The basics

Meet the 152 tiles

Three suits, winds, three dragons, flowers and jokers. Watch out for one thing — each dragon belongs to a suit, and the Soap can also stand in for 0.

What’s in a set?

That makes 152 tiles. Compared with Chinese mahjong, American mahjong adds jokers and drops the distinction between individual flower and season tiles: all 8 flowers count as the same tile.

The three suits

Every number tile has an Arabic numeral in its top-left corner, so you don’t need to read Chinese characters to play.

Winds

On the card, NEWS means one each of North, East, West and South.

Dragons: each one goes with a suit

In American mahjong the dragons belong to suits. This trips up a lot of beginners:

Wherever the card shows D, you need the dragon that matches that group’s suit. For example, if 4444 and DDDD are printed in the same color and you make the 4444 in craks, the DDDD has to be 4 Red dragons. Make the 4444 in dots instead, and the DDDD becomes 4 Soaps.

Soap also doubles as the number 0. In year hands like 2026, the 0 in the middle is a Soap, and it belongs to no suit.

Flowers

Flowers are not bonus tiles you set aside. They are ordinary tiles that go into your hand, and many hands open with FF or FFFF.

Jokers

A joker can stand in for any tile in a group of 3 or more (a pung, kong or quint), but never in a single or a pair. It is the most important tile in American mahjong; all the rules are in Jokers and joker swaps.

Names for groups

There are only 4 of each tile, so a quint always needs at least one joker (flowers, with 8 tiles, are the exception).