American Mahjong Tiles Explained: All 152 Tiles

On this page

1. All 152 tiles at a glance
2. The three suits
3. Dots
4. Bams
5. Craks
6. Winds
7. Dragons
8. Flowers
9. Jokers
10. Blank and extra tiles
11. How the tiles appear on the card
12. Count your set before the first game

The tiles are the first thing that makes American Mahjong feel foreign, and the fastest thing to learn. There are only seven kinds of tile, and once you can name them out loud, the card and the rest of the game start to make sense.

All 152 tiles at a glance

The three suits

Dots, Bams and Craks are the suits. Each runs from 1 to 9, and each number comes four times, so every suit has 36 tiles. The suits are the only tiles with numbers, so they are the only tiles that can form runs or the numbered patterns you will see all over the card.

American sets print an Arabic numeral in the corner of every suit tile. You never need to read the pictures or the Chinese characters to know a tile's number: look at the corner.

Dots

Dots (sometimes called circles) show that many circles on the face. The 1 Dot is a single large, decorated circle. Dots pair with the White Dragon, Soap, whenever a hand asks for matching Dragons.

Bams

Bams are bamboo sticks. The 1 Bam is the tile that confuses everyone: it is a bird, not a stick. Traditionally it is a sparrow, a nod to one of the game's old names. Bams pair with the Green Dragon.

Craks

Craks, short for characters, carry two Chinese characters. The top one is the number, one through nine. The bottom one, 萬 (wan), means ten thousand and appears on every Crak. With the numeral in the corner you do not need to read either. Craks pair with the Red Dragon.

Winds

There are four Winds, North, East, West and South, and four of each. Each shows a Chinese character with a letter in the corner. Winds are not a suit: they have no numbers and cannot form runs. On the card they appear as the letters N, E, W and S, and many hands are built around pungs and kongs of them. The table itself also uses the Winds: the dealer sits in the East seat.

Dragons

There are three Dragons, four of each. The Red Dragon shows the character 中 and the Green Dragon shows 發. The White Dragon is usually a blank frame or a decorative border, and nearly every American player calls it Soap.

Two Dragon details matter when you read the card:

• Each Dragon matches a suit. Red goes with Craks, Green with Bams, and Soap with Dots. When a hand calls for a Dragon "matching" a suit, this is the pairing it means.
• Soap doubles as a zero. Hands built from the digits of the year use Soap wherever a 0 appears.

Flowers

A set has eight Flowers. They often show different pictures, and some are numbered or labelled with seasons, but in American Mahjong every Flower is interchangeable. Any Flower counts as a Flower. On the card they appear as the letter F, often in groups of two, three or four.

Jokers

The eight Jokers are what most clearly separate an American set from a Chinese one. A Joker can stand in for any tile, but only in a group of three or more identical tiles: a pung, kong, quint or sextet. Jokers can never be used in a pair or as a single tile. The Joker rules guide covers exchanges, discarded Jokers and the edge cases.

Blank and extra tiles

Many sets come with blank tiles, which is why you will see sets advertised with 166 tiles. Blanks are spares: if you lose or chip a tile, you can use a blank in its place (some people write on them). Standard NMJL play does not use blank tiles, so set them aside before you build the walls. Some groups play a house rule that brings blanks into the game; if yours does, agree on it before play starts.

How the tiles appear on the card

The card never shows pictures of tiles. It uses a shorthand:

The colors trip up almost every beginner, so read how to read the NMJL card before you commit to your first hand.

Count your set before the first game

A missing tile quietly ruins a game, because hands that need it can never be completed. The first time you open a set, and after every game night with a new group, do a quick check:

1. Count the Jokers and Flowers.

   There should be 8 of each. These are the tiles most often lost or mixed up with blanks.

2. Count one suit.

   Lay out one suit in rows of 1 to 9. You should see four complete rows.

3. Check the Dragons and Winds.

   Four of each Dragon and four of each Wind.

4. Set the blanks aside.

   Keep them in the case as spares.

Keep the free printable cheat sheet beside you while you learn. It shows every tile with its name.