Siamese Mah Jongg

I had a great week with 70 different students in four different classes. There is nothing better to do in January than learn to play Mah Jongg. (Sorry if you want to learn the next available opening dates are March, but realistically May.)

Once you know how to play Mah Jongg with four people the next best thing is to learn to play Siamese Mah Jongg with two people.

My beyond Beginner class this week wanted me to write down the rules for them so I promised them a blog post.

Siamese Mah Jongg uses the NMJL card and each player gets two racks in front of them. The purpose of the game is to make two mah jonggs, one on rack before your opponent does.

You do not build the wall and there is not Charleston in Siamese. Sitting across from each other you mosh the tiles between you and decide who will be East. East takes 28 tiles and the other player takes 27.

You may arrange your tiles any way you like on your two racks. The goal is to make two different winning hands so pick your hands carefully so that you are not competing with yourself.

East starts by discarding. The opponent then either calls the discarded tile or picks a new tile from the mess of tiles between you. Then that player discards, naming the tile like normal.

You may call tiles to make an exposure just like in regular mah jongg, but you must put exposures that go with one hand on one rack and the the other hand on the second rack. You may not move exposures back and forth between racks. You may also exchange jokers in exposures until you call mah jongg on that hand.

Once mah jongg has been called for a hand those jokers are now frozen and no one may exchange them. So it is to your advantage not to call mah jongg on a hand you just make by picking from the mess. If you have to call a discard to make mah jongg so be it.

There is only a winner when one person has two mah jonggs.

Enjoy the game no matter how many people you have to play with.