Two-Player Mahjong (13 tiles) — Rules

Overview

Two-player 13-tile Mahjong is a one-on-one mahjong game played with 72 tiles: Characters, the 1 and 9 Dots, and honors, with no Bamboo and no Flowers. Each player holds 13 tiles and the two take turns drawing and discarding; there is no Chow, only Pung and Kong, and a player who completes four melds plus a pair wins, with payments counted in "tai" according to the hand and how it was won.

• Players: Two per table, one on one.
• Tiles: 72 tiles, no Flowers.
• Goal: Complete a hand of "four melds + one pair" (14 tiles) to win, scoring as many tai as you can, while avoiding dealing in.
• Hand: Everything from the deal until someone wins or the hand ends in an exhaustive draw and is settled is one "hand". An exhaustive draw also counts as a hand, scoring 0.

These rules follow the Douque (鬥雀) platform's two-player mahjong rules; anything those rules do not cover follows Douque's four-player mahjong (the rules of Taiwanese Mahjong). Compared with 16-tile Taiwanese Mahjong, please note these on your first game:

1. The only tiles are Characters, 1 Dot, 9 Dot and honors — no Bamboo, no Flowers. Each player holds 13 tiles, and a winning hand is four melds plus a pair.
2. There is no Chow. You can Pung or make an Exposed Kong on your opponent's discard, and you can self-draw on an Exposed Kong replacement, scoring Out with Replacement Tile.
3. Self-drawn is worth 4 tai and is paid by your opponent alone. At a two-player table one of the two is always the dealer, so every payment includes the dealer tai.
4. There are only two seat winds, East and West, decided each hand by whether the dice total is odd or even; the dealer is not necessarily East.
5. The last 8 tiles of the wall are kept back; the dealer streak is capped at 10; MIGI must be declared within the first 4 discards of the hand.

Tiles and Dealing

Tile Set

There are no Bamboo tiles and no Flowers.

What a Winning Hand Looks Like

• Four melds + one pair, 14 tiles in all. A meld is a Chow (three consecutive tiles of the same suit), a Pung (three identical tiles) or a Kong (four identical tiles, counted as one meld). The fourth tile of a Kong does not count toward the 14 tiles.
• Dots are only the 1 and the 9, so they cannot form a Chow — only a pair, Pung or Kong; Chows only occur in Characters. A Full Flush is therefore always Characters, and a Half Flush is either "Characters + honors" or "Dots + honors".
• There are no special hands such as Seven Pairs, Thirteen Orphans or Ligu.
• There is no minimum tai requirement; you can win as soon as your hand is complete.

Dealing

• Each player is dealt 13 tiles; the dealer gets one extra, 14 in total, and discards first.
• Normal draws come from the front of the wall; Kong replacements come from the tail end.
• The last 8 tiles of the wall are never drawn. When only 8 tiles remain and a player needs to draw, or to draw a Kong replacement, the hand ends at once in an exhaustive draw. Replacements come from the tail end, but each one still uses up one drawable tile (what is kept back is a count of tiles).
• The tile drawn when 9 tiles remain in the wall is the last drawable tile (海底) (this includes reaching it as a Kong replacement).

Breaking the Wall and Seat Winds

• Each hand the dealer rolls three dice, and the total decides whose section of the wall is broken (開門); that player is East and the other is West:
  • Odd total: the wall is broken from the dealer's section; the dealer is East and the opponent is West.
  • Even total: the wall is broken from the opponent's section; the opponent is East and the dealer is West.
• The first hand also uses the dice, so the dealer is not necessarily East.
• The only seat winds are East and West; there is never a South or North seat.

