American vs. Chinese vs. Riichi: Which Mahjong Is on Your Table?

Three people can say "I play mahjong" and mean three genuinely different games. They share a set of tiles that look nearly identical across the table, and almost nothing else — different tile counts, different scoring, different rituals, different win conditions. If you have ever sat down at a mahjong table and felt lost despite "knowing mahjong," this is why. Here is how American, Chinese, and Japanese riichi actually differ, and how to tell in ten seconds which one is in front of you.

The one-glance comparison

Feature	American (NMJL)	Chinese (e.g. Hong Kong)	Japanese (Riichi)
Total tiles	152 (136 + 8 jokers + 8 flowers)	136 (many sets add 8 bonus flowers)	136 (no flowers; adds red fives)
Jokers	8, essential to play	none	none
Printed card of legal hands	Yes, renewed annually	No	No
Wall per player	19 stacks x 2	17 stacks x 2	17 stacks x 2
Pre-game Charleston	Yes	No	No
How you win	match a hand on the card	make any legal pattern	make a hand with at least one yaku
Scoring	card values, roughly 25 to 50	fan / faan by pattern	yaku plus han and fu, riichi bets
Signature move	calling mahj on a card hand	going out on a pattern	declaring riichi

Everything below is that table, explained.

American: the card is the whole game

American mahjong, governed by the National Mah Jongg League card, is the outlier of the three, and the card is why. You cannot win on just any sensible pattern; you must match one of the specific hands printed on the current year's card, exactly. That single rule reshapes everything around it.

To support the card's more elaborate hands, the American set is the biggest of the three at 152 tiles — the standard 136 plus 8 jokers and 8 flowers. The jokers are load-bearing: they stand in for tiles inside groups of three or more and drive a whole subsystem of exchanges and restrictions that the other games simply do not have. Before play even starts, American adds the Charleston, a fixed sequence of three-tile passes with no equivalent anywhere else in the mahjong world. And because each player builds a wall of 19 stacks, two tiles high, the American wall is visibly longer than its cousins.

If you are coming to the American game specifically, our guides on reading the card and the Charleston cover the two things no other mahjong tradition will teach you.

Chinese: the original, pattern-based game

Chinese mahjong is the root the other two grew from, and it is best understood as the lean, pattern-based version. There is no card and no joker. You win by assembling a legal hand — typically four sets and a pair — out of the tiles themselves, and the huge variety of regional rule sets (Hong Kong Old Style being one of the most common internationally) mostly differ in how they score those patterns.

The set is the baseline 136 tiles: the three suits, winds, and dragons, with no jokers added. Many Chinese sets do include 8 bonus flower and season tiles, which score points but are set aside rather than played into your hand. Each player's wall is 17 stacks high, which is the single fastest tell that you are not at an American table. Scoring runs on fan (also spelled faan) — points awarded for the difficulty and rarity of the pattern you completed, with hand values multiplying quickly for the flashy stuff. It is faster and more improvisational than the American game: you are reading tiles, not hunting a printed line.

Riichi: the Japanese game with its own machinery

Japanese riichi mahjong is the most mechanically distinct of the three, a tournament-grade game with a deep scoring engine and a signature declaration that gives it its name. Like Chinese, it uses 136 tiles and no jokers — but riichi sets drop the flowers entirely and add red fives (aka-dora), a red-printed 5 in each suit that acts as a bonus multiplier. Spot a red five and you are almost certainly at a riichi table.

Riichi has two features nothing else in mahjong shares. First, you generally cannot win at all unless your hand contains at least one yaku — a named scoring pattern — so a hand that is merely complete but has no yaku is not a legal win. Second, when you are one tile away with a concealed hand, you can declare riichi, betting a thousand-point stick and locking your hand in exchange for scoring bonuses. Scoring combines han (doubles from yaku and dora) with fu (minor points), and it is the most math-forward of the three games by a wide margin. There are no jokers to lean on and no card to follow — just you, the yaku list, and the wall.

How to tell which game you have wandered into

You do not need to know the rules to identify the game. Read the table:

• Count a wall. Nineteen stacks means American. Seventeen means Chinese or riichi.
• Look for jokers. A "JOKER" tile in play means American, always. No other standard game uses them.
• Look for a little folded card. A booklet of hands on the table is American and only American.
• Watch the start. If players pass tiles around three at a time before anyone draws, that is the Charleston — American.
• Look for red fives. A red-printed 5 tile means riichi.
• Look for flowers in the wall. Flower and season tiles present in play lean Chinese (or American, which also uses flowers); their total absence alongside red fives means riichi.

Two tiles that settle most arguments: the joker points to American, the red five points to riichi, and the plain 136-tile set with neither is Chinese.

Can you play one game with another's set?

Mostly, with caveats. A Chinese 136-tile set can be converted to an American set by adding jokers — a sheet of mahjong joker stickers on blank or spare tiles is the classic, insider-known fix, though you will still need a current card to actually play the American hands. Going the other way, an American set has everything a Chinese game needs and then some; you just set the jokers aside. Riichi is the fussiest to improvise because of the red fives and the absent flowers, so dedicated riichi players tend to buy a purpose-built set.

If you specifically want to play the American game — the one with the card, the jokers, and the Charleston — the cleanest start is a set built for it. The Yellow Mountain Imports American set ships with the jokers and flowers already included, and Elaine Sandberg's beginner's guide to American mah jongg teaches the card game from zero. For a fuller rundown across sets and accessories, see our American mahjong comparison hub; our sister site TileSetHQ covers the same ground if you want a second opinion.