Where this book comes from
I wrote the first version of this guide in 2010 for the Club Argentino de Mahjong (CAM). I wanted one text in Spanish that covered riichi mahjong from end to end: the tiles, how a hand plays out, the yaku, scoring, and table manners.
Today I live in Osaka, where I've played for about ten years, and I'm a professional with the 日本プロ麻雀協会 (Nihon Pro Mahjong Kyoukai). This 2026 edition is the same book, revised from start to finish. It's also the first time the book appears in English.
What changed in this edition
- The rules. The text follows today's standard, the one Mahjong Soul, Tenhou, and Japanese parlors share. The old CAM house rules, and whatever other rule sets change, sit in separate boxes.
- The examples. I went through every hand tile by tile. Hands that were built wrong, or didn't show what the text claimed, are fixed.
- The history. Mahjong isn't thousands of years old. It took shape in 19th-century China, and that part is corrected too.
- The terms. I write han where the first edition said fan, the way Tenhou, Mahjong Soul, and the WRC rules do. You'll still see fan in older texts, such as the 2016 EMA rules.
- The figures. They're redrawn, and diagrams replace the photos of the first edition.
- The drills. The web edition adds interactive practice: naming tiles, finding waits, naming yaku, and counting points.
How to read it
New to the game? Read the chapters in order. Each one builds on the last. If you already play, jump to whatever you're missing. The appendices, the yaku list and the glossary, work as quick reference.
The web edition and the PDF carry the same text. On the web, the drills respond to what you do. In the PDF, they appear as problems with the answers.
Two boxes come up again and again. "Rule variants" marks where Mahjong Soul, Tenhou, the M-League, WRC and EMA tournaments, or the old CAM rules part ways. "From the table" is advice from me, one player to another.
Which rules it teaches
The main text teaches one version of riichi, the one shared by ranked games on Mahjong Soul and Tenhou and by parlors across Japan:
- four players, and games of two rounds, East and South;
- 25,000 points at the start and a 30,000 return;
- three red fives, one per suit;
- open tanyao (kuitan) and atozuke allowed;
- 4 han 30 fu doesn't round up to mangan.
If some of those words mean nothing to you yet, the book explains each one when it matters. Where other rule sets differ, I say so in the places it counts.