| American Mah Jongg | Overview | Gameplay | Scoring |
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National Mah Jongg League Rules (NMJL, American Maj) is a synthetic ruleset popular in the United States. The winning patterns change from year to year. American Maj utilizes racks, joker tiles, and score cards in order to play the game – items not used in Asian Mahjong variants. Distinct gameplay mechanics are the lack of chows and the ability to achieve more than four-of-a-kind using jokers.
Terminology
Charleston: A series of tile passing prior to each hand.
Pung: Three of a kind.
Kong: Four of a kind.
Quint: Five of a kind.
Mahjong: A valid winning hand. Players say "Mahjong!" to declare that they have won.
Soap: Nickname for the White Dragon.
Equipment
An American Maj set would have all the necessary tiles (basic set + 8 flowers + 8 jokers), A score card (containing the patterns and point values), and racks to straighten out the walls and place Called tiles.
- 152 tiles
- Dice (2x)
- Scoring cards (4x)
- Racks (4x)
Players & Seating
For casual play, any seating arrangement will do.
Each Hand of Mahjong is called a "Game".
Dealing
The dealer starts by rolling two dice. The indicated player rolls. The sum of the two rolls determines where the dealer breaks his wall. Counting from his right to the left the sum, the dealer takes the next two stacks of tiles (four tiles total). South then takes the next two stacks clockwise from the break. Next, west takes the next two stacks, and north takes the next two stacks. Repeat these steps two more times until each player has six stacks (12 tiles).
Note that players take turns going counter-clockwise, and they take tiles going clockwise. This applies to dealing tiles as well as general gameplay.
Lastly, the players take their final tiles as shown below. East takes two tiles, then South takes one, West takes one, and North takes one.
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