Singapore Mahjong Guide

The tile count that confuses everyone. 108 suited + 16 winds + 12 dragons = 136 regular hand tiles. Add the 8 flowers and seasons and you have 144. Add the four Animals used by this Singapore profile and you have 148 — the exact set used by this site's practice table. Other Mahjong sets may omit or replace local bonus tiles.

Only the 136 regular tiles ever sit in your hand. The other 12 are revealed and replaced the moment they arrive, so they never form part of your four-sets-and-a-pair.

Honours never form a sequence. Winds and dragons can only ever be a pair, a triplet or a quad. Every Chi must be three consecutive tiles within one numbered suit.

Different names, same tiles. Circles and Dots both mean 筒子; Characters and Millions both mean 萬子; Bamboo and Bams refer to 索子, also written 條子. This guide places its preferred English label first, but includes the alternatives so a new player can follow different Singapore tables. A tile can be named by rank — 7 Circles is 七筒 (qī tǒng).

The break point. Once the wall is built, the dealer rolls three dice. The total (3–18) is counted round the table starting from the dealer as 1, and that names whose wall section is opened. The same total is then counted along that section to find the exact stack where the wall is broken, and dealing runs on from there. This is why the deal does not simply start in front of the dealer — the break point moves every hand.

The wall is consumed from both ends. Sixteen tiles are set aside at the back as a replacement reserve, and every flower, animal and Kong replacement is drawn from there rather than from the live wall. That is why the "last tile" is a defined point rather than simply the end of the row: the hand ends with 15 live tiles still sitting in the wall, and the draw taken just before that is the special final draw that scores an extra Tai. If nobody has won by then the hand is an exhaustive draw with no winner — agree beforehand whether the dealer repeats.

Why the seats do not match a compass. This catches out almost every new player: the four names look like a compass and behave nothing like one. Two ordinary facts collide, and the mismatch falls out of them.

• The table convention orders the seats 東南西北 — East, South, West, North. Cultural origin stories are not needed to use the rule, and this guide does not present one as established history.
• Play passes to the player on your right, which seen from above is anticlockwise. Every turn, claim and dealership rotation follows it.

Put those together and the seat names must appear in East → South → West → North order while travelling anticlockwise. On a compass that same sequence runs clockwise. One order, two opposite rotations — so the table is simply the compass reflected. Nothing is wrong: the seat order and the turn order are each fixed, and a mirror is the only arrangement that satisfies both.

Same four names, same starting point, opposite rotations. Hold one up to a mirror and you get the other.

From your chair, then: if you are East, South sits on your right, West faces you across the table, and North is on your left. That is exactly what this site's practice table draws.

Why play runs anticlockwise in the first place is not documented. The sources are candid that no conclusive reason survives — it is convention, and worth saying plainly rather than dressing up in an origin story.

The practical consequence is that the table's East is wherever the dealer is sitting, not a direction in the room. It moves: when the dealership passes, every player's seat wind changes and the player who was South becomes East, without anyone getting up. Trying to align the table with the room's actual compass bearing gains nothing. It also explains a distinction that bites later — your seat wind is where you sit this hand, while the prevailing wind is the round the whole table is in. Both use the same four names and both can score, so a hand's value depends on the round as well as your chair.

Four sets and one pair, totalling 14 tiles. A set is three tiles — a sequence (Chi) or a triplet (Pong). A Kong holds four tiles but still fills one set slot, which is exactly why it comes with a replacement draw: without it you could never reach 14.

The pair — the eye — can be any two identical tiles: a suited number, a wind or a dragon. Which one you choose has scoring consequences in both directions, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than taking whatever is left over.

Special hands ignore the template altogether, and which ones your table allows is very much a house rule. Two matter here:

• Thirteen Orphans — played on this table under the name 13 Wonders (十三幺), and worth the full five-Tai cap.
• Seven Pairs — seven distinct pairs and no sets at all. This table does not use it. Do not build toward a seven-pair hand here and expect to declare it; you will be holding a shape the scorer does not recognise.

