SOYOUWANNA LEARN TO PLAY MAH-JONG?

3. GET THE RIGHT PLANTER

Now here's the hardest part of learning to play mah-jong: getting to know the tiles and what each of them means. This is a difficult step because it involves some foreign language, and, for readers under the age of four, some counting.

There are three different tile categories: suits, honors and bonuses. We'll go over each one in detail.

Suit tiles
Honor tiles
Bonus tiles

Suit tiles

Just as there are four suits in a deck of cards, there are three suits in mah-jong: dots, lines, and characters. (Some people call the dots "balls" or "circles" and the lines "bam" or "bamboos.") Each suit has tiles that go from 1 - 9, and there are four tiles of each number in the mah-jong set. Add it all up, and you'll discover that there are 108 suit tiles in all (9 x 4 = 36 dot tiles, 9 x 4 = 36 line tiles, and 9 x 4 = 36 character tiles).

You can calculate the numeric value each suit tile holds by counting the number of dots or lines on the tile. This is just like normal playing cards, where there are five little diamonds on the "five of diamonds" card. The only exception to this is the tile ONE LINE - it does not depict one line, but the image of a bird. But the game will take forever if you sit around and count the number of lines or dots each time you come upon a new tile, though, so familiarize yourself with each number's pattern before playing a real game. Either that or get the set with the numbers in the corner.

Here are some examples of dot suits and line suits. Ignore the patterns of the dots and lines; they just make the tiles pretty.

Here is a full set of dot tiles:

And here is a full set of line tiles:

This entire counting system collapses when it comes to the character suit. The character suit consists of the numbers one through nine written out in Chinese characters. Here is where you, as a beginner, should rely on the little numbers on the tiles.

Here is a full set of character tiles:

Don't worry about what everything is worth yet. Just realize that because there are so many suit tiles, they're worth less than the rarer honor tiles. However, because there are so many suit tiles, they're also easier to work with when you're looking to make combinations.

Honor tiles

The honor tiles consist of three colored dragons (white, red, and green) and four directional winds (east, south, west, and north). There are four of each honor tile in the mah-jong set, leading to a grand total of 28 honor tiles in a set.

• The three types of dragon tiles (again, there are 3 x 4 = 12 dragon tiles total) unfittingly don't have pictures of dragons on them. Instead, the white dragon has a picture of a rectangle or nothing at all, and the red and green dragons depict Chinese characters. Fortunately, this wacky system is saved by the fact that the red dragon character is written entirely in red and the green dragon is entirely green, so unless you're color-blind, there should be no confusion. The pictures below will clarify what we mean.
  This is a full set of dragon tiles:

• The four directional wind tiles (3 x 4 = 16 in a complete set) depict the Chinese characters for east, south, west, and north. But the fact that you don't speak Chinese means that you'll need to use the little E - S - W - N hints on the corners of the tiles. If it's any consolation, after learning the characters, chances are that you'll never get lost in the woods in China, even if you have a Chinese compass.
  Here is a full set of wind tiles:

The honor tiles are rarer than the suit tiles, and are therefore worth more. Again, scoring discussion will come later.

Bonus tiles

There are 8 bonus tiles in a mah-jong set, and each tile depicts a fancy-looking flower or drawing and a number 1 - 4, so they're easy to pick out.

Here are examples of the 8 bonus tiles in a full set:

Bonus tiles are different from suit and honor tiles in that their purpose is to add bonus points onto the total score; they aren't included in the actual playing hand. In fact, when a player draws a bonus tile, he must turn it face up and keep it on his side of the table and draw another tile to replace it. So basically, getting a bonus tile is a good thing that is COMPLETELY based on luck. You get the bonus points, plus you get to go again.

Still with us? If you're just barely there, take some time out now to look over your tiles and really learn what each one is all about before moving on. If you're getting discouraged already, just remember that learning the tiles is the hardest part of the game - everything after this will be a breeze (or should we say, "a directional wind").