Vincent did most of the work. Tom just helped clean up the English, dressed up the article with images, stuff like that.
The Equipment
36......Dot tiles
16......Four winds
12......Dragons
8.......Flowers & Seasons
4.......Faces (or extra Flower)
4.......Animals (or extra Flower)
4.......Fly (or Joker)
And...
2.......Dice
1.......Table
3.......Chairs
2.......Party tables for snacks (optional; see FAQ 7f)
The "Face" tiles are used like Flowers. (You can use flower tiles for these, if your set has enough flowers.)
The "Animal" tiles are used like Flowers. The pictured set has "cock & worm and "cat & rat" tiles, but other sets may contain different animal tiles (see FAQ 7e). If your set doesn't have animal tiles, you can simply use extra flower tiles (if your set has those).
The rectangular-design tiles can be used as White Dragons.
Some people use the blank tiles as White Dragons. Whichever tiles you use as White Dragons (the rectangular-design tiles or the blank tiles), leave the other tiles off the table during play.
Build Wall
Each player builds a 14-tile-long wall (2 tiles high, as in other forms of mah-jongg).
Because there are 3 players and your table is probably square, one side of the table is unoccupied. There being no North player, the 3 players are called East, South, and West, as shown above.
Breaking the Wall
From the rightmost stack of the wall in front of the player who rolled the second time, count the sum of the two throws clockwise, stack by stack.
Example: Dealer's first roll is a ten. Counting around the table counterclockwise, it's the dealer's wall that will be broken. Dealer's second roll is a six. Dealer's wall is 14 stacks long, so the wall to the dealer's left is broken after two stacks.
The Deal
Dealer takes the first two stacks after the break (clockwise from the break), followed by the next player to dealer's right drawing 2 stacks, and so on. (Just as is done in other forms of mah-jongg.)
The game is played much as it is in other Asian forms (see FAQ 10).
Winning the game.
The goal is to form a complete hand of four sets and a pair ("eye"), as in most Asian forms of mah-jongg.
But in this Malaysian game, you need a minimum of 5 fan to win.
The Fly
One special feature of this form of mah-jongg, compared with other Asian forms, is this special wild tile, the "FLY."
The fly can be used to represent any tile in making a 3-tile set.
You may use the fly...
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As in most forms of mah-jongg, the play is simple but the scoring can be complicated to learn. As in many Asian forms, the Malaysian game is scored with both "points" and "fan," which are each used in different ways to arrive at the final score.
Counting Fan
Note: Table rules may vary. Before beginning play, make sure you know the fan counts at the table (see FAQ 14 for more about table rules).
** (Dealer having East wind pong = 2 fan)
*** (If you have 4 fly in the first round , you win the game with max fan , if you only manage to get 4 fly after that ,you must Wu in order to get max fan.)
Copyright 2003 Vincent Cheah and Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.
More on Malaysian mah-jongg, from the Mah-Jongg FAQs bulletin board:
Malaysian 3P
>From: Yong H
>Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 7:31 PM
>Subject: Malaysian 3-player mahjongg
>Hi Tom,
>I was going through your page at http://www.sloperama.com/mahjongg/malaysian.html.
>It is a very good description, thanks a lot.
>I just want to add that to avoid confusion, in the "Counting Fan" section, you should add:
>* PONG of East Wind for 1 fan.
>And that is why the Dealer having PONG of East Wind has 2 fan (1 from his own Wind and 1 more because everyone has 1 fan for East Wind).
Hi Yong,
Thanks for that. Vincent Cheah wrote that article, and he did not say everyone gets a fan for having a pung of east wind. He said there are no round winds. Maybe a way of looking at it is to say instead that it's always the east round? I'll add this to that article.
Thanks again. May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper
トム·スローパー
湯姆 斯洛珀
Creator of the
Sloper On Mah-Jongg column and
the Mah-Jongg FAQs -- donations appreciated.
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, California, USA
February 27, 2018
Malaysian 3P, p2
>From: Yong H
>Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 10:41 PM
>Subject: Re: Malaysian 3-player mahjongg
>Hi Tom,
>Just like in 4-player mahjong, there is a prevailing wind which changes after a round, in 3-player mahjong the prevailing wind is always East.
