Scoring practice: who pays what.

This free trainer gives you a finished hand and asks the only two questions settling up ever asks: how much does each player pay, and how much does the winner collect?

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Settling up is the last step of a hand. If the road to a finished hand is still fuzzy, Mahjong 101 walks the whole game in about five minutes, tiles to Charleston to turns, and its last step is a miniature settlement just like the ones below. Start with Mahjong 101

Every value below is a practice number invented for the arithmetic. Your own card prints the real value of each line.

Hand 1 of 10 Score: 0 of 0

Work both answers out, then check them.

Scoring, in three ideas

Start from the card. Every line on the card carries a printed point value. That value is the base value, and every payment starts there. Tables settle in points on paper or in an app, or in money at an agreed rate; a penny a point is a common social rate, so 100 points is a dollar.

A win on a discard. The player who discarded the winning tile pays double the base value. The other two players pay the base value each. On a 25 point hand, that is 50 from the discarder and 25 from each of the others: the winner collects 100.

A win by self pick. If the winner drew the winning tile from the wall, all three other players pay double the base value. On a 25 point hand, 50 from each: the winner collects 150.

The jokerless bonus. A winning hand that was allowed to use jokers but whose final 14 tiles contain none is jokerless, and its value doubles. The doubles stack: jokerless doubles the value, and self pick doubles what each player pays on that value, so a self picked jokerless win pays four times the base from each player. Teachers call it double double. On a 25 point hand: a jokerless win on a discard collects 200, and a jokerless self pick collects 300.

The Finesse. If the last move before declaring Mah Jongg is a joker exchange, the win counts as self picked, so everyone pays double. A Finesse win is never jokerless, because the joker just redeemed becomes part of the winning hand.

A wall game pays nothing. If the wall runs out and nobody has won, the hand is a draw. Nobody pays anybody, the tiles are washed, and the East seat passes to the right.

About East. League scoring has no general double for East. Some tables double what East pays and receives; treat that as a house rule, and agree on it out loud before the first deal.

Take it to the table

The trainers are free. When you sit down to a real game, these are the two printables readers keep within reach.

Get the free One Page Score Sheet The Beginner Companion, $14.99

The score sheet costs nothing and tracks a full session, hand by hand, with room for the base value, the self pick and jokerless marks, and what each player paid. The Beginner Companion is the complete beginner guide: how to play American mahjong from the first deal to settling up, in plain words.

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About the rules here

These trainers teach American mahjong in our own words. The rules are summarized from public sources, including published rule guides and instructor materials, and they reflect standard National Mah Jongg League play as we understand it in October 2026.

This section is not published by, endorsed by, or affiliated with the National Mah Jongg League. Nothing here reproduces the League's card, and nothing here replaces it. To play a real game, every player needs the current official card from the National Mah Jongg League. Check any hand, hand value, or rule against the card at your table. The card is the final word, and house rules are whatever your table agrees before the first deal.

If you find an error, or your group plays a point differently, write to us at hello@oasisinvestingllc.com. We check reader corrections against published sources and fold confirmed fixes into updates.

This section is published by Oasis Investing LLC, as part of Parlor and Play.