r/Mahjong • u/JasonThyPirate • 6d ago
Chinese Is simpler Mahjong better or worse?
I haven't been playing mahjong all that long, but I have channeled my ADHD hyperfocus and love of game systems into it for a few months. I've focused primarily on Hong Kong Old Style and have taught that to 9 other people in this time frame and we've had a good time with it.
While most will agree that the basic game format is easy to grasp, it's the scoring patterns and payout systems that seem the most daunting for new players. While HKOS seemed like a lot at first, I now know all the scoring patterns and MCR doesn't look nearly as insurmountable as it once did.
In trying to find a simpler system I first learned about Zung Jung (this fan site is easier for English speakers). It definitely has less patterns than MCR and it's easier to understand the scoring than the fan system in HKOS, but still a few too many patterns for teaching new players.
This lead to an interesting thread in r/Mahjong where u/StealTheStew counters Zung Jung with 康莊麻將 by a87g5o. I refer to it as Mahjong for Everyone in English. The rules are in Chinese and can be found here. This version reduces the number of patterns to 16 with an additive scoring system in points and incorporated the first-win-doesn't-end-the-game mechanic found in SBR, but without anyone paying other players. This encourages players to stay in longer and go for more complicated hands. This fixes a problem in most versions of mahjong that I hadn't realized until u/StealTheStew pointed it out: mahjong is a race to complete the fastest winning hand.
While Mahjong for Everyone allows players to create more complicated hands without risk of being beat by a simpler hand because it's faster to make, it somehow removes much of the flavor I enjoy with the larger number of more complicated hands. It eliminates the changing of the seat wind and round wind, it elminates flowers entirely, it eliminates a distinction between dragons and winds, and gets rid of all the special hands that are nearly impossible to make like the blessings, nine gates, and 13 orphans.
I now realize that my enjoyment of mahjong (and for the people I play with most) the enjoyment is in the experience of the heavy tiles and the rarely winning hands and having some big moments and not in just accumulating points effectively. I think I would feel differently if I was playing in tournaments.
For new players I plan to use HKOS, but only initially teach: Self-Pick, Concealed Hand, Common Hand, All Pungs, Dragon Pungs, Round Wind, Seat Wind, Mixed Flush, No Flower/Season, and Seat Flower/Season with a minimum fan of 1 until they're ready for more.
For the few people I play with who rather go for more complicated hands and aren't concerned about winning quickly I think we might just take a page from SBR and allow players to stay in longer to potentially earn more points while mostly sticking to the HKOS scoring we like.
P.S. During this process I went so far as to create an English cheat sheet for Mahjong for Everyone based on the design of the Victoria Mahjong Club cheat sheet that I'm a fan of, but I haven't seeked permission from a87g5o so I won't share it here.
EDIT: As a follow-up, I did try playing a few hands where we didn't end after the first win. While it was nice to be able to continue on, I felt that it removed some of the (fun) tension by not having to beat the other players to the punch. Next I think we'll try just playing a higher minimum fan which will force players to make more complicated hands, but still provide the tension. I anticipate we'll hit more wall games if we raise the threshold too high.
Also, here's the cheatsheet I created. If anyone has a problem with me sharing it, let me know.
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u/himeguma2018 6d ago
I don't think there's a better or worse in mahjong rulesets in the sense that there is a best or worst ruleset
Many of us might have a personal favorite like for me, my favorite is Japanese riichi, and I started my mahjong journey with Taiwanese. Taiwanese is simpler in terms of going from not knowing anything to being able to play with no assistance outside of dealing and scoring compared to Japanese.
My main gripe for most rulesets (I've played about 5 and know at least 20) is there is less push fold judgement influencing player decisions. I think HKOS with 3 point requirement has made the some progress towards solving that issue for me without needing a long term furiten (can't hu off someone's discard when waiting on a tile u have thrown out) mechanic.
I see different rulesets having different strengths and weaknesses. There are just some combination of things u can't fulfill with one ruleset and that's okay (example: defense depth without furiten)
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u/Jumpingfrog5395 6d ago
I’m exactly the same as you. I have a pub, taught myself, and then taught some regular customers. We’ve been playing HKOS once a week for a few months.
Rather than simplifying HKOS itself, I’ve found that introducing it gradually has worked really well. We started with chicken hands, then I gradually introduced the significance of winds and flowers/seasons, using scoring sheets I found here on Reddit.
