Mahjong Guide

Most beginners think the game is about the hand in front of them. You draw, you discard, you chase the pattern on your card. That part is real, and it’s the fun part. But here’s what nobody tells you until you’ve lost a few games you should have won: a lot of American mahjong is…

Open a new American mahjong set for the first time and it looks like somebody dumped a small library of tiny ivory bricks on your table. There are characters you don’t read, numbers you half recognize, dragons, flowers, and a handful of tiles that look like they belong to a different game entirely. One hundred…