Reading the table — practice drill

Practice, not the rulebook

These are teaching scenarios built around real American-mahjong principles (eight jokers, no furiten, a discarded joker is dead). The actual call always comes down to the live table and the current NMJL card — read the table, don't trust table talk.

Two worked examples — read these before you start

1. Choosing a safe throw. West has called a pung of 4-dots. The pool holds four 9-dots, a 7-crak and a 3-bam. In your rack: 4-bam, 4-crak, 6-bam, 2-crak.

1. Count the copies. All four 9-dots are visible, so the 9-dot is dead — the one provably safe tile in the game. You do not hold one, so keep looking.
2. Check the exposures. West called 4-dots. American mahjong has no sequences, so 3-dots and 5-dots tell you nothing. What matters is the digit: many card lines pair like numbers across suits, so 4-bam and 4-crak are exactly what that hand may still be waiting on.
3. Check the card. Find the lines that contain a pung of 4-dots. Whatever those lines still need becomes your no-throw list.

Answer: the 6-bam is the throw — it shares neither the digit nor the suit with anything West has shown. Hold the two 4s back unless your own line is finished with them.

2. Counting the joker supply. Four jokers sit inside opponents' exposures, three are in the discard pool, and you are holding the eighth. Nobody can be holding a joker.

1. Only four physical copies of any tile exist, so five or six of a kind can only be built with a joker.
2. With all eight accounted for, every quint and sextet line on the card is mathematically impossible.
3. Strike that whole family off your defensive thinking — a kong on the table is now a closed book, not a group waiting to grow.

Answer: any hand still "needing one more" for five of a kind is dead. Stop defending against quints and spend the attention on like-number and consecutive lines instead.