Minefield Mahjong

for 2 players
adapted from Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s “Kaiji”
℅ DFW Mahjong

Players attempt to use their opponent’s discards to read information about their hand while trying to avoid revealing too much with their own discards. The objective is to get your opponent to deal into your hand. Familiarity with riichi mahjong is assumed.

Setup

Select a player to be East seat - the other will be West. Each hand the players will switch. Shuffle a full set of tiles and each player draws 34 tiles into rows in front of them. A pair of tiles, one dora (face up) and one uradora is also set aside. From their own drawn tiles, players must create a 13 tile hand in tenpai worth at least mangan (this includes riichi as well as dora.) There are no round winds, only seat winds. Kans are not allowed. Furiten rules still apply. Players begin with a normal allotment of points

Play

Players take turns discarding tiles from the remaining 21 tiles in front of them; the first tile is declared riichi. Each player will discard up to 17 tiles.

You win if the other player deals into your hand, otherwise the hand is a draw. A win must be a ron - you may not win on a self selected tile.

Scoring

Winning hands must be mangan or better - 4 fan 30 fu and 3 fan 60 fu hands are rounded up. Riichi is counted as well as ippatsu (win on first deal) and houtei (win on last discard). A declared win that does not meet the minimum score is considered chombo.

Wait Finding

(for 1 player)
℅ Reach Mahjong of New York

A useful drill to practice finding waits in suit tiles.

  • Pull an entire suit out of a set of tiles.
  • Shuffle and draw 4.
  • If you had already called 3 times, are these 4 tiles tenpai? if so, what is the wait?
  • To increase the difficulty, draw 7 (if you have called 2 times, are you tenpai? what is the wait?)
  • To further increase, draw 10 (if you have called 1 time, are you tenpai? what is the wait?)
  • For max difficulty, draw 13. Is this full flush tenpai? What’s the wait?

To gauge your proficiency, time how long doing this 10-20 times takes, and then note how the time goes down with repeated practice.
Special bonus – to do this on the go, you can use a deck of cards! A deck of cards, all four suits, A-9, (toss out 10JQK), is the same makeup as a suit in mahjong.

Tenpai Practice

for 1 player
℅ Reach Mahjong of New York

Practice your tile efficiency methods and speed up your tenpai hand.

Shuffle a set face down.
Draw 13 tiles.
Draw and discard until you get to tenpai, or you’ve discarded 18 times.
Write down the number of tiles you’ve discarded.
Repeat.
To gauge your proficiency, do this 50 times, and figure out the average number of tiles discarded. Note how the number of tiles goes down with repeated practice.
Bonus – to make this more of a puzzle, only shuffle after every four hands (keep tiles used in previous hands visible). You can better judge possible draws by seeing what is gone already.

One suit mahjong

for 2 players
℅ Reach Mahjong of New York
 

Practice tile efficiency, quickly tracking wait tiles, and reading your opponent’s discards.

  • Use only one suit of tiles.
  • Play mahjong against each other: no calls other than Kan, Ron or Tsumo.
  • No dead wall: go through the whole set.
  • Players have 100K to start, play until someone goes below 0.

To shorten the game, players do not gain points: their opponent, however, still loses them.

Half flush mahjong

for 2 players
adapted from Shinasaka Kouji’s “Tohai”
℅ Reach Mahjong of New York
 

Practice tile efficiency, quickly tracking wait tiles, and reading your opponent’s discards. Know when to fold.

  • Use only one suit of tiles and the honors.
  • Play mahjong against each other: no calls other than Kan, Ron or Tsumo.
  • Players are East and West, Table is East.
  • Standard dead wall with dora.
  • At any time, instead of discarding, a player can “fold”. They pay 3,000 points to do this, +3,000 for every tile they’ve discarded this hand. If they are dealer, doing this passes the deal.
  • Players have 30K to start, play until someone goes below 0.

To shorten the game, players do not gain points: their opponent, however, still loses them.
 

A/B mahjong

for 2 players
adapted from Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s “Ten”
℅ Reach Mahjong of New York
 

A useful 2-player version of mahjong that practices reading discards and knowing your opponent’s wait tiles.

Use only one suit of tiles and the honors. Set up a standard dead wall with dora. No calls other than Kan are allowed. Players are East and West; table is East.

Phase 1

Draw and discard as normal. At any time while discarding, if not furiten, a player may Reach. This ends phase 1 of the game and moves on to phase 2 below. If you do this and are not dealer, you become dealer next hand.

Phase 2

The non-reached player guesses 2 tiles. If either of those completes the hand, the hand ends as a draw, otherwise the reached player draws and discards 5 tiles, one at a time. If any tile completes their hand, they win. If there is no winning draw repeat the previous steps until the wall runs out, in which case the hand is a draw.

Players have 30K to start. Play until someone goes below 0. To shorten the game, players do not gain points: their opponent, however, still loses them.

Minipoint Battle

For 3-4 players
℅ Panhandle Mahjong

Drill players on quickly scoring their minipoints by only focusing on this scoring metric. Players can immediately begin to weigh benefit to adding value to their hands vs going out quickly.

In this drill there are no yaku, no riichi, and no dora. Players may call discards as normal. Shuffle a full set of tiles and set up as usual. Players start with a standard configuration of point sticks; drop a zero from each stick’s value (1,000 is now 100.) Play mahjong as usual with the aim to make four melds and a pair (no Seven Pairs or 13 Orphans hand.) Score a winning hand using minipoints (fu) only and rounding up to the nearest 10 for payout.
Bonus - Players must include the minipoint value of their hand immediately when declaring a win. Verify the score - if the point value is wrong the hand is chombo and the player must pay 800/1,200 points to the other players. This encourages tracking minipoints during play.