>So yes, it's always the East round.
>If other players do not have fan for East PONG, then it's a bit inconsistent for the East player to get 2 fan for the PONG (like mentioned in the article).
Great! Thanks again, Yong.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper
Creator of
the weekly Mah-Jongg column and
the Mah-Jongg FAQs -- donations appreciated!
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, California, USA
February 28, 2018
Malaysian game with 164 tiles
>From: Tine Willis
>Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 5:56 AM
>Subject: 'Malaysian' game with 164 tiles
>Dear Tom,
>At last I have found your amazing website. Have you come across a Mah-jong set with 164 tiles? A group of us play here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia using 164 tiles. We have 16 numbered flowers and 8 unnumbered ones. The set looks like a Hong Kong set. We are happy to use no Arabic numerals on kraks or Roman letters on winds and have produced a cribsheet for newcomers. Our walls are 20x2 and 21x2 for banker and opposite seat. There are two places I know of that supply these sets, one is a factory, which makes sets to order, all HDPE I think, although the sales lady did not know.... and another one in Chinatown, not surprising really.
>
>We use rules written in French, which are being translated now. Do you know of these rules, if yes, where can I get them? If not, are you interested in these rules? Main points are:
>- No chicken hands allowed unless one player has 6 flowers( at least 1) of his own position ( i.e. No 1 if player is East) or without numbers
>- Dragon eyes cannot be mixed with chees.
>- Wind eyes can be mixed with chees, but only if not wind of the game or player's own wind.
>- Pongs ( we don't call them pung, but pong...) of player's own or game's wind count double.
>- The scoring is a little complicated and depends on the types of flowers accumulated.
>I am still learning the rules and to facilitate speedy learning searched your website, recommended in that lovely coffeetable book Mah-jongg from Shanghai to Miami Beach you mention in your website. Sadly, to no avail....
>I bought my own set in Chinatown and it came as a 200 tile set! I have lots of spare tiles, for any eventuality. Maybe you know which rules use these tiles? The 'spares' are 10 flies, 2 blanks, 2 different lots of 4 identical joker faces, 16 flowers with pretty pictures of a pig, piglets, centipede, cat, dog, puppies, a hen, paddy farmers etc.
>
>I bought a chinese Mah-jong table here and it has markings for chinese chess. Do you know a good source for the rules of this game? Thank you for your time
>Tine
Hello Tine,
I have heard of two 3-player variants popular in Malaysia, but I haven't previously heard of a 164-tile variant (which would obviously be suitable for 4 players, not 3). I'd be most interested if you would tell me what the extra tiles beyond the basic 136 are, exactly. You told me what extra tiles added to the 164 bring the total up to 200, and you mentioned that your 164-tile set has 24 flowers, but that leaves us with 4 unnamed tiles.
And if you take a look at Frequently Asked Question #2b (above left) you'll see that I like to provide my readers with a very short synopsis of each variant, in the format:
MALAYSIAN 4-PLAYER MAH-JONGG
So any assistance you can give me in creating a synopsis of the 164-tile 4-player game would be greatly appreciated. And of course I'd love to have any information you can provide about the rules you learned. A copy of the French writeup would be appreciated as well. I plan to add this new information not only to FAQ 2b but also to
http://www.sloperama.com/mahjongg/malaysian.htm
for the benefit of other readers interested in the little-documented Malaysian variants. If I have failed to answer any of the questions and points you raised, you are very welcome to write again with follow-ups anytime.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper / トム·スローパー
/
湯姆·斯洛珀 /
탐 슬로퍼
MJ溌Sloperama中com
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
May 31, 2007
If you appreciate the free information on this site, your donation would be gratefully accepted, and would help keep this site running as a free service. Thank you!
1: Malaysian. 2: Japanese.
>From: Sylvain Malbec
>Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 11:27 AM
>Subject: Malaysian rule in French & 2 players Japanese rule
>Hello Tom,
>
>1) I have seen in your Q&A Bulletin Board a message about a French description of a 164 tiles Malaysian rule.
