Whose turn is it? Draw, then discard
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Mahj School › Your First Game · Lesson 7 of 10 · 27 seconds
A discard should land quietly →
Every turn ends with a tile hitting the table. A neoprene mat absorbs that and stores in its own tube.
Shop mats — $99.99Once the Charleston is over, American mahjong becomes very simple to describe and very hard to stop playing. Take a tile. Let one go. Next player.
Full transcript
East throws the first tile, face up, and says its name out loud. Then play moves to the right. Your turn is two things: take a tile, then let one go.
Draw from the wall, or claim the tile just discarded. Either way you end your turn by discarding one, and you say that one out loud too.
Saying it out loud is part of the rule
Naming your discard is not politeness. It is how the other three players know a tile has been offered and have a moment to claim it. A tile put down in silence is a tile somebody will argue about later, and at a fast table it can be buried before anyone has seen it.
The order of play runs to the right. If you claim a discard out of turn — which you are allowed to do — play picks up from you and the players you skipped lose that turn. That is the cost of calling, and it is why the next lesson is about when calling is worth it.
One tile in, one tile out, every time. If your rack ever holds twelve or fourteen at the end of a turn, something has gone wrong and it is better to say so immediately.
- Take one: draw from the wall, or claim the last discard.
- Let one go: discard face up, in the middle.
- Say the name of the tile you discard, out loud.
- Play moves right. East throws the very first tile.
- Thirteen at rest. Fourteen only while it is your turn.
Mahj School is a free video series from ALOXO. The tiles and tables in this video are illustrations drawn for teaching, not photographs of a particular set.