How mahjong scoring works

Points are called tai

Every scoring element in Taiwanese mahjong is measured in tai. When you win, the engine reads your finished hand, finds every pattern it matches, and adds their tai together into one total. That total decides how much the other three players pay you. The losing players pay more when the dealer wins, and the dealer pays more when anyone else wins.

The base point and the floor

A completed hand starts at a base of 5 points just for being a legal shape — five sets and a pair. On top of that, it must reach a minimum of 20 points to be declared a win. That floor rises by 2 with each prevailing round: 20 in the East round, 22 in South, 24 in West, and 26 in North. A hand that completes the shape but scores under the floor is not yet a winning hand.

False mahjong

Because of the floor, you can’t simply call “mahjong” the moment your tiles fit. If you declare a win that falls short of the minimum, it’s a false mahjong: the round ends and you pay a penalty to the other three players. Counting before you call is part of the skill.

How patterns stack

Big scores aren’t single huge rules — they’re many small ones adding up. A pong of dragons is worth 2; a pong of your seat wind is worth more than a plain wind; a hand with no runs at all (all triplets) adds 25; a hand in a single suit adds 90. A real hand often triggers half a dozen patterns at once, and they all stack onto the base. Every pattern, with its exact value and a worked example, is listed under scoring rules.

The common bonuses

• Flowers — 1 point per flower you hold, with an extra point for the flower matching your seat; or 1 point for holding none at all.
• Seat and round winds — a pong of winds scores 1, plus 1 if it’s your seat wind and 1 more if it’s the prevailing round wind.
• Concealment — keeping your hand fully concealed (no claimed melds) adds points, and more again if you win on your own draw.
• Self-draw — completing the hand from the wall rather than someone’s discard scores a point in its own right.

A worked example

The clearest way to see the stacking is a real hand. Take Big Dragons: pongs of all three dragons score 40 on their own, but the finished hand also collects its base point, dragon-pong bonuses, and any wait or self-draw points — adding up well past the floor. Every rule page shows its hand laid out tile by tile with the points beside it.

Higher rounds and the dealer streak

Two adjustments shift the floor. The prevailing wind raises it by 2 each round, as above. And when the dealer wins repeatedly, their own threshold drops with each consecutive win and they earn a matching streak bonus — rewarding a hot dealer while making the seat harder to topple. The scoring rules cover the named patterns; these two adjustments set the bar each hand has to clear.