Your first win

Today's a special one. You're going to win your first hand of mahjong. It's set up. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But the feeling's going to be real, and you'll carry it with you. The word for what we're about to do is "ting." It means "listening," or "ready." Let me show you what a ready hand looks like.

Ready means you're one tile away from a complete hand. You've already got four full sets, pongs, sheungs, or both, and a pair, and just one more set that's almost there. You're waiting for one specific tile to finish it. That waiting is called being ting. Good players spend most of their round trying to get to ting as fast as possible, and then they sit quiet, listening for the tile that's going to win them the hand.

When the winning tile finally shows up, from the wall on your own draw, or from somebody else's discard, you have to claim it right away. There's a gold button on your screen that reads "Mahjong." You tap it. Once you do, the round's over, the tiles get counted, and the points are yours. But you have to be quick. If you wait, and someone else's turn begins, you lose the chance. Mahjong is always a moment, never a delay.

Okay. I've given you a hand that's already ting. Look at it. Four sets done, a pair, and one sheung waiting on just one tile. You don't have to do anything except watch the discards for the next few turns. When the winning tile drops, the gold mahjong button lights up. Tap it straight away.

Look at your winning hand slowly. Three east winds. That's a pong. Two, three, four of bamboo, sheung. Five, six, seven of circles, another sheung. Three red dragons, another pong. A pair of 9-cracks. And the sheung we just completed with that 5-circle from west. Five sets, plus the pair. Seventeen tiles. This is the shape every hand in mahjong is chasing. Every round, every table, every game. You'll see this shape a thousand times. Now you know what it feels like from the inside.

Okay, now let's count what you just won. In mahjong, winning is only half the round. The other half is counting. Every rule you trigger adds points, and the points are called "tai." I'm going to teach you two rules today. Just two. We'll build the rest up class by class. By class nine, you'll be counting whole hands on your own.

Rule one. The base point. Every winning hand in mahjong starts with five tai, just for completing the shape. Five points, yours the moment the gold button lights up. That's your floor. You'll never score less than five on a winning hand.

Rule two. No flowers. If nobody at the table held a single flower tile during the round (and that was the case today), you get one more tai as a clean-hand bonus. Five, plus one, is six. That's what I'm going to count for you today. Your hand actually has more bonuses hidden in it: your east wind pong, your red dragons. But those rules belong to class six. I'd rather teach them properly than rush them now.

And now the rule I've been quietly ignoring. In a real game of mahjong, a winning hand has to score at least TWENTY tai. Not six. Twenty. If it's below twenty, the shape might be complete, but the points are too small to win on. Your hand today came to six by the two rules I taught you, which is way below the minimum. I bent the rule for class five because I wanted you to feel the shape of a real win before the numbers started mattering. Starting in class six, every hand you win is going to clear twenty honestly.

One more rule. Important enough to name out loud right now. If you ever declare mahjong in a real game with a hand that doesn't clear twenty tai, it's called a FALSE MAHJONG. The round ends, the tiles go back, but instead of collecting your points, you pay a penalty to the other three players. A false mahjong is one of the few things in this game that actually costs you money. Never declare unless you're sure. When we get to class nine, I'll teach you how to count your hand before you declare, so you can always be sure.

That's class five. You won. You also just finished the first stretch of the course. Classes one to five were about getting comfortable with the tiles, the turns, the claims, and the shape of a win. From class six onwards, we start filling in the edges. Seat winds, round winds, dragons, kongs, flowers, scoring, strategy. All the things that turn a winning hand into a BIG winning hand. Come back when you're ready.