Hong Kong Mahjong Rules and Scoring

What is Hong Kong Mahjong?

Hong Kong Mahjong (香港麻雀), also called Cantonese Mahjong, is the four-player game played across Hong Kong, Guangdong and Cantonese-speaking communities around the world. Each player holds 13 tiles, draws and discards one tile a turn, and races to build a winning hand of four sets and a pair.

What sets the Hong Kong style apart is its scoring. Every winning hand is counted in faan (番), and under traditional rules a hand needs at least 3 faan before you may declare it. This page covers the full rules, the faan table and how the money changes hands. For a gentler first introduction, start with how to play Mahjong.

A winning shape Mahjong!

The tiles and the deal

Hong Kong Mahjong uses 144 tiles. There are four copies of every tile in the three suits (characters, bamboo and dots, numbered 1 to 9), four copies of each wind and dragon, and one of each of the eight flowers and seasons. There are no animal tiles; those belong to the Singapore and Malaysian games.

The three suits Characters, bamboo, dots

Honour tiles Winds and dragons

Bonus tiles Flowers and seasons

1. 01 Everyone takes 13 tiles. Any flower or season in your deal is set face up beside you and replaced from the wall, so you always start with 13 playing tiles.
2. 02 The dealer is East and plays first. The dealer draws a 14th tile and discards. The other seats are South, West and North in turn order.
3. 03 Draw one, discard one. On your turn you draw from the wall, then throw one tile face up into the middle, ending your turn on 13 again.
4. 04 The hand ends with a win or an empty wall. If nobody completes a hand before the wall runs out, the hand is a draw.

Sets and claiming discards

A set is three or four tiles that belong together. A chow (上) is a run of three in one suit. A pung (碰) is three identical tiles. A kong (槓) is four identical tiles and counts as one set; whenever you make a kong you draw a replacement tile. The pair (眼) is two identical tiles.

The four shapes Chow, pung, kong, pair

You can take the tile another player has just discarded to finish a set, then show that set face up. A pung, a kong or a winning tile can be claimed from anyone. A chow can only be claimed from the player before you, the one on your left. Play then continues from you, skipping anyone in between.

When several players want the same discard, a win beats a kong, a kong beats a pung and a pung beats a chow. Hong Kong rules allow more than one player to win on the same discard, and the discarder pays each winner in full.

Winning hands

A standard winning hand has 14 tiles made of four sets and a pair. Hong Kong rules also allow seven pairs (七對子), seven different pairs held in your hand with nothing exposed, and the special limit hand thirteen orphans (十三么).

Seven pairs 4 faan

Thirteen orphans Limit hand

You can win in two ways. A self-drawn win (自摸) is when you draw the winning tile from the wall yourself. A discard win (食糊) is when you claim another player's discard to finish your hand. A self-drawn win scores an extra faan and changes who pays.

The Hong Kong faan table

Add up every pattern your hand contains. Under Hong Kong faan scoring you need at least 3 faan to win, and a hand's total is capped at 13 faan. A hand that reads more than one way, such as 111 222 333 as three pungs or three runs, is scored in whichever way gives more faan.

Small three dragons also scores its two dragon pungs, so it is worth at least 7 faan. Seven pairs and thirteen orphans do not add the concealed hand faan.

Small three dragons 7 faan

Exposed runs, won on a discard 1 faan

Flowers and seasons score only when they match your seat. East's tiles are plum and spring, South's are orchid and summer, West's are chrysanthemum and autumn, and North's are bamboo and winter. Each matching tile is worth 1 faan; the others are worth nothing. Collecting all four flowers or all four seasons adds 1 more faan on top, and holding no bonus tiles at all scores 1 faan.

East's seat flowers 1 faan each

Who pays and how much

Faan turn into a base amount that doubles at 3, 5, 7 and 10 faan. Anything above 10 faan pays the same as 10.

On a discard win, only the player who threw the winning tile pays. On a self-drawn win, all three opponents pay. Whenever the dealer is on either side of a payment, as the winner or as a payer, that payment is doubled.

For example, a non-dealer self-draws a 4-faan hand. The base is 2, so the two other non-dealers pay 2 each and the dealer pays 4, and the winner collects 8. If the same hand had won on a non-dealer's discard, that player alone would pay 2.

The dealer and wind rounds

The dealer sits East. If the dealer wins, they keep the deal for the next hand. If the wall runs out with no winner, the dealer also keeps the deal. When anyone else wins, the deal passes to the next player.

Once every player has dealt, the round wind moves on, from East to South, then West and North. A full match is four wind rounds. The round wind matters for scoring, because a pung of it is worth 1 faan.

Playing Hong Kong Mahjong here

Our Hong Kong tables use everything above: 144 tiles with flowers and seasons, 13-tile hands, chows only from your left, seven pairs, multiple winners and four wind rounds.

Scoring is casual by default. Any complete hand wins, with no faan to count, and each win scores a point. When you set up a private table you can switch the Scoring option to Hong Kong Faan, which uses the faan table, the 3-faan minimum and the payouts on this page.

Questions about Hong Kong Mahjong

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