Draw, discard, claim melds, and race the table to a winning hand.
Take the East seat at a four-player table, pick up your 13 tiles, and work through a 136-tile wall against three AI opponents. Claim discards for chow, pong, or kong, read the rivers for danger, and be the first to lay down four melds and a pair.
Looking for the tile-matching puzzle instead? That game is Mahjong Solitaire — Play Mahjong Solitaire Free — or see Mahjong vs Mahjong Solitaire for every difference between the two.
Here for the real table game? The Mahjong strategy guide covers discards, claims, and reading the rivers, and the American Mahjong guide explains the NMJL game with racks, jokers, and the Charleston.
First, a quick signpost, because two very different games share this name. If you arrived hoping to clear a stacked board by clicking matching tile pairs, that puzzle is Mahjong Solitaire — our free version lives at www.playmahjongsolitaire.org, and our Mahjong vs Mahjong Solitaire guide lays out every difference between the two. What you will find on this page is the original table game: four players, a shared wall, and a race to the first complete hand.
Table Mahjong runs on a simple loop with deep consequences. On your turn you draw one tile, weigh what it does for your hand, and throw one tile face up where the whole table can see it. Between your turns the three AI opponents do the same — and any tile they throw might be exactly the one you need, which is where claims come in.
Claims are what separate Mahjong from every draw-and-discard card game you have played. When an opponent releases a tile you can use, buttons appear at the bottom of the table: pong takes it to complete a triplet, kong takes it for four of a kind and earns a replacement draw from the wall, chow builds a run — though only off the player to your left — and win takes it to finish your hand on the spot. Every claim exposes part of your hand, so each one is a real decision, not a reflex.
The wall behind all of this holds 136 tiles: 108 suited tiles across bamboo, characters, and dots (numbers one through nine, four copies of each), 16 wind tiles, and 12 dragon tiles. You hold 13 tiles between turns, and as East you open the game by throwing your first discard from a 14th. Flower tiles, seasons, and regional scoring tables are deliberately left out so the core game stays readable while you learn it.
Three difficulty settings let you scale the opposition from forgiving to sharp, and the writing on this site grows with you. The rules page walks through setup, turn order, and every claim in sequence; the strategy guide covers which tiles to release early and when a claim costs more than it gains; and the American Mahjong guide explains the NMJL game with its racks, jokers, Charleston, and annual card of hands.
The wall
136 tiles
108 suited tiles in three suits, plus 16 winds and 12 dragons, make up every deal.
Your hand
13 tiles
Each seat holds 13 between turns. East opens the game with a 14th.
Winning shape
4 melds + pair
Fourteen tiles at the finish: four chows, pongs, or kongs, anchored by one pair.
Most search traffic for "mahjong" actually wants the solitaire matching puzzle, while this site hosts the four-player table game — a distinction our comparison page covers in depth. The short version: solitaire is a solo pattern-spotting exercise, while table Mahjong is a competitive game of memory, timing, and risk against live opponents.
This app implements the shared foundation under Hong Kong, riichi, and most other regional styles: a 136-tile wall, chow claims restricted to the player on your left, kong claims followed by a replacement draw, and victory on four melds plus a pair. Scoring variants layer on top of exactly this skeleton, so everything you practice here transfers.
Every winning hand is assembled from the same small vocabulary of shapes, and recognizing them mid-deal is the first skill worth drilling.
Each seat keeps its own visible row of discards, called a river. Counting how many copies of a tile have already appeared tells you whether your pair can still complete — and which of your own throws would hand an opponent the win.