>>From: Tine Willis
>>Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 5:56 AM
>>Subject: 'Malaysian' game with 164 tiles
>
>Do you have any information about this French writing?
>Like a copy or just the title / author name?
>In that case, I will happy to help translating it in English.
>
>2) Some (many) Mahjong's video games use a 2 players variant of Japanese Riichi/Dora, especially on SNES (alias Super Famicom) and arcade machines.
>Do you know how the wall and the players's winds are set-up ?
>All the other parts, except starting points, are as in the Riichi/Dora rule.
>Strangely for a non-official rule, all the games I have see seem use the same rule.
>
>Thanks,
>Sylvain
Bonjour Sylvain, vous avez écrit :
Do you have any information about this French writing?
Mais oui. He sent me scans. I'm sending them to you. Your translation would be most welcome, merci beaucoups.
Do you know how the wall and the players's winds are set-up [in Japanese 2-player majan]?
Right, I guess I didn't include this in FAQ 13. I play Yakuman DS on my Nintendo DS, and I know that all the tiles are used (no suit is left out). I assume 4 walls are built. My friends Mr. and Mrs. Kugimiya (who were with me in Copenhagen last week) tell me they play 4-player majan together, with one player playing E and S, and the other player playing W and N (each of them playing two hands). But in Yakuman DS or any other 2P Japanese videogame, I assume one player is E and the other player is W. It could be that N and S are also scorable for the players, you can make up your own rule for that if you're just looking for how to do it with one playing companion. See FAQ 14.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper / トム·スローパー
/
湯姆·斯洛珀 /
탐 슬로퍼
MJ溌Sloperama中com
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
June 28, 2007
Available now from HarperCollins: "The Red Dragon & The West Wind" at bookstores and www.amazon.com
Malaysian 64-tiles, translated from the French
>From: Sylvain Malbec
>To: Tom Sloper
>Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 6:00 AM
>Subject: Re: Malaysian rule in French & 2 players Japanese rule
>Hello Tom,
>Thank you for sending the scans, I will translate it soon.
>I can already complete your synopsis :
>
>MALAYSIAN 4-PLAYER MAH-JONGG
> * Uses 164 tiles (24 flowers, and 4 jokers).
> * 16 flowers/seasons, 8 animals, 4 jokers.
> * Hold 13 tiles in the hand, go out on 14 tiles.
> * Winning hand must be All Chow, All Pung or Half / Full Flush.
> * Score 50 points for Out, then count up points based on pongs, kongs, pairs, flowers, then double.
> * All players are paid, depending on what they hold.
>
>The 164 tiles are :
>- Suits (108) : Bamboos, Circles, Characters
>- Honors (28) : Winds, Dragons
>- Flowers (24) :
> * 16 numbered Flowers (from 1 to 4) : 4 red, 4 blue, 4 green, 4 brown
> * 8 un-numbered Flowers (=Animals) : Dragon & Pearl, Little tortoises & Big tortoise, Bird & Cage, Rooster & Worm
>- Jokers (4) : blank tiles
>
>Sylvain
Bonjour, Sylvain.
Merveilleux! And merci beaucoups. I'll add this to the Malaysian page and FAQ 2b.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper / トム·スローパー
/
湯姆·斯洛珀 /
탐 슬로퍼
MJ溌Sloperama中com
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
June 29, 2007
Available now from HarperCollins: "The Red Dragon & The West Wind" at bookstores and www.amazon.com
Malaysian 3-player rules
>From: Justin WWK
>Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 3:50 AM
>Subject: Q&A about Malaysia's Mahjong and '13 unique wonders'~ O.o
>Hi,
>I was reading about the malaysia's 3 players mahjong recently in your website.
>I came across the part about the ways to win with max fan.
>There's the 13 unique wonders that scores pretty high.
>I was wondering how can that happen in a 3 player's mahjong,
>when it only consist of the 'dot' tiles, and without the 'bamboo' tiles
>and the 'ten thousand' tiles?
