The Winds of Mahjong
By: Akos Nagy
Tags: Board Games, Mahjong, Games, Winds, Japanese

The Winds of Mahjong

Rīchi Mahjong. As far as I understand, the simplest version of all among the wide selection of Mahjong played around the world. This clearly presents itself in the fact that the rulebook is “only” 30-ish pages long. I mean.. How difficult are the other types?

This version of Mahjong is played in Japan and was adopted by the European Mahjong Association. In general, Mahjong is a “draw and discard” style game, played by 3 or 4 players, and with a lot of tiles. During the game, we have 13 tiles in our hand and desperately looking for our last,14th tile, while making sure that our hand is ready. What ready means? To win, our hand, in most of the cases, have to consist of 4 groups of triplets, that can be three of a kind or a sequence, and an identical pair. But it really does matter which tiles are we having in our hands, because we have to make sure that we at least meet the condition of one Yaku. Yakus are basically winning conditions, and there are a lot of them. So we have to have our groups and the pair and have to have at least one Yaku. No sweat.

As beginners we try to focus on simple Yakus, that are easy to memorise and achieve. A couple of those are the Wind Yakus!

For there are winds that govern every game of Mahjong and one must know which wind to follow.

A triplet of the right wind will grant you a much-needed yaku.

There are two types of winds we need to take into consideration. The first one is the prevalent wind, the round wind, that stay with us for a longer time.

To understand the prevalent wind we need to know that there are rounds and turns. A turn is the smaller interval that goes from dealing until someone wins or all the tiles are drawn. The dealer is the first player to draw and discard in a turn, and the dealership moves around the table. When the dealership returns to the first dealer, the round ends. So the round is the bigger interval. At the beginning of the game, East is the prevalent wind and stays with us until the round ends. At that moment, the East wind changes into a South wind, and we start another go around. In most of the cases, the game ends when the dealership goes around in the South round.

The second wind we need to keep in mind is the seat wind. When I started playing Mahjong I was told it’s a fairly simple game, and I can learn it fast. I was told to look for my seat wind, to get a Yaku easily. “How should I know which is my wind?”- I asked as someone does who have been playing the game for a good 5 minutes at the time. I was told that it’s quite easy: “Every Smart Woman kNows!”. This answer was a bit terrifying for me, mainly because I don’t fit into any of the mentioned categories, I’m neither a woman, nor smart, as it seems, and was not any closer to my winds. So what is the trick here?

Well, the dealer is always East, regardless of the prevalent wind. It’s easy for the dealer to guess the seat wind, but everyone else needs to check where they sit, compared to the dealer. As most of the things in Mahjong, the wind order goes in counter-clockwise. And now we get to our phrase: “Every Smart Woman kNows!”. And yes, it is “miss-typed“ on purpose, here’s why:

Every — East

Smart — South

Women — West

kNows — North

So the dealer is East, and then we go counter-clockwise from there to know which one is our seat wind. On the dealer’s right, we have South, opposite West, and on the left-hand side North.

Having either a triplet of your seat wind or the prevalent wind is a yaku, and starting with a pair of any of those can be a big relief at the beginning of the game for a novice player.

But, there’s a catch. What if my seat wind is the same as the prevalent wind? Is that a good thing at all? If your seat and prevalent wind are the same and you manage to get a triplet of your wind, that earns you 2 yakus! Having more yakus are more points for you, if you win the turn, so it can be fun. However, being off wind, having a different seat wind that what the prevalent wind is, grants you the chances to get a yaku with either of them, so you have better chances of getting your yaku.

All in all, Mahjong is a quite challenging but fun social game that I can recommend to anyone. I do believe that it can improve cognitive abilities and memory, and by its design, of needing 3 or 4 players, it’s a great excuse to come together for a fun evening.