Everything else runs through the four-sets-and-a-pair template, so unless you are deliberately chasing a limit hand, that is the shape to build toward.

Why the count changes. Between turns everyone holds 13 tiles. Your draw makes 14; your discard puts you back to 13. The dealer starts with 14 only because they discard first without drawing.

A claim replaces your draw — it is not an extra tile. If you Pong or Chi a discard, that tile is your incoming tile: you form the open set and discard, without drawing from the wall first. Getting this wrong is the usual cause of ending up with the wrong number of tiles.

The loop, and what breaks it. Play normally runs East → South → West → North, passing to the player on your right. A claim cuts the loop short:

• Pong, Kong or Hu jump straight to whoever called, skipping everyone in between. Those players simply lose their turn that round.
• Chi never skips anyone — only the next player in turn order may claim it. From the claimant's seat, the discarder is on their left; equivalently, the claimant sits to the discarder’s right.

Bonus tiles are handled inside your turn. Reveal any flower, season or animal the moment it arrives, take a replacement from the reserve, and repeat if the replacement is another bonus tile. Only then do you decide your discard.

Chi is the only call that cares where the tile came from. If the player on your left discards 6 Bamboo and you hold 4–5 Bamboo, you may Chi. The identical 6 Bamboo from either other player cannot be Chi'd — though it could still be claimed for Hu if it completes your whole hand. Pong, Kong and Hu can be taken from anyone.

The three kinds of Kong, which behave differently but all count as one set and all earn a replacement draw:

The replacement draw is not a bonus turn. A Kong uses four tiles to fill one set slot, so without a replacement you would be a tile short of ever reaching 14. It restores the count, nothing more. If the replacement is itself a bonus tile, reveal it and draw again.

Pass 過 also has a temporary cost. Passing an eligible Hu 胡 blocks Hu on that tile type until your next draw. Separately, passing an eligible Pong 碰, Kong 槓 or Chi 吃 blocks all three set claims—Pong, Kong and Chi—on that tile type until your next draw, but does not by itself block Hu. Your own latest discard is likewise locked against reclaiming or winning until your next draw. Drawing clears these temporary restrictions.

You cannot claim merely to swap the same tile back. After Pong, the claimed tile cannot be discarded immediately. After Chi, the claimed tile is blocked and, when the claimed tile sits at one end of the new sequence, the opposite extension is blocked too. For example, after claiming 1 with 2–3, neither 1 nor 4 may be the immediate discard. The restriction ends as soon as you discard another legal tile.

Calling is optional, and often wrong. Being allowed to Pong or Chi is a different question from whether you should. A call trades flexibility and information for speed: the set is locked in, cannot change shape, and tells everyone what you are collecting.

The test worth applying every time: does this call bring me closer to a hand I could actually declare — including reaching the minimum Tai — or does it just fill a slot? A call that completes a set but leaves you with no legal Tai source is how players end up holding a finished chicken hand.

• Usually call when you have already exposed a set this hand (the concealment is spent anyway), when you are deliberately racing for a fast cheap hand, when the wall is running low, or for a Kong that does not wreck your shape — the replacement draw plus the immediate Kong payment is close to free.
• Usually pass early, before your shape has settled; when the tile completes a set but not your overall plan; or when an opponent is clearly close and the exposed information would help them read you.

Chi and Pong are not symmetrical. A Chi can only ever come from one player, so a genuinely useful one is rare — take it when it helps. A Pong can come from any of three, so useful chances recur, and you can afford to let a marginal one go.

One thing that does not apply here: some rulesets pay a bonus for a fully concealed hand, which any call forfeits. This table awards no concealed-hand Tai, so the only cost of calling is information and flexibility. Check which applies at your table.

Ready (聽牌) is not simply "one tile from four sets and a pair". Because this table requires at least one Tai, the tile that completes your shape must also leave you with a legally scoring hand. A hand one tile from a complete but worthless shape is not ready — it is stuck.

