American vs. Chinese vs. Riichi Mahjong: What's Actually Different

The short version: American, Chinese, and Japanese riichi mahjong are three branches of the same family tree, and they differ enough that knowing one does not mean you can sit down and play another. American mahjong uses 152 tiles, an annually changing card of legal hands, jokers, and a passing ritual called the Charleston. Chinese (Hong Kong-style) mahjong uses 144 tiles and free-form hands with no card and no jokers. Riichi, the Japanese game, uses 136 tiles and adds a whole ecosystem of betting declarations and scoring rules that reward study for years.

If you're deciding which to learn, skip to the end; the answer is simpler than the comparison. But the comparison is genuinely interesting, so let's take the tour.

One game, three branches

All three versions descend from the mahjong that took shape in China in the 19th century, most likely in the region around Ningbo and Shanghai. The tiles themselves tell the story: the dots, bams, and craks are Chinese suits; the winds and dragons are Chinese honors; the flowers depict scenes and seasons from Chinese art. Whatever table you sit down at (a Shanghai parlor, a Tokyo club, or a Milwaukee dining room), you are playing with a Chinese invention, and I think it matters to say so plainly. The American game in particular has evolved a long way from its source, but the source deserves the credit.

Mahjong crossed the Pacific in the 1920s and became a full-blown American craze. When the fad faded, a group of women in New York founded the National Mah Jongg League in 1937 to standardize the American variations that had sprung up. Their solution, a printed card of legal hands that changes every year, is the single biggest thing that makes the American game its own animal. Meanwhile, the game kept evolving back in Asia: Hong Kong-style became the dominant Chinese form, and Japan developed riichi into a competitive game with a scoring system deep enough to fill textbooks.

So when someone says "I play mahjong," the polite follow-up question is: which one?

The side-by-side comparison

	American (NMJL)	Chinese (Hong Kong-style)	Japanese (Riichi)
Tiles	152 (includes 8 jokers, 8 flowers)	144 (typically)	136
Legal hands	~70 hands printed on an annual card	Free-form: chows, pungs, kongs plus a pair	Free-form, but the hand must contain a yaku (scoring pattern)
Jokers	Yes: 8 of them, central to the game	Not standard	No
The Charleston	Yes: a three-pass tile exchange before play	No	No
Sequences (runs)	Only if the card says so; no exposed chows	Chows are a basic building block	Chows are a basic building block
Equipment	Racks, pushers, and the current NMJL card	Tiles and a table	Tiles; often a scoring stick set
Scoring	Fixed values per hand, 25 to 75 points on the card	Faan-based, varies by house rules	Yaku and dora based, famously deep
Signature rules	Dead hands, joker exchanges	Fast dealing rhythm, quick hands	Riichi declaration, furiten, dora indicators
Pace	Deliberate (there's a card to consult)	Brisk	Brisk, with dramatic pauses

Tables flatten nuance, so let me put some flesh on those bones.

What makes American mahjong American

The card. Everything else flows from the card. Under National Mah Jongg League rules, you can't just assemble any pretty combination of tiles. Your hand must exactly match one of the roughly 70 hands printed on the current year's card, organized into categories, each worth a fixed 25 to 75 points, marked X for hands you may expose or C for hands that must stay concealed. As of the 2026 card, that's the landscape; next April, the League publishes a new card and the landscape changes. Learning the new card each spring is an annual ritual, half homework and half holiday.

Because the card is so specific, the American game added machinery to help you get there: eight jokers that can stand in for tiles in pungs, kongs, quints, and sextets, and the Charleston, a structured passing of tiles between players before the first discard. If you want the full details, I've written a whole guide to the Charleston and another on joker rules. The American game also plays with racks and pushers, which keep your tiles upright and your exposures visible, and there are no exposed runs at all: only pairs, pungs, kongs, quints, and sextets as the card dictates.

The card is also why American mahjong is such a social game. There's a rhythm of consulting, deliberating, and second-guessing that gives the table room to talk. My grandmother's games ran three hours and about forty minutes of that was actual tile-play; the rest was the good stuff.

What makes Chinese mahjong Chinese

Freedom and speed. In Hong Kong-style play, a winning hand is four sets plus a pair, where a set is a chow (a run of three in a suit), a pung (three of a kind), or a kong (four of a kind). No card tells you which combinations are legal; almost any combination is. There are no jokers as standard, no Charleston, and the dealing and discarding rhythm is noticeably faster. A Hong Kong hand can be over in a few minutes, and scoring is based on faan (bonus points for particular patterns), with the details varying table to table.

If American mahjong is a crossword with an answer key, Chinese mahjong is more like speed chess: fewer constraints, faster decisions, and a premium on reading the table.

What makes riichi its own universe

Riichi takes the free-form Chinese structure and layers on a competitive scoring system of remarkable depth. The 136-tile set drops the flowers. A dora indicator turned up at the start of each hand makes certain tiles worth bonus points. When you're one tile from winning with a concealed hand, you may declare riichi, placing a bet on yourself that locks your hand and raises the stakes. And the furiten rule says you can't win on a tile you've previously discarded, which turns every discard into a small strategic confession.

Scoring is built on yaku (named patterns your hand must contain to win at all), and calculating a final score involves enough arithmetic that new players usually let someone else do it for a few months. Riichi rewards deep study the way go or bridge does. It's a beautiful game. It is also, hands down, the steepest learning curve of the three.

So which one should you learn?

Whichever one your community plays. Truly, that's the whole answer. Mahjong is a four-player game, and the best version is the one with three other people waiting for you.

In the United States, when someone invites you to "mahjong night," they almost always mean the American game played under National Mah Jongg League rules. That's what's on the table at synagogues, country clubs, senior centers, and, increasingly, the thirty-something game nights I keep getting hired to teach. If your goal is to join the game your neighbor, coworker, or mother-in-law plays, learn American. That's what I teach, both in group lessons and privately, and I bring everything you need: tiles, racks, pushers, and current cards.

Milwaukee, happily, has room for more than one branch of the family. There are social groups here in town that play Chinese-style mahjong. And riichi has a passionate online community plus clubs in most major metros if the Japanese game is your flavor.

One reassuring note: the skills transfer more than you'd think. If you learn American mahjong with me and later sit down at a Chinese or riichi table, you'll already know the tiles, the draw-and-discard rhythm, and the basic instinct of building toward a hand. You'll need to learn new rules, but you won't be starting from zero.

A few honest caveats

Nobody's version is "real mahjong" and nobody's is watered down. I occasionally hear that American mahjong isn't authentic because of the card and the jokers, and I understand the impulse, but I'd gently push back: the American game has been played continuously since the 1920s, standardized since 1937, and passed down through generations, including from my grandmother to me. It's a genuine tradition with Chinese roots, and holding both of those truths at once is easy.

I'd also say: don't choose based on perceived difficulty. Riichi is the deepest, American has the most structure to memorize up front, Chinese is the fastest to start, but all three are learnable by ordinary humans in ordinary living rooms. If you want the honest numbers on how long it takes, I wrote up a realistic timeline.

Come find out for yourself

If you're in the Milwaukee area and American mahjong is calling, or if you're just mahjong-curious and want to see the tiles up close, I'd love to teach you. My lessons come to you, materials included, and I promise the only thing you need to bring is three friends and a table. Start with how to play American mahjong if you want a preview, or just reach out and we'll find a date.

Whichever branch of the family you end up playing: welcome to mahjong. It's a big table, and there's a seat for you.