Where our rules come from
The course has 12 chapters; chapters 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 group two or three section pages each. The lesson text is written in the course's own words, and the tile artwork is drawn for this course.
Deliberate teaching choices
- Every new chapter has Back/Next, contents, examples, practice and a review quiz. Answers explain the result; missed-question practice preserves the original full-attempt score.
- Custom 14-tile teaching patterns are labelled. They are not represented as current NMJL card lines. Quints show a Joker where a fifth natural copy cannot exist.
- Strategy uses actual progress, overlap, available natural tiles and remaining opportunities. No fixed turn number forces a commitment or switch.
- Discard patterns and exposed Jokers are clues, not proof of hidden tiles, exact opponent hands or tile scarcity. Examples supply enough card context for their answers.
- Chapter 9 (Your First Game) is a scripted hand with six Charleston passes, changing rack contents, a call, a Joker exchange, a win and payment. Unrelated opponent actions are summarized. It is not a random four-player engine.
- Opening a recap does not claim completion, and model checking is not testing with actual beginners. Each browser saves the learner’s place and activity answers on that device (local storage). Signing in is optional: a learner who signs in with their email (Save my place) also keeps an online copy, to pick up on another device; without signing in, they aren’t sent to us. Reset saved progress on the main menu clears them, and a signed-in learner’s online copy too. To learn which chapters help people, we count visits with Plausible, a visitor counter built for privacy: it uses no cookies, and we see only totals, never who visited. Your privacy explains what it records.
Rules checked
Ambiguous or overgeneralized rule claims were checked against the American Mah-Jongg Association's public playing guide. On 2026-10-15, claim priority, misnamed Jokers, wrong Joker exchanges, dead-hand evidence and discarded Jokers were rechecked against the National Mah Jongg League’s January 2026 bulletin, and the second-Charleston cut-off and East’s rotation against the Association’s Charleston and game-completion pages. The NMJL public FAQ was unavailable during this check. All players should use the same agreed current card and rules at a real table.
- AMJA playing guide
- Hand value and payment
- Mah Jongg in error
- Dead hands
- Charleston errors and remedies
- Ordinary-call errors and corrections
- Misnamed-tile winning claims
Other references
How the name is said, on Chapter 1, follows Merriam-Webster’s entry for mah-jongg, which lists both “mah-ZHONG” and “mah-JONG”. The Hong Kong style on American and Chinese Mah Jongg: what’s different is described from general references: Wikipedia’s articles Mahjong and American mahjong, read on 4 November 2026.