No Tapping

I had a request from a friend to address tapping in Mah Jongg. Before I got around to posting a blog about it I had a different student today who told me that she had a teacher out of Charlotte teach her group to tap when they drew a tile. This second student eventually learned that was incorrect, but brought it to my attention.

I am only going to say this once…well, no I am not. I am going to say it now and will continue saying it until all tapping stops. If you are reading this and have no idea what I am talking about you might not play mah Jongg, or you might play with a limited circle who all learned correctly.

I am not exactly sure when or where tapping started, but I have a fairly good idea. And it needs to stop now. Here is the official rule. When a player draws a tile from the wall they must place it in their rack with the bottom of the tile touching the bottom shelf on the slanted side of the rack to make the previously discarded tile dead. That is called “racking” it.

If you draw a tile from the wall and just tap or worst, tap, tap it on the top of your rack that is not the same as “racking” it. So if you tap and another player wants to call the previously discarded tile then they still have that option.

Players need to stop tapping. It is not only giving opponents an advantage of more time to call a discard, it is just plain annoying adding unneeded noise to the game.

Please stop recognizing tapping as legitimate racking. Nothing will make it stop happening faster than making a player put a tile back in the wall because you call a tile that was discarded and they thought they were entitled to keeping the drawn tile because they tapped and did not rack.

I have two tournaments I am directing in the next couple of weeks. Tapping will not be recognized and it is on the rules. Get out of the tapping habit and learn to properly rack your tiles.

If you teach people to play mah Jongg, please stop teaching them to tap. You are just showing yourselves as amateurs.