How to Play

1. Turn order: The two players alternate. Your opponent is both your previous player and your next player.
2. On your turn: Draw one tile, then choose one of the following:
   • Discard a tile;
   • Self-drawn win (the tile you drew completes your hand);
   • Concealed Kong (you hold four identical tiles) or Added Kong (you already have an exposed Pung and hold the fourth tile); after a Kong, draw a replacement from the tail end of the wall and continue your turn — you may Kong again or self-draw a win;
   • Declare Ready (declare that your hand is ready and discard a tile; see below).
3. When your opponent discards, you may:
   • Win: the tile completes your hand;
   • Pung: you hold two identical tiles;
   • Exposed Kong: you hold three identical tiles;
   • Pass: take nothing.
   • There is no Chow.
4. After a Pung you must discard; you cannot immediately make a Concealed or Added Kong or self-draw. After an Exposed Kong, you first draw a replacement from the tail end, then continue as a normal turn (you may self-draw on the replacement).
5. End of a hand: Someone wins (self-drawn, on the opponent's discard, or by Robbing the Kong), or the hand ends in an exhaustive draw. Two players can never win on the same tile at a two-player table.
6. Dealer and prevailing wind:
   • The first dealer is chosen at random; after that the two players take turns as dealer.
   • If the dealer wins or the hand is an exhaustive draw, the dealer keeps the deal and the dealer streak goes up by 1; if the non-dealer wins, the deal passes and the streak resets to zero.
   • The dealer streak is capped at 10: the hand at streak 10 is played as usual (dealer tai of 21), but afterwards the deal passes even if the dealer would otherwise keep it.
   • When each player has been dealer once, that is one "round"; the prevailing wind goes East, South, West, North in order. A hand name such as "East-East" or "East-South" (東風東, 東風南): the first wind is the prevailing wind, and the second is which dealer of this round it is (East = the first, South = the second) — not the dealer's seat wind.
   • If the last dealer of a round keeps the deal, play continues until the dealer no longer keeps it or reaches the cap; only then does the round end.

Declare Ready and MIGI (Declaring a Ready Hand)

• If the MIGI conditions are met when you declare, it is MIGI; otherwise it is Declare Ready. The two are never scored together.
• You may Declare Ready even with exposed Pungs.
• After declaring, if you draw the fourth tile of a Pung you have already exposed, an Added Kong is always made automatically (if that tile is also your winning tile you may choose to win first, and the Kong is made only if you don't; no Kong on the turn you draw the last drawable tile); if you draw a tile that would allow a Concealed Kong, it is not Konged but discarded directly.
• Declaring Ready only adds tai when you win. When your opponent wins, you do not pay extra for having declared. These rules have no Heavenly Ready, Earthly Ready or Eye Tiles.

Tai Table

When you win, add up every item that applies; that total is the tai for the hand. All items can be combined, except combinations the "Notes" column says are not scored.

• Only one of Heavenly Hand, Earthly Hand and Human Hand can be scored; they are never combined.

All Honors Combinations

When All Honors occurs together with Little/Big Three Dragons or Little/Big Four Winds, the two are added together minus 4 tai and shown as a single item:

Four Concealed Pungs is not part of this merging; when it applies, add 5 tai separately. Example: a concealed All Honors (Little Four Winds), waiting on two pairs, won by self-draw, with no Concealed Kong and no Declare Ready = All Honors (Little Four Winds) 20 + Four Concealed Pungs 5 + Concealed Hand 1 + Self-drawn 4 + Fully Concealed 1 = 31 tai, with the dealer tai added on top; on a pair wait, add 1 more tai for Single Wait.

When a Hand Can Be Split More Than One Way

If the same hand can be split into different meld combinations, it is scored using the split that gives the most tai.

Four-Player Items That Never Occur in Two-Player Mahjong

• Ruled out by the tile set and the number of players: Seat Flower, Flower Kong, Seven Robs One, Eight Immortals (there are no Flowers), Five Concealed Pungs (there are only four melds) and All Chows (with no Chow, any exposed meld is a Pung or Kong; a hand with no exposed melds is concealed, and a concealed hand does not score All Chows).
• Not used, as in Taiwanese Mahjong: Last Tile Claim (河底撈魚; winning on the last discard is allowed but earns no extra tai), Half Melded (半求), Eye Tiles (眼牌), Heavenly Ready, Earthly Ready, Ligu (哩咕), Minimum Tai to Win (幾台起胡), Liability Payment (包牌), Tai Cap (滿台封頂), Three-Tile Exchange (換三張), Dice Bonus Tai (骰規台) and similar items.

