The object of 144-tile Taiwan mahjong is to obtain a collection of tiles that form a specific hand before your opponents do. The face values of the tiles you hold are then added up and after several hands the player with the highest score wins.
Players must decide on two things before beginning any game:
Firstly, the value of each unit, or tai (
Each round is associated with a wind and this influences the score of certain hands. The first-round wind is always the East (
If the dealer's hand contains any flower tiles they are placed face-up on the table surface, next to his hand. The dealer then announces that he will trade his flowers by saying buhua (
After all the flowers have been traded out of the dealer's hand, he/she asks the player on the right if he or she wishes to trade. After that it is that player's turn to trade in any flowers from his/her hand. This continues until all players have traded in all their flowers.
A player must draw a tile from the wall at the beginning of his/her turn. When the wall has been opened and East has taken the first four tiles -- two stacks -- from the wall South proceeds to take the next four tiles and so on.
This is repeated three times until all the players have 16 tiles each which are arranged in front of them standing on edge so that they alone can see the symbols engraved on the tile's faces.
If a flower tile is drawn during this process, it is immediately placed face up on the table and a replacement is taken from the loose tiles at the end of the wall.
After drawing tiles the player then considers what tiles will be needed to complete their winning hands, as well as choosing what tiles they will discard. All discarded tiles are placed in the middle of the table.
The object is to select the following combinations:
Run of three is a sequence of three numeral tiles of the same suit.
A Triple is three identical tiles.
Four-of-a-kind is four identical tiles.
If a player finds he/she has a hand consisting of five of any of the above sets of tiles, plus a pair of any tiles, then he or she has won the hand.
Of course, not all games are won and if all the tiles, except for the 16 dead ones, are used up and no player has a complete hand, a draw is called and a new hand dealt.
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