Follows your device setting.
Posts and lessons in one serif column, like a printed page.
White face, black outline.
Plain faces, no corner index.
Follows your device setting.
Posts and lessons in one serif column, like a printed page.
White face, black outline.
Plain faces, no corner index.
Deep dives into advanced tactics, tournament strategies, and pro-level insights from Japan's competitive mahjong scene.
The three guides I send every new student first. About 30 minutes in total.
Start with step 1
A Japanese proverb says the rich don't pick fights, because a fight can only cost them. For the player in 1st that means cheap hands, earlier folds against 2nd, dama over riichi, and counting what 2nd needs to pass you.
NewRound 30 of the 2026-27 regular season: KADOKAWA Sakura Knights won both games on their table and lead the league by 322.6 points. On the other table Takeuchi Genta took his first top in 14 games, Setokuma Naoki took his seventh, and Watanabe Futoshi paid 12,000 twice.
NewA famous 1984 study found the average tutored student beat 98% of a regular class, an effect of two standard deviations. Later research cut that effect size by more than half, and what's left is still one of the strongest effects in education.
NewIn shogi's endgame, speed beats material. In All Last, points are the material and placement is the mate, which is why a 1,000-point call now beats a mangan two turns late.
NewAn even record earns exactly zero at Tenhou 3-dan and at Mahjong Soul Master 1, and on Mahjong Soul that's where players pile up. Joshua Foer called the stall the OK plateau: here's why autopilot keeps you on it, and the habits that move you past it.
NewThe dealer wins more often than a non-dealer, and wins bigger. A week of Tenhou Houou logs puts the seat at about 730 points a hand and shows how far that lowers the dealer's push bar.
NewAt the end of a game, three steps turn your points into a result: the return, the oka, and the uma. They're why an 11,200-point lead can become a 41.2-point gap.
NewChinese Official, Hong Kong, Sichuan, Taiwanese, American, and Singapore mahjong share the tiles and little else. Here's one strange rule from each, with its source, and what it tells a riichi player.
NewA kan is four identical tiles declared as one set: it draws a replacement tile and flips a new dora. The three kinds, when each is allowed, and what a kan is worth.
NewEach honba adds 300 points to the next win. Here's when the counter goes up and when it clears, how renchan keeps the dealer in the seat, and who takes the riichi sticks.
NewThe National Mah Jongg League mails out a new card every spring, and only the hands printed on it win. Here's how the card, its jokers, and the Charleston work, seen from a riichi table.
NewThe dealer in 1st riichis in All Last, and each trailing player waits for someone else to push. Here's how the scoreboard picks the volunteer, and where sashikomi turns into kingmaking.
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