Planet Mahjong Play free

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Learn mahjong, free

A 20-class course in Taiwanese 16-tile mahjong, built from the ground up — your first tile, your first turn, your first win, then every scoring pattern through to counting a real hand. Read any class below, or jump straight into a free game.

Basics

  1. Class 1 Meet the tiles Tile anatomy, the shape of a winning hand, first vocabulary 7 min
  2. Class 2 Your first turn The turn rhythm. Draw, discard, pass. The student takes four turns. 5 min
  3. Class 3 Your first pong Claiming three of the same tile, from any seat at the table. 7 min
  4. Class 4 Your first sheung Claiming three in a row in the same suit. Only from your left. 7 min
  5. Class 5 Your first win Recognising a ready hand, declaring mahjong, the base point and no-flowers rule, the twenty-tai minimum, and the false mahjong penalty. 21 min
  6. Class 6 Winds, dragons, and your seat Honour tiles, why pongs of them pay, the seat and round wind bonuses, the dragon pong, and the no-honours alternative. 23 min
  7. Class 7 Flowers and kongs Bonus tiles that auto-expose, four-of-a-kind in three flavours, the each-flower and kong scoring rules, self-pick from the flower wall, and a first look at robbing the kong. 25 min
  8. Class 8 Reading the table Defensive play. Probability from the wall and intuition from the players. 12 min
  9. Class 9 Counting your hand, Part 1 The scoring system, the base point and minimum, the common bonus rules, and three line-by-line walkthroughs of real winning hands. 29 min
  10. Class 10 Your first real round A full round on a shuffled wall. No rigging, no script. The mini-graduation that closes the basics arc and invites the student back for Classes 11-17. 32 min

Advanced

  1. Class 11 Honours in depth The wind and dragon composition bonuses. Little 3, Big 3, Little 4, Big 4 Winds, Little and Big Dragons, and a name-drop of Pure Honour Hand. 25 min
  2. Class 12 Dragon sequences The 1-9 dragon sequences. Pure Dragon and Mixed Dragon, exposed and concealed, and the two LRC-legal Mixed Dragon arrangements. 19 min
  3. Class 13 Neighbours and siblings The four family-pattern bonuses. Neighbours, Brothers, Sisters, and Sister Pongs. The most common stacking rules in the everyday game. 21 min
  4. Class 14 Terminals and suits Terminals, terminal pong sets, terminal sheung sets and their stacked variants, and the four suit-composition rules from 2-suit to Pure Suit to All 5 Suits. 26 min
  5. Class 15 Hiding your hand Concealment scoring. The rules that reward keeping melds out of sight, from Concealed Hand to the full Concealed Pongs ladder and the single-wait bonuses. 21 min
  6. Class 16 Shape patterns The geometric meld-shape rules. Step Up, Four in Ways, Full Step Up Hand, and a name-drop of the Sister-Brother Combo. 12 min
  7. Class 17 Graduation, the final round A second full real round, post-round counting using every rule in the course, and the final welcome-to-the-table closing. 30 min

Appendix

  1. Class 18 Eat soy with noodles The Malini book mnemonic for wind order around the mahjong table — East, South, West, North. 3 min
  2. Class 19 The beginner’s ladder The seven safe target hands a beginner can aim for, ranked by difficulty. Pure Sheung, Five Suit, Jewel, Semi-Pure, All Pong, One Suit, Pure Honour. 6 min
  3. Class 20 The legendary three Earthly Hand, Heavenly Hand, Human Hand — the three special wins that fire on the opening tiles of a round. Pure luck, no skill, no declaration needed. 5 min