American Mahjong Tiles Explained
All 152 tiles, what each group is called, how many of each there are, and the handful of facts about them that decide how you play.
An American Mahjong set holds 152 tiles. That sounds like a lot to learn until you see that they come in only six kinds, and that four of the six are small.
More useful than memorizing the pictures is knowing how many of each exist. Counting what is left is most of what good players are doing while they look at the table.
The whole set at a glance
| Group | Tiles | How many |
|---|---|---|
| Bams (bamboo) | 1 through 9 | 36 |
| Cracks (characters) | 1 through 9 | 36 |
| Dots (circles) | 1 through 9 | 36 |
| Winds | North, East, West, South | 16 |
| Dragons | Red, Green, White | 12 |
| Flowers | all identical in play | 8 |
| Jokers | wild, with limits | 8 |
| 152 |
The three suits
The numbered tiles are the bulk of the set: three suits, each running 1 to 9, with four copies of every number. That is 36 tiles per suit and 108 in total.
- Bams show bamboo sticks. The 1 Bam is usually a bird rather than a stick, which confuses every new player exactly once.
- Cracks show a Chinese character above a number.
- Dots show circles.
The names are shorthand players say out loud. You will hear “three crack” and “seven bam” constantly, so learn the vocabulary before you sit down.
Winds
Four winds, four copies each: North, East, West, South. Sixteen tiles.
They belong to no suit. On the card they are written by their initials, and hands built from them often want them as singles in order rather than as groups, which has a consequence covered below.
Dragons
Three dragons, four copies each: Red, Green, White. Twelve tiles.
Dragons are the one honor group tied to the suits, and the pairing is fixed:
| Dragon | Goes with |
|---|---|
| Red | Cracks |
| Green | Bams |
| White | Dots |
When a hand asks for a dragon alongside a numbered group, it wants that group’s dragon. This is not a preference; it is what makes the hand legal.
The Soap
The White Dragon is usually a blank or lightly outlined tile, and everyone calls it the Soap, because it looks like a bar of it.
It has a second job. On hands built around the current year, the Soap is played as the digit zero. Used that way it is a number rather than a Dot dragon, and it can sit beside any suit.
Flowers
Eight tiles, and here is the part that surprises people coming from other mahjong variants: in American Mahjong all eight flowers are identical in play.
Sets vary. Yours may show four flowers and four seasons, with different pictures and little numbers in the corner. Those differences matter in Chinese mahjong and are irrelevant here. A flower is a flower. Any eight of them are interchangeable.
Flowers show up in a great many hands. Hold onto them while you are still undecided.
Jokers
Eight jokers, and they are the most powerful and most misunderstood tiles in the set.
A joker stands in for any tile, but only inside a group of three or more: a pung (three), a kong (four), a quint (five), or a sextet (six).
A joker can never be used for a pair, and never for a single tile.
That one restriction explains a lot about how hands are valued. A hand made of pungs and kongs is forgiving, because jokers can fill the gaps. A hand made of pairs and singles is brutal, because every tile has to be the real thing. It is why the Singles and Pairs section of the card is the hardest on it, and why hands calling for four separate winds cannot be jokered at all.
Two more joker facts to learn early:
- Jokers can never be passed during the Charleston. They stay with whoever was dealt them.
- Once a joker is sitting in a group exposed on someone’s rack, another player can sometimes redeem it by supplying the real tile it is standing in for. House and league rules on this vary, so ask.
What is not in an American set
If your set came with blanks, they are spares, not playing tiles. Some sets include a few, meant as replacements for lost tiles or as extra jokers by agreement. They are not part of the 152.
Similarly, if you have a set bought for Chinese or Riichi mahjong, it will be missing the jokers and will have a different tile count. It is not usable for the American game without additions.
Counting, which is the real skill
Everything above is a reference. The skill built on top of it is tracking what is gone.
Every exposed group and every discard removes tiles from circulation permanently. A player who notices that three of the four Green Dragons are on the table knows that a hand needing a pung of them is dead, and can stop chasing it while everyone else keeps drawing.
That is not memory work. It is a habit of looking, and it is learnable.
Stoa Games drills exactly this: a table state, a question about what is still live, and the reasoning behind the answer. If you are earlier than that, start with how to play American Mahjong, then how to read the NMJL card and the Charleston.