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 who goes first, or determine it by rolling the dice.
• 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) clockwise until everyone has 12 tiles. Then, the first player takes 1 tile, followed by the others 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, gives a direct +1 Han bonus.

Why does Kan work like this? There is normally no reason to call 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 non-winner pays the winner the Base Score. Usually, the winner receives the Base Score × 3.
• Ron (Discard): The discarder pays their own Base Score, plus the Base Score of the other two non-winners. So, the discarder usually pays 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’s bad), so keeping the starting points at 50 instead of 50,000 makes it harder to associate with real money. In actual games, I don’t use phrases like “the discarder pays X amount.” Instead, I say, “Your score is deducted by X points,” or “Your score increases by X points.”

Yaku & Bonuses

You must have at least one Yaku to win.

Closed Hand — 1 Han

The hand must remain closed.

Bonuses:

• +1 Han if you declare Riichi.
• +1 Han if the hand consists only of sequences.
• +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.

Bonus:

• +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 or 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.

Bonus:

• +13 Han if the hand is also closed.

One Numbered Suit — 2 Han

Consists of only one numbered suit (Honors allowed).

Bonuses:

• +1 Han if your hand has the three sequences 123, 456, and 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 categorizing them more cleanly or simplifying them further before, but they ended up either much longer than poker hands or too simple to be interesting. So, I settled on “hiding” the complexity as bonuses. Complete beginners can simply ignore the bonuses, play a few games, and they’ll (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 as both).
• There are no Riichi bets for the reasons explained in the Base Score Table note.
• Closed Hand is not Menzen Tsumo. You can still win by 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 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!