Pong

Assessment

Confidence

catalogued listed in a variant catalogue with tile counts and hand sizes, but no rules text verified

Evidence

corroborated two or more independent sources agree on the facts that define this variant

Cross-comparison

What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.

• [1] four threesomes only, no pair; threesomes are pungs and knitted pungs only, no chows. Book: Dobree, Gambling Games of Malaya, 1955. Existence revealed by Thierry Depaulis, newsgroup, 2 May 2006
• [2] Read at the source. 'The game is also played in Malaysia under the name Pong. In Gambling Games of Malaya (p. 137-8) it is described as being played with Mahjong tiles'; 'it is played in the Malaysian state of Kelantan, which is adjacent to Thailand'; four players. Walls of 30 tiles (15 long, 2 high). The Thai card game Pai Tong is played with two decks of money-suited cards, 120 cards, four copies of each; its sets of three identical cards are tong, and 'pong' is the call to claim one. Suggests the name Pai Phong may come from Hokkien 碰牌, and tong from 同, 'same'
• [4] Read at the source. Dobree was an Assistant Commissioner of Police in Malaya and wrote the book to help decide whether a game was legal; 'the law codes of Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei all contain lists of illegal games which are based on this book'. The book has a section of games with mahjong tiles
• [5] Read at the source. The Act's schedules name pai kow and a run of card games as bankers' and other games, but not Pong or any mahjong game; a tile game played for money falls under the general definition of gaming
• [1] Re-read 2026-10-11; the entry has not changed since the chart read it. Threesomes are 'pungs and knitted pungs only', no chows. Book: Gambling Games of Malaya, C. T. Dobree, Caxton Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1955. The entry credits Thierry Depaulis's newsgroup post of 2 May 2006. The FAQ's list of variants without books also gives Pong as four pungs or knitted pungs, no pairs, no chows
• [3] The first post is Depaulis's summary. About 46 minutes later he posted Dobree pp. 137-8 under Dobree's heading 'Games with Mah Jong (ma jiang) tiles', giving pinyin in place of Dobree's sinograms. Dobree's section opens by saying there are other games in which Mah Jong tiles 'are used or are substituted for other instruments'. Pong is played by four persons only. Instead of drawing from the wall, a player may take the discard of the player immediately before him; a player who needs only one tile may take any player's discard as soon as it is made. Read 2026-10-11 in the Internet Archive's October 2020 Usenet backup of rec.games.mahjong; the same posts are in Giganews's 2014 mbox in the item usenet-rec.games. Google Groups answered 429. Tom Sloper replied the same day with thanks
• [2] Re-read 2026-10-11. From Dobree, Pollard takes only the tile set, the four walls of 30, the four players, the names tong and tong serong, and the scoring. For the rest he writes 'Play and win as in the Thai game', and he thinks Pong was probably also played with Ceki cards. In the Thai game a player draws from the stock or takes the top discard, may claim any discard to complete a tong by calling 'pong', and may take any player's discard as the winning card
• [6] Entry 1955-1: written by C. T. Dobree, Assistant Commissioner of Police; published in Kuala Lumpur by Caxton Press with the permission of the Federation; preface dated 1 February 1955. The caption says it holds many examples of Chinese-origin playing cards used by gamblers in Malaysia. Nothing on Pong or on mahjong tiles
• [7] Straits Times editorial of 14 December 1959, 'A Matter Of Chance', reprinted in The Straits Budget of 23 December 1959. A provision to make Dobree's book available to Federation courts passed the House of Representatives without debate, then met objections in the Senate, among them that the author was still alive. A former President of the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur had written that no magistrate would know how he had tried gambling cases without it. The editorial calls Dobree a former Assistant Commissioner of Police. It does not mention Pong or mahjong tiles

Reading it

Three accounts of one book now agree. Sloperama's entry, the chart's source, condenses Thierry Depaulis's two rec.games.mahjong posts of 2 May 2006, now read in the Internet Archive's Usenet backup; the second is a near-verbatim transcription of Dobree's Gambling Games of Malaya (1955), pp. 137-8. George Pollard's independent reading agrees with it. Pong used the 120 suit and dragon tiles; four players drew eleven each, and the first to draw a tile completing four sets of three, with no pair, won. A set was a tong (three identical tiles) or a tong serong (three mixed tiles of one number, or mixed dragons), a wider rule than Sloperama's 'knitted pungs'. Each of the other three paid the winner 2 to 6 points, according to how many tong he held. Dobree called Pong 'a simplified form of Mah Jong' played by Malays in Kelantan and gave Kelantan Malay names for the tiles. Pollard's identification with the Thai card game Pai Tong rests on the same 30 kinds by four and on discard rules that Dobree's text confirms, but it remains his inference, so the node's Nanyang placement is questioned rather than contradicted. A 1959 Straits Times editorial shows the book serving as courtroom expertise. Still wanted: Dobree's book itself, with his sinograms, and any Kelantan or Thai account.

Looked for, not found

• Official rules None exist: Pong is known only from Dobree's 1955 police manual, and no body governs it.
• Tournament rules None: no event is recorded, in the web search or in the rec.games.mahjong archive.
• Rulebook No published rulebook other than Dobree's manual (wanted, historical) describes Pong; looked for in the web search and Internet Archive full text.
• Encyclopedia There is no Wikipedia article on Pong; English Wikipedia cites Dobree only in Hoo Hey How and Tujeon. Wikidata and Thai Wikipedia answered 429 on 2026-10-11.
• Commercial None: no app, retailer or casino describes the game.
• Organisation None: no association plays or promotes Pong.

Known, not yet read

Sources that look worth having but could not be read for this entry. If you can reach one, it can be read and added. Every variant’s list is gathered on Missing sources.

• Historical Dobree, C. T. Gambling Games of Malaya. Kuala Lumpur: Caxton Press, 1955 (preface dated 1 February 1955), pp. 137-138 — The only primary source for Pong. Depaulis's transcription of these pages is now read, but it replaces Dobree's sinograms with pinyin, so his Chinese names for the tiles, any sinogram for the game's name and the rest of his section on games with mah jong tiles are known only at second hand.
  Where: National Library of Singapore (a citation in its Infopedia, seen in search results, gives call number RCLOS 795 DOB); WorldCat OCLC 3240893. The Mahjong Tile Set's collector and George Pollard each appear to own a copy.. Tried: 2026-10-11. On the sites' side: WorldCat answered a Cloudflare challenge (403); NLB's eresources pages answered HTTP 202 with an empty body, and its catalogue draws results by script whose file answered 403; the Library of Congress search answered 403; the Google Books API answered 429. HathiTrust's catalog API has no record for OCLC 3240893, and Internet Archive metadata and full-text search find no copy. On our side: Open Library's connection was dropped at the agent proxy.

Where it was searched

Every place the search checklist names for this variant’s languages, and what each gave, including nothing. The last full pass was on 2026-10-11.

Names searched: English Pong; Malay Pong.