Legal Moves and Fouls

The following actions are not legal and may not be made:

Skipped Win (過水)

• Choosing not to win when you can is a Skipped win. This includes: not winning on a tile your opponent discards (or Added-Kongs); choosing to Pung or make an Exposed Kong instead of winning; and not self-drawing a win on a tile you draw (including declining a winning tile drawn as an Exposed Kong replacement).
• While under a Skipped win, you cannot win on any tile, not even by self-draw. However, you can still Pung or make an Exposed Kong when your opponent discards your winning tile (Pung is still subject to Skipped Pung).
• When it is lifted depends on whether the tile is one of your winning tiles:

• When you are not under a Skipped win, you can self-draw on a winning tile drawn as an Exposed Kong replacement, and you are not forced into a Skipped win; you only enter one if you choose not to win.
• Giving up a self-drawn win after Declaring Ready also puts you under a Skipped win; if you then draw the fourth tile of an exposed Pung, the automatic Added Kong is still made (the Added Kong tile is a winning tile, so it is not lifted).
• A player who declared MIGI cannot skip a win; they always win on a winning tile.

Scoring

How Each Payment Is Calculated

Each win is paid by one player only:

Payment = base + tai value × (hand tai + dealer tai)

Dealer tai = 1 + 2 × dealer streak. At a two-player table either you or your opponent is the dealer, so the dealer is always either the winner or the payer, and every payment includes the dealer tai.

The base and the value per tai are set by the table. Taking a base of 50 and 20 per tai as an example, when scoring in tai, divide amounts by 20: the base is 2.5 tai, and each tai is 1 tai, so

Tai paid = 2.5 + hand tai + dealer tai

Your Score per Hand

Your score for a hand = the tai you received in that hand − the tai you paid. The two players' scores always add up to 0. An exhaustive draw scores 0.

Scoring Examples

Example 1: The non-dealer self-draws. You are the non-dealer and win by concealed self-draw: Concealed Hand 1 + Self-drawn 4 + Fully Concealed 1 = 6 tai. Your opponent is the dealer and has kept the deal once (dealer tai = 1 + 2 × 1 = 3 tai). Your opponent pays 2.5 (base) + 6 (hand) + 3 (dealer tai) = 11.5 tai, i.e. 50 + 20 × 9 = 230. You score +11.5 tai for this hand, and your opponent −11.5 tai.

Example 2: Dealing in to the dealer. Your opponent is the dealer with no streak, and your discard lets them win with All Pungs 4 + Dragon Pung 1 = 5 tai, plus 1 dealer tai. You pay 2.5 (base) + 5 + 1 = 8.5 tai (50 + 20 × 6 = 170) and score −8.5 tai for the hand.

Special Rules and Rulings

Kongs

• After a Kong replacement you may Kong again.
• After drawing the last drawable tile, you cannot make a Concealed or Added Kong (a player who has Declared Ready does not Kong automatically either); you can only self-draw a win or discard a tile. If the last tile is a winning tile you may choose to win first; if not, you discard. If your opponent does not win on that discard, the hand is an exhaustive draw.
• Either player's Concealed, Added or Exposed Kong counts as "someone has made a Kong", which rules out a later Human Hand, Earthly Hand or MIGI.

The Last Tile and Exhaustive Draws

• The tile drawn when 9 tiles remain in the wall is the last drawable tile; a self-drawn win on it scores Last Tile Draw.
• Your opponent can only win on the discard from the last-tile turn, and there is no Last Tile Claim tai; if no one wins, the hand is an exhaustive draw.
• An exhaustive draw has no winner or loser, and the dealer keeps the deal.

Heavenly Hand, Earthly Hand, Human Hand

• All three require that "no one at the table has made any Pung or Kong (including Concealed and Added Kongs) so far", and that the winner has not yet discarded or made a Kong.
• Heavenly Hand is for the dealer only; Earthly Hand and Human Hand are for the non-dealer only. Only one of the three can be scored; they are never combined.
• Heavenly Hand and Earthly Hand are paid by the opponent alone.

What Counts as a Concealed Pung

• A Concealed Kong counts as a concealed Pung.
• A Pung completed with your opponent's discard is not a concealed Pung; one completed by self-draw is.

Dealer Streak

• If the dealer wins or the hand is an exhaustive draw, the dealer keeps the deal; if the non-dealer wins, the deal passes.
• The dealer streak is capped at 10: the hand at streak 10 is played as usual, and then the deal passes.

Rules basis: the Douque platform's two-player mahjong rules; anything they do not cover follows the Douque platform's four-player mahjong rules.