>Hope you reply soon.
>A newbie mahjong player,
>Justin.
Hi Justin,
Wow, good question! It won't be easy to dig up Vincent Cheah's email address from my old archive discs, so until such time as I can straighten that out with him, I'll just go ahead and modify the article. (I am listed as co-author after all.) There. I just added a footnote to that hand: "(only applicable when playing with all 3 suits)." I presume sometimes a fourth player wants to join, so all suits would be kept, then this hand is feasible. But otherwise, of course, you're right - with 2 suits left out of the game, 13 Orphans would be impossible.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper / トム·スローパー
/
湯姆 斯洛珀 / 탐 슬로퍼
MJ溌Sloperama中com
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
March 27, 2008
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on mah-jongg East & West. Available at bookstores, BN.com, and Amazon.com.
Malaysian 3P scoring
>From: Nikolay M
>Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2018 6:44 AM
>Subject: Mah-Jongg Q+A
>My mah-jongg question or comment is:
>3P Malaysian Mahjong
>I can’t quite get the scoring.
>1) During the game if a player gets a Gong each other player should pay him 100 pts if it is concealed.(Concealed GONG)
>Small melded kong - both players lose 50 points
>Big melded kong - the player who discarded the tile pays 100 points to kong player
>revealing set of four flowers/seasons from the initial hand.. does this count any additional flowers you may draw from the back of the wall while revealing flowers?
>2) If dealer wins on a self-drawn tile all other must pay double to him, but how many are the winning points? Consider the following example:
>If Player A won with 5 fans and player B and C both have 5 fans also how many are the winning points? 0 or 100?
>If Player A won with 8 fans and Player B has 5 fans, Player B must pay 3 * 20 = 60 point to Player A and double that if Player A is a dealer?
>I see in other rules the dealer wins and loses double points but in Malaysian it seems dealer only wins double.
>3) If I get max fan + any additional points from flowers for example, how many fan do I have for scoring purposes - 10 ?
>3) I bet at the end of the game Fly are counted in the concealed hands of all players, correct?
>Best regards,
>Nikolay
Hi, Nikolay.
I am sorry, but I have never played 3P Malaysian mah-jongg myself. A fellow offered to send me rules, and I shared what he sent me, posting it at http://sloperama.com/mahjongg/malaysian.htm in 2003. I helped clean up the English a bit, but I really don't know the ruleset intimately. To respond to your questions:
I would assume so.
In rulesets where dealers win double, dealers pay double.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You can also try the rules at http://thewriter2006.blogspot.com/2010/04/malaysian-mahjong.html.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper
トム·スローパー
湯姆 斯洛珀
Creator of the
Sloper On Mah-Jongg column and
the Mah-Jongg FAQs -- donations appreciated.
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, California, USA
August 2, 2018
It has tiles I haven't seen before, part 3
>On Sunday, October 20, 2019, 12:50:20 PM PDT, heaton.ray wrote:
>Kendall's upside down tiles...
>Hi Tom,
>I couldn't see Kendall's "upside down tiles" described elsewhere on your site...they are rather amusing, so I thought I'd "chip in"!
>One pair of tiles has the two characters 哈哈, "Ha Ha" and can mean "joke" but this is also simply onomatopoeic for laughter.
>The other pair (one of which is the correct orientation of course) has the two characters 嘻嘻, "Xi Xi" pronounced a bit like "She She" in English (or "He He" in Japanese!).
>Putting them together, it's 嘻嘻哈哈, "Xi Xi Ha Ha", and means "Laughing and Joking".
>I presume then that the tiles will be capture tiles like the cat and mouse or rooster and centipede, rather than jokers.
>Regards,
>Ray
Great, Ray! Thanks! I'll add this to the mystery tiles FAQ. A new type of Malaysian tile, apparently.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper
Author of the
Sloper On Mah-Jongg column and
the Mah-Jongg FAQs -- donations appreciated.
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
October 20, 2019
Los Angeles, California, USA
If you appreciate the free information on this site, your donation would be gratefully accepted, and would help keep this site running as a free service. Thank you!