Mahjong

Mahjong is a traditional Chinese, turn-based game played by four players using tiles (instead of cards, as found in other similar games). There are multiple variations of Mahjong played throughout the world today, each involving strategy, skill and calculated game play, as well as a certain level of luck.

Mahjong is often played throughout Asia as a gambling game. Four players are dealt 16 tiles each with which to create and play melds on the table. Players may draw new tiles and discard old tiles to progress the game until one player is able to rid him or herself of all tiles.

There are more than a dozen popular variations of Mahjong, each forcing the players to rely on a variable level of luck, from incredibly low to extremely important. In all variations, the players are looking to achieve the same basic goal – to combine suits, numbers and or sequences into 4-5 melds and one head to eventually play all tiles in hand onto the table.

History of Mahjong

There is no official documentation recoding the history of Mahjong, leaving much to debate and myth.

One such popular myth dates Mahjong back to about 500 B.C., developed by the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius. The appearance of the game and some of its tiles align directly with the time and doctrines of Confucius’s travels and teachings.

According to this Mahjong history, the name Mahjong, which translates to “Sparrow” in most Chinese and Japanese languages, was chosen for the philosopher’s great love of birds. Then again, there is no evidence to show that Mahjong was played so far back in history.

Official records of the game’s introduction do not occur until after the appearance of the Taiping era in the 19th century. Most historians assert that Mahjong came from an older Chinese game of Madiao, around the time of the Ming Dynasty. This game consisted of 40 paper cards, rather than tiles, number 1 through 9, plus 4 flower cards. However, Madiao used four suits. Mahjong has only 3 suits, but four tiles of each number 1 through 9 per suit.

As to who invented Mahjong, the debate continues, and may never truly be resolved. Some say that Chinese army officers created Mahjong to pass the time during the Taiping Rebellion. Others believe that is was created by a Shanghai nobleman around 1870-75. Still more ascertain that two Ningpo brothers introduced the game based on Madiao.

No matter who was responsible for its creation, we do know how it was almost eliminated from gambling venues. In 1949, Mahjong was banned by the new communist government, the People’s Republic of China. The belief was that all forms of gambling were directly related to capitalist corruption, therefore Mahjong and all other forms of gambling were prohibited.

In 1985, after a revision of the rules that entirely eliminated gambling from the game, Mahjong’s prohibition was revoked. It has sense become a favorite pastime throughout China and other regions of Asia.