I learned American mahjong

I didn’t write much on gomepage in 2024, so this is the first of some posts I’ll do on things I did last year that are worth mentioning.

If you tell someone you play mahjong, the first thing they will usually say is “oh, is that like the computer game?”. I, too, knew only of the Windows tile-matching version of the game when I began my mahjong journey. With no more knowledge than that, last May I signed up for a community education class that promised to teach the game.

As I soon found out, mahjong is actually a variety of games using the same set of tiles, originating from China. There are variations across China and the rest of East Asia. There’s also an American version, the version we learned in my class.

Rather than a single-player matching game, American mahjong (like the original Chinese game) is a four-player game somewhat like rummy on steroids. Players draw and discard tiles in an attempt to create a winning hand of fourteen tiles. There are seventy or so patterns that describe winning hands, given in a terse notation on a printed card, and these patterns change each year.

Mahjong is definitely not an easy game. Learning so many patterns is difficult, but figuring out how to match up your current hand to the best possible winning hand is even harder. On top of that, even if you puzzle it out and hit upon something promising, it’s possible your luck will just be crummy and you won’t be able to get the tiles you need. One of the most remarkable things about mahjong to me is how it manages to be both so difficult and so luck-based at the same time.

That being said, I find it a lot of fun to play. There are parts that take a lot of focus and thinking, but then there are parts where once you have a handle on what’s going on, you can mostly turn your brain off and play. It’s also just fun to handle the tiles, and they all have cool art on them.

After taking the class, I went to a local weekly meetup to play the game some more, but didn’t get in a regular habit of coming. For Christmas, my parents got me my own set of mahjong tiles, so now I can host my own games with friends.

I had a lot of fun teaching my family to play. It was funny how those who tried it out found it ridiculously hard the first few times they played, and then around their fifth game or so, it would click and they would start to enjoy it. I look forward to getting more people over their first five games of mahjong.

Have you played American mahjong? Have you played a different mahjong variant? Have you ever learned a particularly challenging or rewarding tabletop game? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.