This is not the silly tile matching game that’s played on phones nor is it one of the many Asian variants. This is the variant played with the annually issued card from the National Mah Jongg League in New York City stereotypically played by older Jewish women. It’s four players at a table but there are three and two player versions.
My mom taught me and I’ve played with my aunt and friends when I visited them out of town. I’m obsessed. It’s just the right amount of strategy and luck that novices can play with experienced players.
My Mom played it every week with friends for many, many years when I was a kid. I was fascinated by the tiles, but never had the patience or interest to learn the game. I would love to take it up as I am retired and have a lot of free time, but I don’t know anybody that plays it anywhere near me. I live in a very rural area, without a major city nearby, and that may be a big part of why I haven’t heard of a local game.
More or less. The Asian game has a few extra tiles but the rest are identical.
They were certainly playing one of the Asian variants which as I understand is about 50% different but both games involve making melds analogous to the card came gin.
As I alluded to above it’s closest to gin or poker. In some ways like bridge but no bidding. You are passing and drawing tiles until you are the first to complete a fourteen card hand. If no one forms a hand before all of the tiles are used it’s a draw called a Wall Game. Different hands are worth more or fewer points depending on their difficulty and that can be used for gambling, usually for modest sums.
My only knowledge of Ma Jong is from a now-defunct burger joint in North Hollywood, CA. They used MaJong tiles to record orders instead of a computer or chalkboard. I never did figure out their code, but it was something like this: a white tile, flat on the order board, represented a double burger; on its side, plus fries. A red tile was a half-chicken with fries, etc. For anyone who knew the code, it was far more efficient than a chalkboard. Other clerks could see the order from across the room, and when it was filled, a sweep of the hand erased the entire order. Great for a limited menu.
Why they used a MaJong board & tiles, I don’t know. The clerks were mostly limited-English-speaking Mexicans.
My grandmother in Brooklyn played it all the time, my mom knew how to play but it was never a thing. After my grandmother passed someone in the family got her majongg set, but I forget who.
There was a interesting podcast on Mah Jong, I think this is it:
Looking on wikipedia, there are a LOT of variations!
In mainland China alone, there are over thirty variants, and across the world, there are over forty variations. Many variations today differ only by scoring.
The Japanese version is Riichi and is known to be crazy with wild swings in the gambling.
American (aka National Mah Jongg League or NMJL) is much more sedate. There is a card that you buy that is issued by the NMJL for $15. It has around 50 possible hands that you can make. They have point values from 25 to 75 depending on how easy they are. You get a bonus equal to the value if you draw the final tile instead of getting it from a discard. You get a similar bonus for a “natural” which means that you didn’t use any jokers. (I think some Asian variants don’t use jokers). The points can be translated to cents or dollars or whatever. It could just be points used to determine the winner. Most home games are for very little money or just points.
You can see what a card looks like if you look online. They are copyrighted so I can’t show you directly.
Three suits. Cracks (Chinese characters), Bams (Bamboo stalks) and Dots (Dots). The suits are labeled 1 through 9. There are four instances of each numbered suit. (Four Crack, One Bam, Nine Dot…)
Jokers. Eight of them.
Flowers. Eight of them. There are different kinds of flowers but in NMJL they are considered identical. In Asian games the different flowers have different meanings.
Seasons: North, East, West, South (NEWS). Four of each.
Dragons: Red, Green and White. White is called Soap because of the design. In some hands Soap is used as a numerical zero. Four of each. White matches Dots, Green matches Bams, Red matches Crack.
There are also Season tiles (Winter, Summer…) but those aren’t used in AMJL.
I forgot to mention the most interesting thing. Every April 1st a new card is issued with different hands. A lot of them will be the same and are classics and a lot of them will be replaced. Sometimes there will be new categories of hands. It spices things up when the new card comes. This year is the 89th year of NMJL.
A committee in the NMJL comes up with the new card. I don’t understand your second question. You can go out with any hand that is on that year’s card and technically you can play with any card. Most people play with the current one though. I have heard of people doing something fun like for someone’s birthday playing with the card of that person’s birth year.
This is my first year but as I understand it, a lot of the hands are the same from year to year and the categories of how hands work are identical from year to year almost all of the time. People are definitely excited when the new cards are issued because it freshens things up. It’s not easy to convey this without seeing a card.
Categories will be like “Consecutive Numbers”, “2468”, “Winds-Dragons”
***I made a type above, NEWS are Winds, not Seasons.
I have been looking for a way to play locally and posted on the local subreddit and Nextdoor. I found one kind lady who has invited me over to play tomorrow. If we can’t find anyone else we are going to play the two player version (Siamese) where you both try to make two hands. There is also and open play game at the synagogue (obviously) on Tuesdays so I will show up for that.
I think the confusion is that there are no “normal” hands that are good every year. That year’s card is the only thing that identifies what a winning hand is.