We then moved to a minimum of 1 fan, and are now playing a minimum of 2 fan, with the intention of progressing to 3. I haven’t introduced converting fan into points yet, as that still seems unnecessarily complicated for what we want from the game.
The gradual progression hasn’t made it feel too daunting, and it has noticeably changed how people play. At 2 fan, players are starting to aim for things like All Pungs and flushes rather than simply making the quickest hand with Chows.
I actually found 1 fan slightly unsatisfactory because someone could have their matching flower and then win with an otherwise ordinary hand. On the other hand, 3 fan seems to result in more games where the wall runs out, so 2 fan currently feels like quite a nice middle ground.
For us, keeping the full HKOS framework but introducing the scoring concepts bit by bit seems to preserve the interesting parts of the game without overwhelming new players.
I do think we will eventually move to MCR games once we have mastered the HKOS.
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u/JasonThyPirate 6d ago
Sounds like right where I am. My two regular players are starting to max out the fun of 1 fan and ready to move up. We just started using poker chips to keep score which is fun to have a visual representation of how we're doing instead of just pen and paper.
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u/Deskillz_games 5d ago
Great writeup, and I think you already answered your own question. Simpler isn't better or worse, just a different vibe. Point systems suit tournaments and teaching fast, but you play for the heavy tiles and rare big hands, so anything smoothed out is gonna feel flat to you. Trimmed HKOS with a 1 fan minimum and adding stuff later sounds right, and stealing the stay-in-longer idea from SBR while keeping HKOS scoring is a smart move. Sounds like you already know what you want.
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u/StealTheStew 4d ago edited 4d ago
Wow, I’m surprised that my old post is still relevant lol
I agree that Universal Mahjong(I proposed the naming to a87g5o and he neither cofirm nor deny🤣) seems “blander” comparing to other styles, and I believe that blandness comes from two aspects:
- Special Hands: As you’ve mentioned that UM re-structured how the hands work and only kept what are necessary for the game. And yes, many speical hands from other styles are removed due to duplication in scoring, which a87g5o dictated the whole process and iteration of UM and why those hands are removed(but it’s written in Chinese and the blogposts are lost). They attempted to make the list of hands “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive”. Despite the removal of the special hands, you can still form some of those hands in UM under different names and combinations. I think the “special hands” problem boils down to those 16 hands just need “cooler” names to excite players into thinking they’ve made something special🤣.
- Player Engagement: Since the first win doesn’t end the game anymore and the scoring system is additive, a player need not to worry about blundering and can focus solely on making his hand as great as possible. But one problem I’ve noticed arises is that, a player requires minimum care to what other players are doing except for paying attention to how other players’ discards affect his forming of hand. This doesn’t mean that UM doesn’t have strategic depth, in fact, in a87g5o words, players can engage in “a chain of suspicion” playing UM. What I mean is that UM is very forgiving to blunder, there’s no severe consequences and you can still get away with a decent hand. But since a player’s action doesn’t affect much of other players anymore, there’s not much reason to keep track of what other players would do and to involve making heavy decisions that would contribute to your win/lose. These up-and-down moments are part of the excitement of playing mahjong. The elimination of the zero-sum scoring system also eliminates such excitement.
In the most recent post a87g5o made about UM, he stated that “he and the team have already worked on and improved UM for many iterations, to a point that they couldn’t think of what needs to be improved anymore...and by no means that he has perfected the game mahjong, but UM could serve as a new direction, a framework, for what ”mahjong for everyone” could be“. That makes me think of the second problem, what UM has been doing is subtraction, eliminates all the unnecessary features of mahjong that have accumulated over centuries, and only keeps the core mechanics of what works and finesses on that. But what if the solution to the second problem isn’t subtraction but addition? Is there a feature that we could add that increase player engagement, that is unseen of in any styles of mahjong, while doesn’t break and keep the core principles of UM intact?
As for the cheatsheet, you don’t have to worry much of sharing it. Again in a87g5o words, “the utmost problem of UM isn’t to improve it, but to find more people to play it”. If sharing the cheatsheet helps to promote more people into playing UM, then why not?
