136 tiles, 34 kinds
A riichi set has 136 tiles: 34 different kinds, four copies of each. They fall into two groups: numbered tiles, split into three suits from 1 to 9, and honours, which have no number.
Unlike Chinese mahjong, riichi uses no flowers or seasons.
The three suits
Each suit goes from 1 to 9. Runs are made of consecutive tiles in the same suit, and triplets of three identical tiles.
Characters (man)
The number is written in Japanese above the character 萬, “ten thousand”. You only need to learn the first nine numbers: 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九.
Circles (pin)
Just count the circles, like coins.
Bamboo (sou)
Count the bamboo sticks. The only trap: the 1 of bamboo is drawn as a bird.
The honours
Honours don’t follow each other: they only form pairs, triplets and quads. There are seven kinds.
The four winds
East, South, West and North, written 東 南 西 北. Each player has a seat wind, and each round has its own: a triplet of the right wind is a yaku.
The three dragons
The white dragon (Haku, a blank tile), the green dragon (Hatsu, 發) and the red dragon (Chun, 中). A triplet of dragons is always a yaku.
Simples, terminals and honours
Many rules tell three kinds of tiles apart. These words come up again and again in scoring.
- Simples: the tiles from 2 to 8. A hand made only of simples is the tanyao yaku.
- Terminals: the 1s and 9s of each suit.
- Honours: the winds and the dragons. Terminals and honours together are called yaochuuhai; their triplets are worth twice as many fu.
The red fives
In most sets, one of the four 5s of each suit is red: it is an aka-dora. It plays like an ordinary 5, but each red five in the winning hand adds one han.
Tournament rules often do without them: Tenpai lets you choose in the table rules.
Dora: the next tile
At the start of each hand, a tile of the dead wall is turned over: the dora indicator. The dora is not that tile, but the next one. Each dora in the winning hand is worth one han, but does not replace a yaku.
- Within a suit, go to the next number; after 9 comes 1.
- For winds: East, South, West, North, then East.
- For dragons: white, green, red, then white.
A riichi hand that wins also turns over the tiles hidden under the indicators: these are the ura-dora, read the same way.
123m notation
Online and in books, hands are written in shorthand: the numbers, then a letter for the suit. m for characters (man), p for circles (pin), s for bamboo (sou), z for honours, numbered 1 to 7 (East, South, West, North, white, green, red). A 0 is the red five.
So 123m 406p 789s 555z 11z reads: 1-2-3 of characters, 4-red 5-6 of circles, 7-8-9 of bamboo, three white dragons and a pair of East.
You can read the tiles: on to the game. How a game goes.