American Mahjong lesson library
Every lesson, grouped by topic.
Your First Look
- Where this game came from: Find the sparrow, then the 150-year story (3 min)
- What American Mahjong is: The game today, in plain English (3 min)
- How a round flows: Deal, Charleston, play, win (3 min)
Know Your Tiles
- The three suits: Dots, Bams, Craks. Circles, bamboo, characters (3 min)
- The Winds: North, East, West, South. Four directions (2 min)
- The Dragons: Red, Green, and Soap (the blank one) (2 min)
- The Flowers: Eight of them, and any flower counts as a flower (2 min)
- Jokers, the wild cards: Eight of them. Wild in groups of three or more. Never in pairs (3 min)
Building Hands
- Pair, Pung, Kong, Quint: The four group sizes every hand is made of (3 min)
- The card is a menu: Looking at the card isn't cheating (4 min)
- Pick your favorites: Star 2-3 hands from the 2026 card. Practice those (3 min)
Game Day
- The Charleston: passing tiles: Right, across, left. Then reversed (3 min)
- What to pass: Pass lone tiles. Keep jokers (4 min)
- Draw, discard, call, expose: The four parts of a turn (4 min)
- Jokers in the wild: Where jokers go, and the joker exchange (3 min)
Your First Win
- Declaring Mahjong: When to say it, and when to check first (3 min)
- How the table settles up: What a round is, who pays whom, and when the evening ends (3 min)
- By game three, it clicks: What your first three games feel like (2 min)
Before Your First Night
- What to say when you sit down: Three phrases for your first table (3 min)
- Etiquette: do's and don'ts: The unwritten rules everyone expects you to know (4 min)
- Joker etiquette (the unsaid rules): What to say, and not say, about jokers (2 min)
- Joker exchanges, in plain English: How to trade a real tile for an exposed joker (3 min)
- What to do when you're lost: A 3-step recovery script (3 min)
At a Real Table
- Reading the fine print: Colors, "any," "like," runs, and matching dragons (4 min)
- Building the wall: Shuffle, stack, push out, roll, break (3 min)
- The deal: Four at a time, then East goes first (3 min)
- Two callers, one tile: What you can call for, and who gets it (4 min)
- When something goes wrong: Dead hands, misnamed discards, mahjong in error (4 min)
- Settling up, worked out: Self-draw, jokerless, and the exceptions, with real numbers (4 min)
- House rules and pace: Ask before the first deal. Keep your turns short (3 min)
- The Daily and a real table: Same rules. A few habits to leave at home (3 min)
Advanced Strategy
- Reading the discards: What players throw and call tells you what they are building (6 min)
- When to pivot off a target: Sticking with a dead hand costs more than switching (5 min)
- Joker economics: When to hold a joker, spend it, or redeem one (5 min)
- Defensive discarding: Don't throw the tile that wins someone else the hand (5 min)
- Reading exposures: What an opponent's calls tell you about their hand (5 min)
- Charleston strategy: What to pass, and what the passes tell you (5 min)
- Section economics on the 2026 card: Some sections are easier to finish. Choose with that in mind (5 min)
- Dead-hand traps: How hands die mid-round, and how to keep yours alive (4 min)
- Late-round endgame: How to play the last fifteen or so tiles in the wall (5 min)
- Joker chains: Redeem other players' jokers, one turn at a time (5 min)