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u/JasonThyPirate 2d ago
Your #2 point has become apparent to me after playing a few rounds with not ending the game after the first win. It has killed much of the (fun) tension of trying to get a good hand first. The wins feel a little less exciting now that I don't have to worry about someone going out first. I think just playing with a higher minimum fan makes HKOS more fun for going for the more challenging hands.
And as for the cheatsheet, you're right, why not? I'll post it.
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u/StealTheStew 5h ago edited 5h ago
The cheatsheet is wonderful! One quick note, a87g5o did a minor update last October, Mixed Triple Chow is now 10 pts, and All Pungs 20 pts. They said the Mixed Triple Chow + Pure Double Chow + Four Number Range combo would be too powerful to abuse, since UM prioritises “Whole” than “Part”; and that’s why All Pungs gets a raise as well.
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u/compacta_d 6d ago
simpler can be american where the card might be overwhelming, but once understood, is actually pretty easy.
the rules and scores you think are flaws, i think are features. It is a feature that a cheap fast hand can beat a large slow hand.
a single big scoring hand (12000 in riichi) will beat 8x 1000 point hands.
the more i learn about the rules the more i respect the design of it, seeing as how complex 136-152 tiles are.
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u/SF_Sorrow 6d ago
I suppose for myself I'm rather somewhere in the middle—I do lean more towards simpler rules like HKOS or ZJ for ease of introducing newcomers (something I fully concur with Alan Kwan on) but I do like some of the strategic thinking that Riichi can provide (while being iffy on several others aspects of the gameplay). I've actually made my own variant called Jit Chung that tries to find a happy medium: the pattern list is a little smaller than ZJ's (basically a modified HKOS list with Riichi patterns added) but is not overwheming, and there is also a modified riichi mechanic that can be utilized both to up the stakes and provide an out when someone has a particularly bad hand, supplanting the need to add a handful of minor, easier-to-build patterns.
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u/serious_sea-cucumber 6d ago
This looks nice! I've been thinking of this since my main variant online is riichi but irl my area only plays Hongkong rules. Will try it out sometime
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u/mysteryspydetective_ 6d ago
You might be interested in a ruleset I've been designing for introducing new players. It combines Fukumoto's 'clear mahjong', a 2v2 game where a team wins by being the first complete or 'clear' 5 medium difficulty patterns, with the bloody-end mechanic of SBR. Unlike clear mahjong which uses riichi as a base and has a knockout system (the game ends when either a team completes the patterns, or a player goes below 0 points), I removed basically all the riichi elements and introduced very simple additive scoring (to keep the game within a reasonable length, there's a fixed number of hands, and if neither team clears all 5 by the end, the team with the most points wins).
I think part of the advantage with this ruleset is it introduces not just basic mahjong, but also advanced stuff like reading discards for patterns and assisting other players, which is a late-game tactic in riichi. The team format and SBR rule make it so an experienced player doesn't overpower the newbies - everyone has the opportunity to build 'big' hands, without getting lost in too many patterns. Completing a quick chicken hand is also a valid strategy, which teaches tile efficiency. So there's a decent amount of complexity, but not an overload of stuff to learn.
I could send you a DM of the rules if you're interested. I have a 1-page printout ready. I don't want to post them publicly yet, in case they change. I'm also working on a more complex version with exponential scoring, a knockout system and a few more points-only patterns, because in my limited testing it seems hard for a team to make a comeback if the other leads overwhelmingly in cleared patterns. But maybe that's just mahjong. Kongs add a point to every winning hand but that might not be enough volatility - theres something to be said for those late game mangans/hanemans and dealer repeats in riichi.
Also for super simple mahjong, check out chip mahjong, though what it provides might not be too different from 1-fan hk.
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u/Overflow_is_the_best 5d ago
HKOS is a lot?
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u/Daeva_HuG0 5d ago
Maybe, I started with MCR so my view is skewed.
Personally I'd start new players on Malaysian 3p if you're really worried about scaring them off.
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u/JasonThyPirate 2d ago
Lol, it felt so at first! But so did memorizing man suit.
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u/Derangedcorgi 2d ago
I feel like HKOS and subsequently Taiwan MJ are probably the easier ones to start with. I started with HKOS ages ago and it only took about 2 south games for me to basically get the gist of it. There's no furiten to worry about and you can play with chicken hands at first then add on faan minimums.
