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CHAPTER TWO

THE CANTONESE GAME

(The Old Rule 13-Tile Game)

Mah jongg is a game of strategy, with one player’s personality and behavior often affecting another player’s chances of winning. An inexperienced or careless player can inadvertently help an opponent to assemble a high-scoring hand. Mah jongg is also a game of luck. Players believe strongly in Feng Shui, a belief that supernatural powers can bring good luck to a person occupying a particular seat at a certain time. For this reason, rightly or wrongly, players can become very finicky about where they sit. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why seat allocation is an important part of the game.

2.1 Seat Allocation (Jup Wai)

Once all four players are seated randomly around a square table, any player may pick out four different Wind tiles and place them face down on the table. After these Wind tiles have been thoroughly mixed, they are stacked up one on top of another.

One player casts a set of two or three dice and the dots are summed. The dice caster counts him- or herself as 1, followed by the player at his or her right as 2, and thus the sequence of counting is carried out counterclockwise until the sum is reached. The player who is the last one to be counted will pick up the top tile on the stack. The player at his or her right picks up the next tile, the opposite player picks up the third, and the player at his or her left picks up the last tile. Whoever picks up the East Wind tile from the stack will have the prerogative of selecting the first seat. The player with the South Wind tile will be seated at the right of the East Wind player and will be the East’s Lower House. The player with the West Wind tile will be seated opposite the East Wind player and will be the East’s Opposite House. The last player, or the one with the North Wind tile, will be seated at the left of the East Wind player, and will be the East’s Upper House.

For example, four players occupy seats A, B, C, and D as shown below. The player at side A casts the dice and the total number of dots is 3 (or 7 or 11). The player at side C should pick the top tile from the stack, the player at side D picks the second tile, the player at side A the third. The last tile belongs to the player at side B.

If the player with the East Wind tile chooses to sit at side A, then the players with the South Wind tile and the West Wind tile will be seated at side B and side C, respectively. The player with the North Wind tile will be seated at side D.

2.2 Building the Walls (Darp Pai)

Once everyone is seated in his or her designated seat, all the players take part in turning the tiles face down and mixing them thoroughly. Each player then forms a row of 17 tiles (18 if the Flower tiles are also used in the game; see Section 2.17, page 64), 2 tiles high and face down in front of him- or herself.

To add sophistication to the game when building the walls, each player first picks up 5 tiles with both hands (6 tiles if playing with the Flower tiles) to make the initial row of tiles. He or she then picks up 3 tiles in each hand and adds them separately to each end of the existing row. The last step is repeated so that the final row consists of 17 tiles. After carefully aligning the tiles against the frame built around the mahjong table, the player makes another row of tiles in the same manner. When this is done, he or she stacks the tiles and pushes the double-deck row toward the center of the table, joining the other rows as connecting walls. Some mahjong sets come with four rulers, each equivalent to the length of 18 tiles. The rulers are useful for gauging the length of the rows and keeping the walls of tiles straight and tidy.

2.3 Designating the First Dealer (Dar Jong)

There is a Dealer for each hand of the game. His or her function is to start the game and break the walls. In the ritual of choosing the First Dealer, the player who picked the East Wind tile during the seat allocation now casts two dice, and the dots are summed. The same player begins to count counterclockwise, making him- or herself 1, the next player 2, and so forth until that sum is reached. The last player counted is named the First Dealer.

Example: The player with the East Wind tile sitting at side A of the table casts the dice and the total number of the dots is five. The counting begins and ends at that player, making him or her the First Dealer.

2.4 Breaking the Walls (Hoi Pai)

The First Dealer commences the game. Starting at the right side of the wall of tiles he or she is facing, the Dealer counts the stacks clockwise according to the total number of dots on the dice cast, in this case five. The First Dealer then separates the first five stacks from the rest of the wall, so as to mark the breaking point. From the breaking point, the First Dealer picks up 4 tiles from the first 2 stacks (the sixth and seventh stacks) from the walls. He or she is followed by the Lower House, Opposite House, and Upper House. Each player proceeds to pick up two stacks at a time for three turns and a single tile at the fourth turn, thus ending with 13 tiles in his or her playing hand.

2.4.1 Leaping the Tiles (Til Pai)

A little ritual is usually performed by the Dealer after he or she picks up the 12th tile. The Dealer does not have to wait until all three players have picked up their 13th tile to make the first draw. He or she can start the exchange process by picking up a 14th tile from the wall at the same time the 13th tile is picked up (leaping over), to save a little time and to add some sophistication to the game.

Each player now has 13 tiles (the Dealer has 14 if the leap was included), which he or she arranges in a row facing him- or herself. Beginners benefit by placing all the matched tiles on the left side and all the unmatched tiles on the right. By doing so, a player can easily identify what is in the hand and thus avoid accidentally discarding a matching tile. As a courtesy, players always play with their right hands.

2.5 Matching the Tiles (Jo Pai)

The tiles are matched in an exchange process. The exchange process begins with the Dealer, who discards the first tile from his or her hand of 14. Moving counterclockwise, each player takes a turn drawing a tile from the remaining walls and discarding the least desirable tile from his or her hand. The least desirable tile could well be the one just drawn from the walls. Alternatively, instead of drawing a tile from the walls, a player can claim a tile discarded by another player, that will go toward making a matched set. Thus, a matched set can be assembled by using only the tiles in the playing hand or by claiming a tile discarded by another player. In any case, by retrieving a tile to replace the one immediately discarded, each player always keeps 13 tiles in his playing hand. Through this exchange process, the players try to rid themselves of their undesirable tiles in order to put together a winning hand. The same procedure is continued until one player matches all of the tiles in his or her hand.

In some Chinese mah jongg games, not all the tiles on the remaining walls are available for drawing. In the Cantonese Game, there will always be 14 tiles that are untouchable at the tail ends of the walls. In the 16-Tile Game, the number of untouchable tiles is 16. But in the Shanghai Game, every single tile is available for drawing.

2.6 Claiming a Discarded Tile

2.6.1 Sheung – To Match a Sequence