At the table

You have to say it out loud

This is the big one, and it surprises everybody.

When you discard a tile, you name it. Not under your breath, out loud, so three other people hear it: "four bam". The tile goes down as you say it. Nobody at the table is looking at your discard until you say what it is, and a tile that has not been named correctly cannot be claimed by anyone.

When you want a tile somebody else discarded, you say so before you touch it. "Call" works. So does "take", or "I want that". What matters is that you say something the moment you want it, because the claim is what stops play, and until you speak, play has not stopped.

If you name a tile wrongly, it matters. The wrong name has to be corrected before anyone can claim it. If you make an exposure using a tile that was named wrongly, your hand is dead. If you call mah jongg on one, the game stops and you pay everybody.

Picking and racking are two separate acts

On a screen you take a tile and it is in your hand. At a table you pick a tile from the wall, and then you put it on your rack. Those are two different moments, and there is a window between them.

That window is the rule. Somebody can claim the last discard right up until the next player has picked and racked, or discarded. Once the tile is racked, the discard is gone and the moment has passed.

What this means in practice: if you want the tile that was just thrown, you have a second or two, and you spend it deciding, not reaching. And when it is your turn, do not rush to rack, because racking closes the door on the person to your left who was still thinking.

Your exposure is not final until you discard

You claim a tile, you lay the set face up on your rack, and then you look at what you have done and realize the other grouping was better. You may change it. You may change the number of tiles and the kind of tiles in an exposure right up until the moment you discard.

After you discard, it is fixed. So the order is: claim, expose, think, then discard. Not claim, expose, discard, think.

Taking a joker back is something you do, not something that happens

Any joker sitting in an exposure on the table can be swapped for the real tile it is standing in for, including your own exposure and including other players'. It is yours to take if you hold that tile.

Nothing prompts you. No one will point it out, and in a friendly game nobody is obliged to remind you. You have to see the joker, see that you hold the tile it is covering, and say so on your turn. The habit is to look around the table at the start of every turn rather than only at your own rack.

The timing matters: you pick first, then exchange. Exchanging before you have picked is one of the ways a hand is declared dead.

Nobody throws their hand in until mah jongg is verified

Somebody says mah jongg. The natural thing, and the wrong thing, is to push your tiles into the middle. Wait. The hand gets laid out and checked against the card first.

There is a reason the rule is written in capitals on the card. If the mah jongg turns out to be wrong, what happens next depends entirely on whose hands are still intact. If everyone else kept theirs, play carries on and nobody is penalized. If one player has already thrown theirs in, the game continues with the two who did not, and the player who called wrongly pays double to the one whose hand survived. If more than one player threw in, the game is over and cannot be finished.

So the habit is simple: hands stay on the rack until somebody has actually read the winning hand against the card and agreed.

When two people want the same tile

It happens constantly, and there is an order to it.

• Mah jongg beats an exposure, always, even if the other player already has their tiles face up.
• Two people calling for an exposure at the same time: the one closer to the discarder, going in turn order, gets it.
• Unless the other one already claimed it properly, by putting the tile on their rack or exposing tiles from their hand. Doing the thing beats being next.

The practical version: say it fast, and then do it. Hesitating after you call is how you lose a tile you had a right to.

The opening, which a screen skips entirely

The tiles go face down and everybody mixes them, all four of you, hands flat, for longer than feels necessary. Then each player builds a wall in front of themselves.

East rolls the dice, and the number rolled counts along the walls to find where East breaks in. Each player then takes four tiles at a time, going round three times, so twelve each. Then East takes the first and the third tile from the top, and everyone else takes one. East ends up with fourteen and starts the game by discarding one of them.

None of this changes the game. All of it is what the first ten minutes of a real evening looks like, and not knowing it is the most visible way to be new.

The Charleston, as it actually goes

The lesson covers the passing itself. What a table adds is the parts that are optional, and the etiquette around them.

The first Charleston is compulsory: three tiles right, three across, three left. After that first left pass, and only then, the table can agree to stop. If you carry on, the second Charleston goes the other way: left, across, right.

On the first left and the last right you may pass blind. That means passing one, two or three tiles you have not looked at, straight out of what you were given. It is how you get rid of what you were handed without breaking up your own hand.

Then the courtesy pass, which is optional and is with the player opposite you: nothing, one, two or three tiles, and you both pass the same number. You agree the number first.

Jokers are never passed, in any of it.

Dead hands

A hand is dead when it has too many tiles, too few tiles, or an exposure that does not fit any line on the card. It happens, it is not a disaster, and it is not personal.

A dead hand stops picking and discarding, but the player still pays the winner like everyone else, and their jokers can still be taken from any exposure they made while the hand was alive. Being dead takes you out of the running, not your tiles off the table.