BASIC Riichi Mahjong Guide for Beginners (video games)

0:00 Intro
0:51 Understanding the Mahjong board
2:24 Mahjong Tiles & Suits
3:30 Game flow and objectives
4:37 Winning hands in Mahjong (Yaku)
5:25 When to use Chi, Pon, Kan, Ron and Tsumo
7:40 Open and Concealed Hands
8:58 Tenpai
9:19 Riichi
10:17 Winning Hand (Yaku) Scoring
10:42 Dora
11:24 Points Scoring
13:19 Mahjong Gameplay comment

🀚 All Mahjong Tiles - https://imgur.com/Sjrm1Z5
🀄Winning hand combinations reference - https://riichi.wiki/List_of_yaku
🀕 Incredible Mahjong video guide -    • How to Play Japanese Mahjong - A Comp...  

This is a very basic introduction on how to play Mahjong in videogames. In each mahjong board, there are 4 bunch of tiles, one for each player. Your position will always be on the bottom part and your name, as well as the other players’, will have a letter, N, W, E, S – as in north, west, east and south, this is called the player’s Seat Wind.

Every time you start a game you will have 13 tiles on your row. They can belong to 5 different suits, 3 of them are numbered suits. Chinese characters, green bamboos, and balls. Each of them goes from 1 to 9. The remaining 2 suits are called the Honor suits. The first honor suit is the one with 4 Chinese characters with the pink letter at the top left (N, W, E, S) which stand for north, west, east and south. And the remaining honor suit are these colored Chinese characters called dragons, green dragon, white dragon and red dragon.

The objective of the game is to create a winning hand of tiles that consists of 4 groups of 3 tiles (called melds) and a pair before any of the other players. A pair, is well, just two of the same tile, while melds can be either 3 of the same tile or 3 tiles that form a straight combination.

Each turn a player draws one tile at a time so their existing 13 tile hand is converted into a 14 tile hand. If the 14 tiles you have on your hand can successfully create a winning hand combination of 4 melds and a pair, you win, if not, you discard a tile to your discard pile in front of you and it’s the end of your turn. Each player does the same in their turn until there is a winner, if this doesn’t happen, you have a draw.

In Riichi Mahjong (the Japanese version of Mahjong that you can play in most videogames) there are a number of specific winning hand combinations called Yaku. The more complex the combination is, the more valuable your hand will have and the more points you will score. You can form your hand by using only tiles you draw or by stealing from the other players at any point of the match. And here I am going to go a little bit deeper because there are several different kind of actions that can be prompted in the game depending on the tiles available.

• If you have 2 of a kind and a 3rd one is discarded by any player, the game will show PON.
• If you have 3 of a kind and the last remaining is discarded, the game will show 2 options: PON and KAN. Pon will create a meld (3 tiles), and Kan will create a quad (4 tiles). Having a Kan or Quad will allow you to have an extra tile in your hand, and you can still win but, instead of having 14 tiles, you will have 15.
• If you have 2 tiles that can form a sequence and the player to your left discards a tile that completes it, the game will show CHI.
• If an enemy discards a tile that you can use to complete your winning hand, no matter if it is a pair or a meld, the game will show RON.
• If the last tile that forms your winning hand is drawn by yourself, you will have the option to TSUMO. Either way will make you win that current hand.

By doing Pon, Chii or Kan, you will steal the tile and place it like this to your right. As a consequence, you will open your hand and show the resulting meld or quad and now your actual hand will have fewer winning combinations available.

When you just need 1 more tile to complete a winning hand, you are in Tenpai. If you see an enemy call Riichi or it appears to you, it means that the player is in Tenpai, has a concealed hand and they have at least 1,000 points.

Once there is a winner, the points depend on the number of winning combinations or yaku that the winner has.
If the last tile was stolen from a player using Ron, all the points are subtracted from his pool. And, in case you do a Tsumo by drawing the last tile by yourself, the points are divided between the rest of the players. If nobody wins and there is a draw, you can earn or lose points as well, and the decisive factor is whether or not the players are 1 tile away from a winning hand or Tenpai:
• If all players are in Tenpai, nobody receives points.
• If 1 player is in tenpai, he wins 3,000 points and the rest lose 1,000 points each
• If 2 players are in Tenpai, both win 1,500 points and the rest lose 1,500 points each,
• Finally, If 3 players are in Tenpai, they get 1,000 points and the unfortunate soul left loses 3,000 points.