The same three loose tiles, shaped three ways, give very different chances. This is the highest-leverage skill beyond knowing the rules:

Those are ceilings, not counts. Subtract every copy you can see before trusting any of them — a two-sided wait on a suit an opponent is visibly hoarding can be worse than a narrow wait on a tile nobody wants.

Shape the wait before you are ready, not after. Early on, when choosing between a tile that only serves a closed wait and one that could become two-sided, lean flexible. Once you are actually ready the wait is essentially fixed — the decision that mattered was made several turns earlier. Reshaping late costs a draw you usually cannot spare.

Before you declare Hu, run four checks — a wrongly declared win is a penalty situation on stricter tables:

1. Count the tiles. The incoming tile should complete four sets and a pair exactly.
2. Check every sequence sits within one numbered suit. Honours never form a Chi.
3. Check you actually reach the minimum Tai — this is the one people miss.
4. Declare before the next player draws. If you are unsure, say so and ask the table to verify rather than guessing.

Shape and value are two separate tests, and you need both. Holding fourteen tiles in four sets and a pair is necessary but, on a table with a minimum-tai rule, it is not sufficient. A complete hand worth zero tai is a chicken hand (雞胡): you cannot declare it, and play simply continues. This is the rule newcomers from other Mahjong variants least expect, and the one that most often ruins an otherwise finished hand.

The practical consequence is that you have to plan a tai source before the final tile arrives, not after. Common sources on a Singapore table:

• Your seat wind or the prevailing wind as a Pong or Kong — the easiest tai to pick up by accident, and the reason honour tiles are worth holding a little longer than they look.
• Dragons (Red 中, Green 發, White 白) as a Pong or Kong.
• Bonus tiles — flowers, seasons and, on Singapore tables, the four animals, depending on what your table pays for them.
• Ping Hu (平胡), the all-sequence hand, where the whole hand rather than one set carries the value.
• Winning on a replacement tile after a Kong or a bonus draw, where the table scores it.

Two ways to win can settle differently by table: self-drawn (Zimo · 自摸), where the tile completing your hand comes from your own draw, and on a discard (Fangpao / Dianpao · 放炮 / 點炮), where you claim another player's discard as the win rather than as a Pong, Kong or Chi.

Confirm the number before the first hand. This practice table requires one Tai. The compared rulesets and configurable profiles also document two-Tai and zero-Tai alternatives; this guide does not claim how prevalent each choice is. The minimum changes how you build every hand, so settle it alongside the other house rules rather than discovering it mid-game.

Ping Hu differs materially across the rulesets compared here. The shared idea is an all-sequence hand, but the eye, the wait, whether bonus tiles disqualify it and whether an exposed Chi is allowed are all table-rule questions. A rule learned at one table does not transfer unchanged to another — check it rather than assume.

Open the focused Ping Hu contradiction map for the direct answer, a side-by-side table of documented alternatives, stable rule ID SGMJ-PINGHU-001, and worked hands that are automatically checked against the playable scorer.

On this site's practice table the test runs in order, and the hand scores Ping Hu only when every answer is favourable:

1. Four sequences? Every set must be a numbered run. A single Pong or Kong ends the Ping Hu route.
2. Unvalued eye? The pair cannot be a dragon, your seat wind or the prevailing wind.
3. No bonus tile? Any flower, season or animal blocks Ping Hu on this table — one of the commonest surprises, because bonus tiles otherwise help you.
4. More than one winning tile — or self-drawn? This is the condition most often stated wrongly. On this table, Kah Long (卡窿) means winning off a discard on a hand that had only one possible winning tile. That covers a closed middle wait, an edge wait and a single-tile pair wait alike. Crucially, it only applies to a discard: the same single-tile wait self-drawn keeps Ping Hu.

Chou Ping Hu (臭平胡) — literally "smelly" Ping Hu — is the near miss: a hand that looks like Ping Hu but fails one condition, most often because the eye turned out to be a valued honour. Tables differ on whether it still pays something or nothing at all.

