This is one hand of American mah jongg, described from the moment you sit down to the moment you push your rack forward. Nothing here assumes you have played before.
1. The wall
Each player builds a wall in front of their rack: 19 stacks, two tiles high. Four players, nineteen stacks each, two tiles per stack — 152 tiles, the whole set. Push the four walls together into a hollow square.
Walls are built face-down. Nobody sees what anyone else has, and that stays true for most of the hand.
2. Keep your flowers
Deal thirteen tiles to each player (fourteen to East), then look at what you have.
A quick correction for anyone arriving from Chinese or Hong Kong rules: in American mah jongg, flowers are not bonus tiles. They are ordinary tiles that live in your rack and satisfy the "F" printed on the annual card — hands like FFFF or FF 222 000 222 555. There is no automatic replacement draw when you hold one.
Two things follow from that. Flowers are interchangeable — any flower satisfies any "F", and the numbers printed on them do not matter. And flowers are suitless, so they never count toward the number of suits a hand requires.
Some groups still choose to expose flowers and draw a replacement before the Charleston, which is a legitimate table agreement — but it is an agreement, not a rule. If you are playing a flower hand, you certainly do not want to give them away.
3. The Charleston
Now the passing. Three tiles right, three across, three left — all simultaneously, receiving before each new pass. Then, if the table agreed, the same three passes again, followed by an optional courtesy pass of up to three tiles with the player across.
Take your time here. This is the one moment in the hand when you can improve your rack without any risk.
4. Read your rack, pick a line
Arrange your thirteen tiles by suit, then look at the card. You are looking for a line you are plausibly three or four tiles away from. Pick the closest one, not the most valuable one, and commit.
If nothing fits — and on your first few hands, often nothing will — take the cheapest, most flexible line you can see and start discarding toward it. You can change your mind later. Players do it constantly.
5. East discards
East begins. One tile is placed face-up in the centre of the square, and play proceeds counter-clockwise: each player in turn draws from the wall, then discards one tile into the centre.
You may claim a discarded tile if it completes a group in the hand you are playing. To claim it, call out — "pung" for three of a kind, "kong" for four, "quint" for five, or "mah jongg" if it completes your hand. Then expose the group on top of your rack, face-up, for everyone to see.
If nobody claims a discard, the next player draws from the wall.
6. What an exposed group means
Once a group is exposed on your rack, it is locked. Those tiles are yours, they are visible to the table, and they cannot be rearranged or returned to your hand. You also cannot win with a hand that must be concealed if you have exposed anything.
Exposure is safe and it is honest, and it costs you information. That is the trade.
7. Concealed, or not
If you never expose a group and never call a discard except the winning tile, your hand is concealed. Concealed hands are marked on the card and pay more.
Concealed play is harder. You need the tiles to come to you off the wall. But nothing you do is visible to the other three players, and that is worth a great deal.
8. Calling mah jongg
When your rack holds every group the card asks for — and the final tile comes either off the wall or off someone's discard — call "mah jongg," and push your rack forward so all thirteen (or fourteen) tiles are visible.
Do not push until you are certain. A false call ends your turn and, at most tables, ends your participation in the hand. If you are unsure, check the line on the card with the table watching. Nobody will mind; everybody has done it.
9. Settling
Read the value off the card, then apply two multipliers.
How you won. If you drew the winning tile yourself off the wall — a self-pick — all three other players pay you double the card value. If you called it off somebody's discard, that player pays double and the other two pay single. A 25-point hand is therefore worth 150 to you as a self-pick, or 100 off a discard.
Whether you used a joker. Under official NMJL rules, a hand with no jokers at all doubles again — except on Singles-and-Pairs hands, which are exempt. The two multipliers stack, so a 25-point hand that is both self-picked and jokerless pays 100 from each player, 300 total. That four-times ceiling is the best return available in standard scoring.
Concealed hands do not double again; their higher value is already printed on the card.
Whether East pays and receives double is a table decision rather than an NMJL rule — settle it along with the second Charleston before you deal.
Then the deal rotates and East builds a new wall.
What you will actually feel on your first game
Slow. Everybody says this. For the first several hands, you will be looking at the card more than the table, and you will forget what was discarded two turns ago.
That passes faster than you would think — usually somewhere in the second session. What does not pass is the part where the Charleston starts and four people who were strangers an hour ago begin talking about their grandchildren. That is the game.