Sichuan-style Rules

General rules:

  • only tiles of three suits are used in game totaling 108 tiles;
  • to choose a dealer for the first time, two dice are used;
  • the wall consists of 14 stacks of tiles at the dealer's side and the opposite player's side, 13 stacks at the two other players' sides;
  • the dealer rolls two dice, the sum of the values ​​counted counterclockwise from the dealer determines the wall, the smaller of the two values ​​is counted from the right end of the wall to determine where the wall breaks;
  • pung, kong, and mahjong ("Hu") declarations are allowed, chow in hand is allowed (but with no declaration);
  • two types of winning hands are allowed: four sets and a pair, as well as seven pairs;
  • a replacement tile after the kong declaration is taken from the "open" end of the wall;
  • kong cannot be declared if there is no replacement tile left in the wall.

Forbidden suit:

  • after distributing the tiles each player must assign a “forbidden suit”, which is a suit that should not be in the player’s hand when declaring mahjong;
  • before the first dealer's turn, each player separates a tile of a forbidden suit from his / her hand and places it in the center in front of him / her face down, this tile is the player’s first discard;
  • if the player does not have a tile of a forbidden suit in his / her hand, then he / she places a card indicating the suit, this card is flipped along with the player’s first discard.

Declaring Hu:

  • there can be multiple Hu players on the same discard; they all get paid by the discarder;
  • when somebody is Hu, and there are multiple non-Hu players, they keep playing (“battle to the bloody end”);
  • Hu players stop playing and turn their "standing" tiles face down;
  • claimed winning tile is shown face up among the face-down tiles of the winning hand on the left, right or in the middle to indicate the position of the discarder; self-drawn winning tile is turned face down;
  • if a player skips a discard that could be claimed for Hu, then this player is not allowed declare Hu until taking a tile from the wall, but except situation when winning hand has a greater value.

Finishing playing:

  • playing stops when all players except one are Hu, or when the wall ends;
  • everybody shows their tiles and each player’s total points are calculated;
  • a player’s total is the sum of Hu payments (including non-ready to ready) and kong payments;
  • a penalty of 48 points is paid if a player still has tiles of the forbidden suit in hand, and not all of his / her discards are of this suit;
  • “ready” means having a hand that only waits for adding a winning tile to become a winning hand even if waiting for a tile that is unavailable as all four copies of it are seen exposed on the table (exception — cannot count as “ready” if all four copies of it are in the player’s "standing" tiles);
  • if the wall ends with multiple non-Hu players playing, non-Hu non-ready players pay to non-Hu ready players;
  • players who are non-Hu non-ready when finishing playing, do not get kong payments.

Exception: when three declared Hu, the player’s hand without Hu is not shown and is not checked for the tiles of the forbidden suit, points for the declared kongs are calculated.

Dealership transfer:

  • if nobody is Hu, the dealer stays the same;
  • if the first Hu is by a single player, this player is the next dealer;
  • if the first Hu is by multiple players on the same discard, the discarder is the next dealer.

Scoring

In Sichuan-style mahjong, a scoring system based on doubles (fans) is used. The table lists all the value combinations that are used for scoring of a hand with Hu or a waiting hand.

Value combinations and fans (doubles)

No Combination Fan (doubles) Description
1 Kong 1 for each 4 identical tiles in kong
2 Root 1 for each 4 identical tiles in two or more sets
3 All Pungs 1 Hand with four pungs or kongs and a pair
4 Golden wait 1 Four melds (pungs or kongs) in hand, the winning tile completes the pair, add 1 fan for "All Pungs"
5 Full Flush 2 All tiles in the hand are one suit only
6 Seven Pairs 2 Seven pairs in hand
7 Win after Kong 1 Declaring Hu on a replacement tile after making a kong
8 Shoot after Kong 1 Declaring Hu on a tile discarded after making a kong
9 Robbing the Kong 1 Declaring Hu by robbing a kong
10 Under the Sea 1 Declaring Hu on the last tile in the wall or on the discard after the last tile

For each valuable combination, 1 or 2 fans are added, the number of fans is added up. The hand value is doubled from the starting value of 1 point as many times as the total of the fans turned out, however, with a limit of 4 fans, that is, any hand with 4 or more fans will be evaluated as a hand with exactly 4 fans, or 2*2*2*2=16 points (see table).

Total fans 0 1 2 3 4+
Hand value (points) 1 2 4 8 16

To calculate the hand value when Hu, fans are summed up for all valuable combinations applicable to this hand. For a waiting hand, the maximum value of a possible hand is calculated for the variety of the winning tiles.

Winning hand and waiting hand payments

Hu Payment Event Points Who is Paying Who is Getting the Payment
Hu is declared on a discard Hand Value The discarder Each player declaring Hu on this discard
Hu is declared on a self-drawn tile Hand Value + 1 Each non-Hu player The player declaring Hu on this self-drawn tile
The wall ends with two or more non-Hu players Hand Value of the best hand the ready player is ready for Each non-Hu non-ready player Each non-Hu ready player

Kongs

Scoring and payments for kongs:

  • the player declaring Concealed Kong receives 2 points from each non-Hu player;
  • the player declaring Melded Kong receives 2 points from the discarder;
  • the player declaring Promoted Kong receives 1 point from each non-Hu player (but only in case of a freshly taken from the wall tile, otherwise, in case of a tile added to Melded Pung from the hand such a kong is named Postponed Kong and does not bring points at all);
  • no kong payment if Promoted Kong was robbed;
  • no kong payment if another player declares Hu on the tile discarded after the kong is made;
  • no kong payment if the player who declared the kong is non-Hu non-ready when the wall ends.

Above-stated rules are systematized in a table.

Kong Payment Event Points Who is Paying Who is Getting the Payment
Concealed Kong is declared 2 Each non-Hu player The player declaring the kong
Melded Kong is declared on a discard 2 The discarder The player declaring the kong
Promoted kong on a freshly taken from the wall tile 1 Each non-Hu player The player declaring the kong
Postponed kong on a tile from the hand 0 Nobody Nobody