The practical warning is the same one that governs the minimum-tai rule: because Ping Hu forbids Pongs, an all-sequence hand often has no other tai source. If your table also blocks it on bonus tiles, a single flower you were pleased to draw can leave you with a complete hand you cannot legally declare. Decide early whether you are committing to Ping Hu, and confirm your table's exact four conditions before the first hand rather than mid-dispute.

Some bonus combinations pay chips immediately, while the tiles also have their ordinary Tai value. The immediate award happens as soon as the combination is complete, before anyone wins. It is separate from final hand settlement.

Two details worth knowing. The immediate payment for your seat's Flower and Season needs both tiles, whereas the Tai is awarded for each matching tile separately — so a single matching Flower scores but does not trigger the payment. And each combination pays only once per hand, however the tiles arrive.

Because every animal is worth +1 Tai on its own, animals are the easiest way to satisfy the minimum-Tai rule without building anything special. A bonus tile is not optional hand material: it must be exposed immediately, then replaced from the back of the wall before play continues.

How a win is paid depends on how it was won. This is the part new players get wrong at the table rather than in theory, because the two cases look similar and settle very differently.

• Won on a discard (Fangpao · 放炮). All three opponents pay, but not equally — the discarder pays double and the other two pay the single rate. So feeding the winning tile costs you twice what your neighbours pay, which is why a late discard into an obviously ready hand hurts in a way a bad draw never does.
• Self-drawn (Zimo · 自摸). Nobody fed it, so all three pay the double rate. That makes a self-drawn hand worth half as much again as the same hand won on a discard.

Chips double per tai. On this table a one-tai hand starts at 1 chip and doubles from there, so the gap between a small hand and a capped one is far wider than the Tai numbers suggest:

Read the last two columns as what the winner collects in total. A discard win is the single rate ×4 (double from the discarder, single from each of the other two); a self-drawn win is the single rate ×6. Confirm your own base and cap before the first hand rather than after someone wins big.

Kongs pay immediately, and separately. An exposed Kong claimed from a discard and a promoted (added) Kong each collect 1 chip from every opponent. A concealed Kong collects 2 chips from every opponent. The flat payment happens before anyone wins, does not scale with Tai and adds no Kong Tai.

Bao (包) is the exception that overrides all of it. Where feeding the winning tile normally costs you the double share, bao makes you liable for the entire settlement — the full 4× or 6× above, paid by you alone, on behalf of the two players who did nothing. At the five-tai cap that is 64 or 96 chips out of one pocket. It is not a penalty for carelessness in general; it triggers on specific, visible situations, which is exactly why it is avoidable.

The trigger is feeding a tile that lets an opponent complete a third exposed dragon set, a fourth exposed wind set, or a fourth exposed same-suit set. In each case the danger was showing on the table before you discarded: the opponent had already exposed two dragon sets, or three winds, or three sets in one suit. That is the practical lesson — read exposed sets before you discard, because bao only ever arrives after a warning you could see.

The liability sticks. This is the part that surprises people: once you have fed the triggering tile, you are on the hook for that player's eventual win — whether they go on to win off your discard, off somebody else's, or by self-draw. You do not get released because the winning tile came from elsewhere. The moment of the mistake is when you fed the set, not when the hand ended.

Bao has several independently varying dimensions. Compared rulesets use different triggers and durations, and some profiles turn it off. Because Bao can move the whole settlement onto one player, agree the exact trigger, duration and payment consequence before play.

There is no single nationwide Singapore ruleset. The foundation is stable — four players, the same tiles, draw-and-discard turns, the familiar Chi/Pong/Kong/Hu calls. The disagreements cluster tightly around scoring and edge cases, and that is where arguments start. A club or tournament can publish an official ruleset for that event, and an app can define an exact implementation, but neither overrides your family's table. "Official at this tournament" and "universal Singapore rule" are different claims.

So name the ruleset before money or pride is involved. Here is what varies, and what this site's practice table does:

Round, dealer and session choices

On a phone, swipe the table sideways to compare every column.

