Little known to most players, the suits of the tiles are money-based. In ancient China, the copper coins had a square hole in the center. People passed a rope through the holes to tie coins into strings. These strings are usually in groups of 100 coins called diao (弔 or variant 吊) [...]

View from a player going to discard a tile in an ongoing gameplay.
Players may read the name of the discarded tile out loud.
The flower tile on the left should be replaced by a tile from the dead wall promptly.
Each player is dealt either 13 tiles for 13-tile variations or 16 tiles [...]

Basic equipment: chips, tiles and dice.
Mahjong houses provide a convenient venue for Mahjong old hands. This is a typical scene of Mahjong house in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.
Mahjong, can be played either with a set of Mahjong tiles, or less commonly, a set of Mahjong playing cards (sometimes spelled ‘kards’ to [...]

In 1998 the China State Sports Commission, in the interest of changing mahjong from an illegal gambling game to an approved ‘healthy sport’, published a new set of rules, now generally referred to as Chinese Official rules or International Tournament rules. The principles of the new, ‘healthy’ mahjong are: no gambling – [...]

Beijing residents playing Mahjong in public.
Four Filipino women playing Filipino Mahjong.
There are many variations of mahjong. In many places, players observe one version, and are either often unaware of other variations, or claim that other variations are incorrect. Although many variations today differ only by scoring, there are several main [...]

Mahjong in China
Different kinds of Chinese playcards (from left to right): Bógŭ Yèzí (博古葉子), Caozhou Paí (曹州牌), Three Kingdoms Yèzí (三國葉子), Dongguan Paí (東莞牌).
One of the myths (probably originating in the West) regarding the origin of Mahjong suggests that Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, had developed the game about 500 BC. [...]

Mahjong

Players
4

Age range
> Any

Setup time
2-5 minutes

Playing time
0-3 hours

Rules complexity
High

Strategy depth
Medium

Random chance
Yes

Skills required
Tactics, observation, memory

Mahjong (Traditional Chinese: 麻將; Simplified Chinese: 麻将; pinyin: Májiàng; Cantonese: Màhjeung; or Chinese: 麻雀; pinyin: Máquè; Cantonese: Màhjeuk; other common English spellings include mahjongg, majiang, and hyphenated forms such as mah-jong or mah-jongg) is a game for four [...]