Mahjong Five
Prologue
My family loves playing card games, and I love Mahjong, especially Riichi. However Mahjong is notoriously complex and the unfamiliar Chinese characters don’t help either. Teaching my siblings is one thing, but it’s incredibly hard to convince parents or younger kids to learn.
Therefore I made this. The core philosophy is straightforward: it should be easy to understand even for children, but still strategic enough for the elders to enjoy it.
Setup & Core Assumptions
- Starting Point: 50 points per player.
- Bonus Tiles: No Season or Flower tiles are used.
- Akadora (Red Fives): Up to your preference. Originally I didn’t allow them, but I realized my youngest likes drawing them because they look special and make the score bigger.
- Base Rules: Regular Mahjong rules apply for drawing, discarding, Pon, Chi, and Kan unless explicitly stated in this guide.
Building the Wall & Dealing
- Shuffle and build standard walls (17 tiles in length).
- Let the youngest player decide, or determine it by rolling the dice.
- The East cuts the wall 7 tiles from the right. These 7 tiles act as the Dora indicator and the dead wall.
- Players in turn take 2 stacks (4 tiles) in clockwise in until everyone has 12 tiles. Then, the first player takes 1, and the others take 1 in turn.
Even when playing against my friend at least once a week, he keeps drawing first despite not being East. We enforce the correct rules of course, but against my family who probably only plays once a month, I think it’s better to simplify the draw sequence so it feels more like a familiar French deck card game.
Round Progression
- It is the round wind that rotates, not the seats. The progression is East - South - West - North.
- If the dealer doesn’t win or isn’t in Tenpai, the round changes.
- If the dealer wins or is in Tenpai, they keep the round.
- After the North round, the game ends.
Scoring
Step 1: Calculate Total Han
Total Han = Yaku Value + Dora + Kan Bonus + Dealer Bonus- Kan Bonus: Every Kan gives a direct +1 Han bonus to the hand.
- Dealer Bonus: If the dealer wins, each Honba counter gives a direct +1 Han bonus.
Why does Kan work like this? There is normally no use for Kan in this variant because it doesn’t have a specific Yaku or add Fu. But Kan is one of the core identities of Mahjong, so I can’t just remove it! Therefore, I borrowed Sichuan Mahjong’s wisdom for this rule.
Step 2: Base Score Table
| Total Han | Base Score |
|---|---|
| 1 Han | 5 |
| 2 Han | 10 |
| 3 Han | 20 |
| 4-5 Han | 40 |
| 6-7 Han | 60 |
| 8-10 Han | 80 |
| 11-12 Han | 120 |
| 13+ Han | 160 |
- Tsumo (Self-Draw): Every single non-winner pays the winner the Base Score. Usually the winner gets the Base Score x 3
- Ron (Discard): The discarder pays their own Base Score, plus the Base Score of the other two non-winners. So the discarder usually has to pay 3 times the base amount.
Why aren’t scores multiplied by 100 like regular Riichi? This is simply to avoid gambling connotations. 1 USD is around 18,000 in my local currency (I know it is bad), so keeping the starting point at 50 instead of 50,000 makes it harder to connect with real money. In actual games, I don’t use phrases like “the discarder pays X amount.” Instead I say, “Your score is deducted/added by X amount.”
Simplified Yaku & Bonuses
You must have at least one yaku to win.
| Yaku Category | Base Value | Condition & Potential Bonuses |
|---|---|---|
| Closed Hand | 1 Han | The hand must remain closed. • 1 Han if you declare Riichi. • +1 Han if the hand consists of sequences only. • +1 Han if you have two identical sequences in the same suit. |
| VIP Sets | +1 Han | Awarded for each triplet or quad of Dragons or your relevant Wind. • +13 Han if your hand contains all the Dragons or all the Winds. |
| Outside or Inside | 1 Han | Awarded if every set and the pair contains a terminal (1, 9) or Honor tile, OR Awarded if none of them do (consisting entirely of middle numbers 2–8). |
| All Triplets | 2 Han | Consists entirely of triplets or quads. • +13 Han if it is also closed hand. |
| One Numbered Suit | 2 Han | Consist using only one numbered suit (Honors allowed). • +1 Han if your hand has 3 sequences of 123 456 789 • +3 Han if there are absolutely no Honors included. |
Why choose these Yaku and write them weirdly? I once showed my family Mahjong Yaku and saw how flabbergasted they were. Now there are “only” 5 Yaku categories to remember! I tried to categorize them properly or simplify further before, but they ended up either way longer than poker hands or too simple to be interesting. So, I settled by “hiding” the complexity as bonuses. For complete beginners, they can just ignore the bonuses, let them play a bit, and they will (probably) realize there are more than 5 types of hands naturally.
- Yaku are stackable: (e.g., a Closed Hand that is also a One Numbered Suit counts both).
- There are no Riichi bets for the reasons explained under the Base Score Table note.
- Closed Hand is not Menzen Tsumo. You can still win via Ron even if this is your only Yaku.
- You might think the “+1 Han for sequences only” bonus is just Pinfu. That’s exactly right! However, for this variant I decided to simplify it by allowing value pairs and non-Ryanmen (two-sided) waits.
Exhaustive Draws
Unlike Riichi, the penalty for being Noten (not ready) is not split among the players.
- Every Noten player pays 5 points directly to each Tenpai player.
- Example: If there are 2 Tenpai players at the end of a draw, the 2 Noten players will each lose 10 points (5 points paid to the first Tenpai player, and 5 points paid to the second).
That’s it. Thank you for reading. Any feedback is welcome!