Beginner Skills

For those of you who are taking your first steps from no points (chicken) mahjong to playing with points, this is the place to start!

What Does 3 Min Mean?

Playing with 3 Min, also known as points mahjong, means that in order to declare a winning hand, the value of your hand must contain at least 3 Fan. You earn these Fan when your hand meets certain criteria shown on the Rules page.

Fan are additive, so if you win with Mixed One Suit and Self Flower , then your hand is worth 4 Fan.

However, not all rules can be stacked together. For example, Concealed Triplets and All Pongs do not stack because winning with Concealed Triplets implies that you have an All Pongs hand already.

Your First Few Games

Your priority as a beginner in points is to learn to play hands that reach 3 Fan.

Most of the time, these hands will consist of one suit hands, all pong hands, and all chow (straight) hands.

The goal of this beginner guide is to help you familiarize yourself with each of these hands so that you’ll always have enough points to win.

All Pongs Hands

The first type of hand we’ll cover is the All Pongs hand, which has an inherent value of 3 Fan. So even if you score no additional points, you can always win with this hand.

An All Pongs hand consists of 4 sets of triplets (pongs) or quads (kongs) and a pair. The pongs or kongs can all either be melded (completed by calls from other players) or concealed (all drawn into your hand).

When to play: All Pongs hands become easier to play when you have more pairs or full sets of pongs in your starting hand. This is because you can call for missing tiles off of other players’ discards.

How to Play:

• Carefully watch discards to call for pongs
• Prioritize discarding tiles that other players have previously discarded or revealed because it becomes less likely for you to form a pair or triplet with those tiles
• Immediately discard tiles if two or more of them are discarded or revealed. Because there are only 4 of each tile, it is impossible to make a pong with the remaining two
• Immediately call a concealed kong if you have 4 of the same tile in your hand

To increase your score, you can aim for pongs of dragon tiles or relevant wind tiles for +1 Fan each.

I recommend starting off by playing a few games aiming only for an All Pongs hand to get a feel for the style.

Suited Hands

The next type of hand you’ll frequently want to play are single suit hands. Single suit hands are hands consisting of tiles that are all from the same suit (characters, bamboos, or dots) or honor tiles (winds and dragons).

The easier variant with honor tiles included ( Mixed One Suit , Half Flush) has a base value of 3 Fan, and the rarer one without honor tiles ( Pure One Suit , Full Flush) has a base value of 7 Fan.

When to play: if your hand consists of at least 7 tiles that are either honor tiles (winds or dragons) or of a single suit.

How to Play:

• Try to call for pongs and chows of your suit or pongs of honors
• Prioritize discarding tiles of other suits (if you’re aiming for dots, drop character and bamboo tiles)
• If your hand consists of only one suit and honor tiles, prioritize discarding single honor tiles and keeping paired ones to call for pongs

To score more, you can aim to combine the hand with All Pongs for +3 Fan or throw out all honor tiles to go for Pure One Suit .

Straight (All Chow) Hands

All pongs hands and single suit hands will make up the majority of hands you’ll play, but sometimes it can be worth aiming for All Chows (or All Sequences).

All sequence hands consist of four sets of chows and a pair, which can be honor tiles. These chows can be either melded or concealed.

All Chow hands are extremely situational because they only have a base value of 1 Fan, meaning that you’ll need to find an additional 2 Fan to reach 3 Fan.

Pros:

• With the right starting conditions, you can win extremely quickly
• You can play with greater flexibility and avoid discarding tiles that other players might need (we’ll talk more about defensive play in the advanced guide).

Cons:

• It can be difficult to succeed without Self Flower or similar bonuses
• You rarely score over 4 Fan

When to play:

• You start the game with Self Flower , Flower Set , or No Flowers
• Your hand contains few honors and multiple connected tiles or existing chows

How to Play:

With straight hands, you’re usually looking to get 1 Fan from All Chows , 1 Fan from Concealed Hand , and 1 Fan from bonuses such as Self Flower .

If you start with the wrong flower, your best bet would be to Self Draw for the last 1 Fan or win off the Last Tile . Without the Fan from flowers, you won’t be able to win off of other players’ discards unless it is the last tile.

• Maintain a Concealed Hand and avoid calling for chows unless you have 2 Fan from Self Flower or Flower Set
• Prioritize discarding single honor tiles because they don’t help with forming chows. If you have a paired honor tile, you can keep those to be your final pair
• Discard isolated tiles next, starting with terminals (1 or 9 tiles)
• Aim for open ended waits to make it easier to draw the tiles you need

It’s unusual to score more than 3 or 4 Fan with straight hands unless they are also all tiles of the same suit.

Review

Question 1: Given this starting hand, which hand should you aim for?

Answer: Since the hand contains 3 pairs and few consecutive tiles, an all pongs hand could be easier to build. The first two discards could be the 9 Wan and 8 Bamboo tiles, keeping your options open for a potential suited dots hand.

Question 2: Given this starting hand, which hand should you aim for?

Answer: With a total of 8 tiles that are either honors or dots and only a single pair, you'd be most likely to form a suited hand of dots. The first two discards would be the 9 Wan and 3 Wan tiles, keeping the pair of 3 Bamboo in case you draw more pairs later.