The thirty-second version, if you only ask a few: how many Tai are needed and what is the cap? Who pays on a discard versus a self-draw? Does bao apply, and on what? What counts as Ping Hu? And what happens after a false Hu?

Edge cases to settle at a human table

When it has already gone wrong. Everything above is about avoiding mistakes. This is about the moment one has already happened — which is when a new player most often freezes. None of these situations is unusual and none needs an argument, but Mahjong has no governing body, so every penalty below is a table convention rather than a fixed law. Agree the answers before the first hand, not during the dispute.

Five habits that matter more than any clever play. None of these require reading opponents well — they are simply the things beginners most often skip.

1. Name your Tai source early. Before you are halfway through the hand you should be able to say what will make this hand legal. A structurally perfect hand worth zero Tai cannot be declared, and by the time you notice it is usually too late to fix.
2. Stay flexible in the opening turns. Keep tiles that could join more than one shape, and avoid exposing melds before your hand has settled. An early call narrows your options and tells everyone what you are doing, usually for very little gain.
3. Always reveal bonus tiles immediately. Flowers, seasons and animals are free value with a free replacement draw — and on this table they pay chips on the spot. There is never a reason to hold one back.
4. Read discards, not just your own tiles. A suit that disappears from someone's discards is the loudest signal in the game. Two fast Pongs in one suit is the second loudest.
5. Play safer as the wall runs low. Late in the hand, re-price every risky discard against how little is left to draw.

One myth worth dropping now. "They discarded it themselves, so it is safe" is unreliable here. Japanese Riichi and this practice table apply different discard restrictions; other rulesets may define another lock or none. The genuinely useful signal is a tile with several copies already visible — that simply leaves fewer copies for anyone to be waiting on.

Review decisions, not outcomes. After a hand, the useful questions are: did I keep the shape with more live improvements? Could I name my Tai source? Did I update my outs as copies appeared? Did I reassess when the table turned dangerous, or keep attacking because that was the plan? "I discarded wrong because the next draw would have helped it" is hindsight and teaches nothing. "I kept a shape with two live improvements instead of one" is analysis you can reuse.

When you are ready to go further, section 17 covers trading speed against value and section 18 covers when to stop pushing altogether.

A winning hand needs five functional blocks: four that become sets, plus one that becomes the eye. Reading your hand as five jobs to fill is far easier than asking, tile by tile, whether each one is "good" — and it is the only reliable way to see which tile is genuinely spare.

A worked example. You are in the South seat, prevailing wind East. You have just drawn, and hold:

Why North goes. It is not your seat wind (South), it is not the prevailing wind (East), and you hold only one copy — so it scores nothing and completes nothing. Every other group in the hand is doing a job. That is what makes it the clean cut rather than a guess.

Block quality changes with the table. If three 7 Circles are already visible, the 8–9 Circles block has almost no live outs left and becomes worse than the North you were about to throw — and North may be worth holding as a safe tile instead. Count the live outs before you decide which block is really the weakest.

The one caveat: a tile with no block job can still be worth keeping if it is your only realistic route to the minimum Tai. A hand with six tidy blocks and no way to score is not a plan.

Do the subtraction on the table, not in your head afterwards. A wait is only as good as the number of copies still available, and that number drops every time a matching tile appears in a discard row or an exposed meld. Counting it is the difference between a wait that looks strong and one that is.

A worked example. You are holding 4–5 Bamboo, a two-sided wait that completes on a 3 or a 6. That shape starts with eight winning tiles — four 3 Bamboo and four 6 Bamboo:

Five outs, not eight. The shape did not change and the wait is still two-sided — but it is now meaningfully worse than it looks, and a one-sided wait on a tile nobody has touched may be the better hand.

What counts as visible. Subtract every copy in your own hand, in any discard row, and in any exposed Pong, Kong or Chi. Tiles in concealed hands stay in the count: you cannot see them, so they are still possible draws. This is why reading the table pays off — the information is sitting face-up in front of you.