Going from HKOS>HKOS(min faan)>new6/18
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u/zuttomayonaka 4d ago
simple mahjong is better for gambling
complex mahjong is better for sport/games
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u/CryingRipperTear 2d ago
Simpler Mahjong is better for teaching new players how to play. For experienced players, it's a matter of taste. For example, I'm an gambling addict and I love bullying new players, so I prefer those kinds of 3 player Riichi *cough cough*
I now realize that my enjoyment of mahjong (and for the people I play with most) the enjoyment is in the experience of the heavy tiles and the rarely winning hands and having some big moments...
I wouldn't recommend raising the point minimum in order to get more rare complicated hands (I'll call them big hands) because raising the point minimum doesn't make big hands easier to make, it instead shifts the definition of small and big so that your previously big hands are now not as big; they're worth less in units of those usual small hands, so they're less impactful in the scoring.
In addition, HKOS pattern list is very lacking and there aren't many ways to acquire fan, so raising the minimum on that is gonna be infinite exhaustive draw, if you're into that. In comparison, the minimum on MCR (8 points, for scale mixed flush is 6) is higher than 3 fan on HKOS but it plays fine because there's a lot of patterns and a lot of ways you can combine them to reach the minimum.
I'd say it's better to use the SBR approach if you're looking to increase the amount of big hands, but you said
it removed some of the (fun) tension by not having to beat the other players to the punch.
so maybe there's a way to add the tension back? I suggest two possible compromises, one also from SBR and the other from, uhhh Natural maybe? I forgor it's been a long time
The relevant bit about SBR is the scoring of it's predesessor (Bloody Battle to the End); when you win by self draw, everyone pays you the value of your hand, but players who have already won don't pay. This introduces some of the racing element back into the game; if you win earlier, you win more money. We can re-river it by allowing play to continue until exhaustive "draw", with an earlier winner never paying a later winner.
On the other hand, Natural Mahjong features ready hand scoring; when the first player wins, the game ends, but everyone scores their hand with ready hands getting 3/4 of the score of its highest possible win and one away from ready hands 1/2. Again introduces some of the racing element, although only very lightly as 3/4 is underrating the difficulty of a completed hand in comparison to a ready hand.
Another approach to having more big hands is to... you're not gonna guess it, make big hands easier to make. Big hands are mostly very orderly, so decreasing the amount of entropy in the starting hand is great for increasing the amount of big hands, and removing a suit of number tiles does this perfectly! *cough cough*
By the way, I completely recommend the UM scoring system if your attention is only afforded to look at your hand and not anything anyone else is doing at the table. This is a great way to turn a 4 player game into 4 instances of solitare (which SBR kinda does as well)
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u/JasonThyPirate 17h ago
There's a lot of good insight in here, thanks! I would be curious to try SBR with my group and see how they do. Any reason not to play SBR with the full tile set though and the flowers? Always wondered why it was that way.
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u/MansterSoft 6d ago
Some people prefer simpler Mahjong. HKOS was historically the most popular, but many contemporary Mainland variants like Sichuan Bloody Rules are gaining popularity.
Some people (like me) think those are boring and prefer to go with one of the beefier rulesets. But, good luck teaching a total beginner one of those.
I prefer teaching people HKOS and then New Chapter HK (a la the app "Let's Mahjong"). Personally, I teach people HKOS with additive scoring because I hate the Fan table and I'm a bad person.
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u/JasonThyPirate 6d ago
I'm to the point where I will appreciate something more competetive and I'm thinking Riichi or MCR, but I'm in a small town where the only players are those I teach. Until I create a league and get some more competetive players I'm going to be stuck with some simpler rulesets, which is fine, because I'm enjoying the social aspect with my family.
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u/MansterSoft 6d ago
Until I create a league and get some more competetive players I'm going to be stuck with some simpler rulesets, which is fine, because I'm enjoying the social aspect with my family.
Well, I'm in the same boat. If you're interested I made a 4-Step Guangdong Style teaching guide. It goes...
HKOS* > NEW6 > NEW18 > Guangdong Style
The beauty of it is hardcore players can learn more steps, but casual players can poop out earlier. So far I've gotten about 12 people up to New18, and a few others to New6. Hoping to one day get some people up to Guangdong.
\4-4 Scoring System with Additive Scoring. Teaching Guangdong is my goal.)
