Winning Hands

Here are the main categories of winning hands! The majority (over 99%) of the winning hands fall into the categories below.





It is possible that your winning hand can be under more than one of the categories above. When that happens, the scoring points for all the categories involved add up! This is rare and it means more WINNINGS! =)

One point to note is that different groups of people playing Mahjong may accept some other kinds of winning hands as well. An example is winning the game with seven pairs of tiles. Hence, do remember to clarify with your Mahjong friends whether certain winning hands are acceptable before the match. This will avoid misunderstanding and conflict after the game started. However, the categories of the winning hands as shown above form the majority of all possible winning hands!

Refer to them when in doubt! =)

Summary: Majority of winning hand includes Chicken Hand, Common Hand, all Triplets (PONG) hand, Mixed One-Suit Hand, Pure One-Suit Hand and all Honour Tiles Hand 

Tiles needed for Mahjong!

Generally, the rules of playing Mahjong in Singapore is similar to that played in other countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, US, Japan, China. However, the 2 main differences are in the scoring method and the extra animals tiles. The extra animal tiles of Cat, Rat, Rooster, and Centipede add to the local flavour of the game and provide extra opportunities for a bigger win.

There are three main subgroup of tiles; Suited tiles, Honour tiles and Flower tiles.

Suited Tiles

Suited tiles can be arranged in running order from 1 to 9. This is similar to normal playing cards, where there is ace to ten. However, there are only three suits in Mahjong: circle, bamboo, and character. While in normal playing cards, there four suits: clubs, diamonds, hearts and spaces. There are 4 repetition of each tiles, similar to the normal playing cards.

Honour Tiles

Unlike the suited tiles, the honour tiles cannot be arranged in running order. They consist of wind and dragon tiles.

Flower Tiles

Flower tiles can enhance the winnings collected when the player successfully gamed (HU or calling mah-jong!)