The habit worth building is checking your outs before you commit to a wait, not after you have been sitting on it for six turns. If a wait has three or fewer live outs and you can switch to one with more, switch early — and if you cannot, that is a strong signal to read the push-or-fold decision rather than pushing on hope.

Every hand is a trade between three things: how likely you are to finish it, how much it pays if you do, and how much you risk feeding someone else while you try. Good Mahjong is not "always go fast" or "always chase a big hand" — it is knowing which of the three is currently scarce.

• Probability — how wide your wait is and how many live outs remain.
• Magnitude — which Tai categories you are stacking, and whether you are likely to be self-drawn or win off a discard.
• Risk — how likely you are to deal in while pursuing your own hand, and how big the hand you would be paying looks.

A worked example. You hold 4–5 Circles. The player to your left discards 6 Circles, which you could Chi for a complete run. An opponent already has two exposed sets. Should you call?

Read the phase of the hand. Early, keep connected shapes and more than one plausible Tai route. Mid-hand, narrow toward a real shape and start reading opponents' melds rather than only your own tiles. Late, when the wall is running short, re-price every extra Tai against the draws actually remaining — speed usually gains value, and folding a cheap hand can beat forcing it through a dangerous tile.

A note on luck and skill, because it is the argument every table eventually has. You do not control the deal or the order of the wall, so a beginner can beat an expert in a single hand and a correct decision can still lose. Skill shows up across many hands: keeping shapes with more live improvements, recognising a legal Tai route early, and limiting losses when someone else is clearly favoured. Judge a choice by what you knew when you made it, not by whether the next tile happened to reward it — and resist inventing precise win percentages out of hidden information. Compare what you can actually observe.

Folding does not mean giving up. It means you stop trying to advance your own hand and start discarding tiles that are unlikely to complete anyone else's, because the cost of feeding a win now outweighs what is left of your own chances. Winning more over an evening is about half finishing hands and half not paying for other people's.

A worked example — and the most expensive discard in the game. An opponent has exposed a White Dragon Pong and a Green Dragon Pong. You are holding a Red Dragon 中 and thinking of throwing it.

This is not merely "a risky honour tile". The two exposed sets were visible before you discarded, which is the whole point of the bao rule: it punishes discards you had every opportunity to avoid.

Reading opponents. Three signals are worth more than the rest:

• Exposed sets sharing a suit or category. All one suit points to a flush; all honours points to a big honours hand. This tells you how expensive they are, more than how close.
• A suit that disappears from someone's discards. The clearest "I need this" signal in the game. It does not say how big their hand is, but it says precisely what is dangerous to feed right now.
• Several fast exposed melds. Less work remaining — though it is not proof of a ready hand.

A player with no melds at all late in the hand is ambiguous, not automatically frightening: they may be far behind, or quietly ready. Their discards tell you more than their concealment does.

When to change gears. If you are still far from ready, your live outs are few, and an opponent shows several threatening sets, switching to safe discards is usually worth more than the small chance you still finish. Tiles already sitting in the discard rows are the safest available — but "safer" is not "safe": a discarded tile can still complete a pair or a single-tile wait. Nothing in Mahjong defence is a guarantee, and any table convention beyond this is worth agreeing with your group rather than assuming.

The questions that actually stall beginners at a real table. Every answer below is what this practice table does; where tables genuinely differ, it says so.

Claims, wins and hand shape

Waits, live tiles and probability

Scoring and practical decisions

Five complete scoring and settlement examples

Kong decision matrix

On a phone, swipe the table sideways to compare every column.

If a Kong is declared at the protected wall boundary and no legal supplement exists, the hand ends cleanly rather than inventing a tile. A Kong on the final playable draw may complete its immediate award, but no supplement follows.

On a phone, swipe the table sideways to compare every column.

Singapore Mahjong rules reference ↗Singaporean scoring names ↗半色 Singapore usage ↗Singaporean reference sheet ↗SPGG competition rules ↗

External references describe their own rulesets and sometimes disagree with one another. They are linked for comparison; the exact rules of this website remain those in section 21.