Questions People Actually Ask
Every one of these has come up at a real table, usually mid-hand, usually with four people disagreeing confidently. Here are the answers.
A Kong doesn't get you any closer to winning than a Pung would — both count as exactly one of your four sets. If someone else wins first, your unfinished hand generally scores nothing regardless of the Kong, in most standard scoring systems.
Some tables do pay a small immediate bonus the moment a Kong is declared, separate from who eventually wins. That's a table-specific convention — worth checking what your club uses.
There's also a real downside worth knowing: if you turn an exposed Pung into a Kong, a player waiting on exactly that tile can "rob" it from you and win on the spot. Concealed Kongs are safe from this.
Yes, always, for both. Any set claimed from a discard must be laid face-up on the table immediately — that's a melded set. A set you build yourself from tiles you drew stays hidden — concealed — until you win.
Melded sets let everyone see part of what you're building. That's the trade-off for the speed of claiming instead of drawing.
Yes. Call it clearly the moment the tile is discarded — "Pung!", "Chow!", "Kong!" or "Mahjong!" — before anyone draws next. The declaration is what gives you the right to interrupt normal turn order, so it has to be unambiguous.
Remember: only the player to the discarder's immediate left may call Chow. Pung, Kong and Mahjong can be called by anyone.
Traditionally, only after a wash-out — when the wall runs out and nobody has won, the next hand is played as a Goulash. In the classic rules it isn't a game type you choose at the beginning of a session.
That said, some circles use it more freely, as a deliberate variant played for fun independent of a wash-out. EasyMahjong plays it this second way in the club — Passport and Goulash are included from the start of club sessions as variants to practise, rather than held back until a wash-out happens to occur.
Completely fresh. After a wash-out the previous hand is abandoned, the wall is rebuilt from scratch, and tiles are dealt again — 13 each, 14 to East — exactly like the start of any normal hand. Nothing carries over.
Only tiles currently in your own hand. Nothing from the discard pile or anyone's melded sets is involved. You look at your freshly dealt tiles, choose what you don't want, and pass those.
Traditionally three rounds, done in sequence before anyone discards:
- Across the table — East with West, South with North
- Then with one side
- Then with the other side
Each round you can use what you just received to help decide what to give away next. Only once all three rounds finish does East make the first discard and normal play begins — draw, discard and the calls all work exactly as usual from there.
What stays different for the rest of that hand: the target shape (one suit, all pungs, plus a pair) and the ban on chows.
No — never together, and not because of any rule about chows. The two target shapes directly contradict each other:
- Goulash needs one numbered suit, all pungs plus a pair — no honour tiles at all
- Passport needs honour tiles exclusively — five or six different winds and dragons
A single 14-tile hand can't satisfy both at once. You're building toward one or the other from your very first few tiles.
Going around to your right: East → South → West → North → back to East.
- West sits directly opposite East
- South sits to East's right
- North sits to East's left
Mahjong terminology calls it anticlockwise — play passes to the player on your right, following that same East–South–West–North order.
It can feel like an odd label, since "East" is a game position rather than true geographic east, and the diagrams used to teach direction are drawn as a mirror of a real compass specifically to make this reading work on paper.