American Mahjong · For Beginners
You have the tiles. You have an invitation to game night. What you don't have is any idea what those rows of numbers and coloured letters mean. Seven short lessons, about 12 minutes a day, and the card starts reading like a sentence.
The part nobody warns you about
Tiles are easy — craks, bams, dots, winds, dragons, flowers, jokers. An afternoon and you know them. Then someone hands you the National Mah Jongg League card, and the confidence disappears. Which line can you actually build? What does the little X mean? Why is half of it in colour?
So you watch another video, and another, and each one answers a different fragment of the question. The information is out there. What isn't out there is an order to learn it in.
This guide teaches one thing properly: how to look at the card and know what you are looking at.
What's inside
Each lesson ends with something you can do, not something you have read. Work through one a day, or the whole thing in a single afternoon — it's a PDF, it waits for you.
Three suits, winds, dragons, flowers, jokers — what each one is and how many of it exists in the set.
Which dragon belongs to which suit, why "soap" is called soap, and how to stop mixing them up mid-hand.
The heart of the guide. Sections, colours, the numbers, X and C — line by line, until the layout makes sense on its own.
Thirteen tiles are in front of you. How to find the two or three lines you are closest to, and pick one without freezing.
What passes where, the blind pass, the courtesy pass — and what to keep when everything looks equally useless.
Draw, discard, calling a tile, exposures, jokers and the joker exchange — including the mistakes that quietly end a hand.
Table etiquette, how payouts work, and a short check to run before you ever say the word "mahjong" out loud.
The whole thing
A PDF you download the moment you pay, print if you like, and keep for good. No login, no expiry, no subscription.
One payment. Instant download.
Get the guideIf it doesn't help, email us within 60 days and we refund it. No questions.
Questions people ask first
Not to start, but get one as soon as you can — the hands change every year, and this guide teaches you to read the current card rather than memorise it. You buy the card directly from the League.
No. You can work through every lesson without them. If you do own a set, there are short practice steps you can follow along with.
American mahjong, as played under National Mah Jongg League rules. It is a different game from the solitaire tile-matching app you may have on your phone.
You pay, and the download link arrives by email straight away, along with a receipt. It is a PDF — read it on a phone, a tablet, or printed and sitting beside the tiles.
Email within 60 days and you get your money back. You keep the file; we would rather you tell a friend than feel stuck with something you didn't want.