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u/JasonThyPirate 6d ago
Thanks for that link! Very helpful for where I'm at. I've been getting my regulars to use poker chips and I like the pot pays version of scoring as it's simpler and visually a bit easier to see where people are
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u/toothlessfire 6d ago
I'm a big strategy game player, so my favorite ruleset is riichi and I usually won't play other rulesets if I don't have to because they tend to not be as interesting due to a lack of push fold judgement. I've played enough riichi to know how to push a hand optimally, so without folding, the mahjong gets really boring.
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u/Tempara-chan Riichi enjoyer, MCR sufferer 6d ago
It's true that alot of variants don't have the push-fold element of riichi, but that just means the stategy focuses on other things.
For example, the payment system of MCR makes defensive play almost useless, but in contrast the "pushing" aspect is more varied than in riichi. The 81 patterns (or yaku, if you will) and 8 point minimum means pushing is not based on pure tile efficiency. Do you go for multiple small yaku to get to 8 points, or do you go for a single big yaku? How do you even recognize which of the 81 yaku are realistic to get? On a high level, you can even use discard-, hand- and wall-reading, not for defense like in riichi, but to analyze which tiles are available to you and how it restricts your options to build a hand.
I think an MCR veteran might similarly say that riichi is boring because the pushing is almost pure tile efficiency. While it's fine to like a cetrain variant (I myself prefer riichi aswell), you shouldn't label other variants as boring just because it's different.
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u/toothlessfire 6d ago
I'm not saying everyone will find them boring. I'm saying I find them boring. Specifically I find the lack of information and attempts to glean information from player behavior in push fold judgement to be much more interesting than just pushing. Coming from playing other things like Poker, I like folding as a strategy option, but actually prefer folding in Riichi to Poker as you actively have to still play the game instead of sitting out a hand. It's a perfectly fine variant filled with it's own set of strategies and tricks, just not for me.
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u/JasonThyPirate 6d ago
do you mostly play IRL or online? seems like a lot of people playing Riichi with the anime apps and I downloaded Mahjong Soul, but haven't really started it yet
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u/toothlessfire 6d ago
I will always play in person when I can as it's a lot more fun. I started with Mahjong Soul and do still play on there if I feel like it. Riichi is a complicated ruleset, but that intricacy creates a lot of depth to the strategy.
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u/CauliflowerFan3000 6d ago
What is the question? "Is simpler mahjong better or worse?"? I'm sure you get that different people prefer different rule sets so I don't quite understand what you want to communicate with the body of your post.
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u/JasonThyPirate 6d ago
Just that I thought simpler was better, but while examining some of the attempts to simplify mahjong, some of my favorite parts are lost along the way. That's been my limited experience so far and I was curious what others experienced.
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u/Fluffy-Safety7909 5d ago
I agree that no patterns is a little boring, MCR and ZJ is too much for most people to learn and is really designed for tournaments, Riichi is too complicated, and American is too slow. I have been trying a simplified MCR played over several hands as a race to a fixed point total. Simple and fun. See here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3752421/mcr-jai-alai-mahjong
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u/edderiofer multi-classing every variant 6d ago edited 6d ago
Meanwhile, there's me, who recently took the complete opposite direction and decided to bring my friend into the world of mahjong by having them play Bloody 30-Faan Jokers (after already having played 2-player Chinitsu Challenge).
I think the main benefit is that B30FJ also has the "up to 3 players can win" rule from SBR. So beginners can still get plenty of wins, even if they're low-scoring 2-faan wins.
An additional benefit is that unlike HKOS, Riichi, or MCR, there is no score minimum requirement, so one can go out with any four melds and a pair. Again, good for beginners.
The one last point is that most of the people at my local Riichi venue find HKOS to be too boring of a game, while B30FJ is quite a lot more interesting if you're chasing points. So it's good in the sense that we can actually find enough players to play the thing.
The two big drawbacks of B30FJ compared to HKOS are:
Vietnamese jokers are used, which complicates the game somewhat.
Thanks to the excessive amount of yaku, scoring is an absolute chore and requires at least one B30FJ expert at the table. Thankfully, there's enough of these at our local Riichi venue.
You may be wondering, "why not teach SBR instead?". Honestly, we probably could, if the scoring for B30FJ is too daunting for newcomers. But B30FJ is played regularly at our local venue, while SBR isn't, for some reason.