Jezz's Chinese Mahjong Variations

Someone throws two dice to decide who will be the Starting Boss (Elder Hand). The dice-thrower counts himself as "1" and counts around the table anticlockwise according to the dice score. The last person counted becomes the Starting Boss.

Everyone makes their wall two tiles high and 17 tiles abreast.

Next, the Boss throws two dice and counts around the table, counting himself as "1" as before, to select which wall is to be broken to start play. The position of the break in the selected wall is decided by counting from the right-hand end of the wall. The lower of the two dice scores determines how many tiles in from the right you count.

Starting with the Boss, each player takes 4 tiles at a time, going anticlockwise around the table three times until each player has twelve tiles. Now the Boss takes 2 tiles, the first and the third from the top row of the wall. The Boss now has 14 tiles. The other players each take the one endmost tile so that they all have 13 tiles.

The single tile remaining after North has taken his tile is turned over, and is placed on top of the wall somewhere towards the end. The four tiles above it in sequence are now 'wild'. These tiles act as jokers in your hand, and can become any tile that you want them to be. They can only be used at the end when declaring a win. (ie you can't 'pung' and 'chi' using wild tiles).

Variation: In some games the wild tiles are not used as jokers.

'Pungs' and 'Chis' are as standard Chinese rules.

The idea is to finish as quickly as possible. With one exception (for kungs - see below), you don't get any extra points for having a fancy hand.

If you go out yourself, everyone owes you 15 Renmin. If you 'ron', the person who gave you the winning tile owes you 10 Renmin, the other two players owe you 5 Renmin each. For every 'Kung' (four tiles the same, hidden or open) that you have, you receive an additional 5 Renmin from every player. A 'pung' of the revealed tile (ie the one indicating the wild tiles) also counts as an extra 5 Renmin. You pay up in cash straight away. You don't get any extra bonuses (nor pay any extra) if you are Oya.

10 Renmin currently equals about 100 yen.

If Oya wins, he remains Oya.

Play the game until either somebody wins or the tiles run out. If there is no winner then you play again with the same Oya.

You can't 'ron' on a hand of one suit (no honours) if your hand contains wild tiles.

As the wind of the round is not important, you just play until you get bored. I think that to end the game, one player must say that they are just about done, and then you play one last round (ie four more hands - or more if Oya keeps his seat).

There is no need to line up your discarded tiles in front of you - just slam them into an untidy mess in the centre.

Without the intricacies of the different hands, this may sound boring, but it is in fact a lot of fun as the game progresses very fast. If you have one or more wild tiles, the opportunities to finish increase quite a lot, and so that you can find yourself waiting for a load of tiles to end.

Conclusion: A good social game - and easy for beginners to learn, but not for the serious Mahjong gamblers ;-)