a riichi that cannot actually win is the classic beginner disaster.

Winning: tsumo and ron

There are two ways to finish a hand. Tsumo is winning on a self-draw: everyone pays you, and a fully concealed winning hand earns the menzen tsumo yaku on top. Ron is winning on another player's discard: the discarder pays the entire value of your hand alone.

Draws: when nobody wins

If the wall empties, the hand is a draw: players without a tenpai hand pay a small penalty to those who are tenpai, and no points change hands if everyone has the same status. A few rare events abort the hand immediately and replay it with no penalty — four identical wind tiles discarded in the first go-around, four players declaring riichi, four kans, or a dealer's starting hand of nothing but terminals and honors.

Scoring at a glance: han and fu

A win's value is counted in han and fu. Han comes from your yaku plus dora; fu measures the hand's shape and how you won. Base points are fu multiplied by two raised to the power of two plus han, and any hand worth 2,000 base points or more lands on a fixed prize tier, starting with mangan at 8,000 points for a non-dealer ron.

You do not need the full arithmetic at the table — the full yaku list and scoring tables give every pattern's han value plus a han-to-points ladder you can memorize in a few minutes.

Your first game, step by step

Eight steps that turn the rules above into a playable plan:

1. 1

   Sort your hand by suit when it is dealt, then discard isolated honor tiles first — they form sets rarely and win nothing on their own.

2. 2

   Keep tiles that connect: pairs, and tiles within two numbers of each other in the same suit. You are building runs more often than triplets.

3. 3

   Glance at the dora indicator once per turn. Collecting a dora is free value for almost any hand.

4. 4

   Pick a simple yaku to aim for early. Tanyao (no terminals or honors) and yakuhai (a dragon or wind triplet) are the easiest to reach.

5. 5

   Call pon or chii only when the claim keeps a yaku possible — an open hand without a yaku is a dead hand.

6. 6

   When your concealed hand is one tile from winning, declare riichi. The stick buys a legal hand, two bonus mechanisms and a locked, safe discard plan.

7. 7

   When someone discards a tile you need, call ron; when you draw it yourself, declare tsumo. Check the payment, then do it all again.

8. 8

   Lose a few hands on purpose and read why. Reading discards is the real skill, and it only comes from table time.