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Mahjong scoring
The Hong Kong system, pattern by pattern
Scoring is where most beginners give up, and it is the one part of mahjong you can put off. Play a few evenings at one point per win, then add patterns from the list below a few at a time. This page follows Hong Kong scoring, the most common starting system: patterns in the winning hand earn fan, fan are converted to points by a table, and the losers pay according to how the win happened.
The common patterns
A hand may hold several patterns at once and their fan add up. The list below covers what comes up in almost every game. Tables differ on the exact values, sometimes by a fan here and there; write yours down before you start.
Worth one fan
- Self-draw. You drew the winning tile yourself instead of claiming a discard.
- Concealed hand. No sets exposed, won on a discard. (Concealed and self-drawn together is usually counted higher.)
- All chows. Four runs and a pair, nothing else. Sometimes called the chicken hand's better cousin: cheap but quick.
- Dragon pung. A pung or kong of any dragon. One fan per dragon.
- Seat wind or prevailing wind pung. A pung of your own seat's wind, or of the round's wind. If they are the same wind, both count.
- Flowers and seasons. Usually one fan for the flower or season matching your seat number, and one for a complete set of four. Tables vary most here.
- Winning on the last wall tile, or on a kong replacement tile, or robbing a kong. Situational bonuses, one fan each.
Worth three fan
- All pungs. Four pungs or kongs and a pair, no runs.
- Half flush. Every tile from one suit plus honours, no other suit.
- Little three dragons. Two dragon pungs and a pair of the third dragon, on top of the fan for the pungs themselves.
Worth more, up to the limit
- Full flush. Every tile from one suit, no honours at all: six or seven fan depending on the table.
- All honours, big three dragons, four winds, thirteen orphans, four concealed pungs, nine gates. Limit hands. They score the maximum on the table whatever else they contain. You will see one every few months.
Worth nothing
A hand with no pattern at all, mixed chows and pungs with no dragons, no wind of value, won on a discard with an exposed set: the chicken hand. Under a three-fan minimum it cannot win. Under a no-minimum house rule it wins for the base amount and is often the fastest hand on the table, which is a strategy in itself.
From fan to points
Fan are converted with a doubling table. A common one, with a three-fan minimum and a ten-fan limit:
| Fan | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 (limit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base points | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 48 | 64 | 96 | 128 |
The base is what one loser pays. Tables that start at one fan, or that double all the way with no flattening in the middle, exist; the shape matters less than everyone agreeing on it beforehand.
Who pays
This is the rule that makes discarding dangerous. If the winner drew the winning tile from the wall, all three losers pay the base. If the winner claimed it from a discard, the player who discarded it pays for everyone: either the whole three shares, or, in the gentler “half-spicy” variant common in Hong Kong, the discarder pays a full share and the other two pay half a share each. Either way, throwing the tile that wins someone the hand costs you, and the last few discards of a long hand are chosen with that in mind. A hand that is obviously one tile from a flush changes what everyone else is willing to throw.
The dealer pays and receives double in many houses, which is why keeping the deal by winning as East is worth chasing.
A worked example
South seat, East round. The hand below is won by self-draw with no exposed sets.
Counting: self-draw one fan, concealed one fan, the pung of red dragons one fan, the pung of South (seat wind) one fan. Four fan; on the table above that is 16 base points, and since it was a self-draw, all three losers pay 16, for 48 in total. Had the same hand been won on a discard, it would have lost the self-draw fan and one of the concealed fan by most tables' reckoning and dropped to two fan, below the minimum, so it could not have been declared at all. That difference, between a hand you can win only by drawing the tile and a hand you can win on any discard, is most of the strategy of the late game.