by Judy Hom, Board Member

I hosted a second mahjong event because Jeanne Katsuro and others told me that they were interested in playing and learning more about mahjong. This year, 12 people signed up. Like last year, this was a potluck in addition to mahjong. After all, you can’t play on an empty stomach. There was a yummy assortment of food: spam musubi, oyster sauce chicken wings, egg rolls, dim sum, mapo tofu and more.

At the break, Ida Koo delighted us with her Hawaiian shaved ice. Ida brought her heavy duty shaved ice machine, syrups, Azuki beans, condensed milk, and ice cream. It was amazing. The day was warm so the shaved ice was a delightful and welcome treat.

Okay, back to the mahjong. At this event, we concentrated on the Hong Kong style of play and scoring.

Jeanne challenged her intermediate table to win with a minimum of 3 fan. No chicken hands or gai woo for her table. There was lots of yelling, screaming, and laughing coming from her table. And, there were some awfully big hands. Curtis was the biggest winner with 8 fan self draw (ji mo!). Everyone had to pay him 384 chips.

At my beginner table, I shared my list of mahjong tidbits like not patting another player’s shoulder which gives them bad luck. David Tom decided to test that superstition and patted Bev Lee’s shoulders a few times. We learned how to count fan and used chips (no money) so people could see who was the big winner at our table. Everyone ended up pretty even so patting Bev’s shoulders didn’t do much harm.

Sarah Lowe did a wonderful coaching the newbies. Dean Santo and James Chan had some big hands at that table.

Even if they didn’t win a hand, everyone had a great time at the event. I got a lot of questions about scoring. I put together these scoring tables from Amy Lo’s “The Book of Mahjong” and Benny Constantino’s “Let’s Play Mahjong”.

Fan

Agree on table limits before playing. A common limit is 6 fan. Each fan is worth 2 points (or 2 chips).

FanChips collected by winner Loser pays the amount shown in parenthesis
Chicken win (gai woo)1 + 1 + (2) = 4
1 fan2 + 2 + (4) = 8
2 fan4 + 4 + (8) = 16
3 fan8 + 8 + (16) = 32
4 fan (called moon woo or full woo)16 + 16 + (32) = 64
5 fan24 + 24 + (48) = 96
6 fan (called seung laht or double hot)32 + 32 + (64) = 128
7 fan48 + 48 + (96) = 192
8 fan (called saam laht or triple hot)64 + 64 + (128) = 256
9 fan96 + 96 + (192) = 384
10 fan (called sei laht or quadruple hot)128 + 128 + (256) = 512
11 fan192 + 192 + (384) = 768
12 fan (called ung laht or quintuple hot)256 + 256 + (512) = 1024

Ji Mo

Ji mo (self win) earns an extra fan. Everyone is a loser and must pay double.

FanChips collected by winner
Gai woo self win2 x 3 = 8
1 fan self win4 x 3 = 12
2 fan self win8 x 3 = 24
3 fan self win16 x 3 = 48
4 fan self win32 x 3 = 96
5 fan self win48 x 3 = 144
6 fan self win64 x 3 = 192
7 fan self win96 x 3 = 288
8 fan self win128 x 3 = 384
9 fan self win192 x 3 = 576
10 fan self win256 x 3 = 768
11 fan self win384 x 3 = 1152
12 fan self win512 x 3 = 1536