Basic rules

Four players each start with 25,000 points. A game (a hanchan) is two rounds, East and South, of at least four hands each. Every player deals at least once per round.

In each hand you draw and discard until someone completes a winning hand. The winner is paid in points, and when the game ends the points decide the placements. Our league then converts them to PT with M-League rules (see counting points).

A winning hand has 14 tiles: four sets and one pair. A set is either a sequence (three in a row in one suit), a triplet (three identical tiles) or a quad (four identical tiles, called a kan, which takes an extra tile).

Two special shapes break the pattern: seven pairs (chiitoitsu) and thirteen orphans (kokushi musou).

A hand one tile away from winning is tenpai. The tiles that would finish it are its waits.

On your turn you draw one tile from the wall and discard one tile face up in front of you. Turns go counter-clockwise: East, South, West, North.

You can also claim another player's discard:

• チーChiiTake the discard of the player on your left to make a sequence.
• ポンPonTake anyone's discard to make a triplet. Beats chii.
• カンKanMake a quad, then draw a replacement tile from the dead wall.
• ロンRonWin on anyone's discard. Beats every other call.

Winning on your own draw is tsumo (ツモ). Any call except a closed kan opens your hand: some yaku (riichi, pinfu, menzen tsumo…) need a closed hand, and others are worth less when open.

Tiles are drawn from a wall built at the start of each hand. Step through how it's set up:

With a closed, tenpai hand, at least 1,000 points and at least four tiles left to draw, you can declare riichi: say it, turn your discard sideways, and put a 1,000-point stick on the table.

Riichi is a 1-han yaku and unlocks bonuses: ippatsu if you win within one go-around, and ura dora, a second set of dora revealed when you win. The price: your hand is locked. You must discard every tile you draw unless it wins (a closed kan that doesn't change your waits is still allowed).

The stick goes to the next player who wins. After a draw it stays on the table and carries over.

Dora are bonus tiles: each one adds 1 han but they are not a yaku. The dora is the tile after the face-up indicator in the dead wall:

• Red fives (aka dora): one red 5 in each suit, each worth 1 han.
• Kan dora: every kan flips another indicator.
• Ura dora: the tiles under the indicators, counted only for a riichi winner.

You can't win by ron while you are furiten. You can still win by tsumo.

1. 1 · Discard furiten. Any of your waits is in your own discards. Lasts until you change your waits.
2. 2 · Temporary furiten. You passed on a winning discard. You can't ron until your next discard.
3. 3 · Riichi furiten. You passed on a winning tile after declaring riichi. You can't ron for the rest of the hand.

Every winning hand needs at least one yaku. Yaku stack: add up the han of all of them, plus dora. Tap a yaku to see an example hand.

If the wall runs out, the hand is an exhaustive draw. Players who are tenpai show their hands and collect 3,000 points in total from the players who aren't (1 tenpai: +3,000 / −1,000 each; 2: ±1,500; 3: +1,000 / −3,000).

The dealer keeps the deal after winning or being tenpai at a draw. Otherwise the deal passes to the right. Each repeat or draw adds a honba counter, worth +300 points to the next win.

Some hands end early as an abortive draw: nine different terminals/honors in a starting hand, all four players discarding the same wind first, four riichi, or four kans by different players.