Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Shanghai / Hong Kong new style › Mainland regionals › Sichuan / Hunan / Tibetan
Sichuan / Hunan / Tibetan
108 tiles
Sources
The documents this entry rests on, as published. Each can be opened and checked; nothing in this part is anybody’s reading of them.
Guide Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 2b: Identifying a Mah-Jongg Variant." Sloperama. canonical checked 2026-09-18
https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq02b.html
chart’s note Tile counts, hand sizes, flower handling and scoring for roughly 50 named variants. Primary source for most leaf nodes in this chart.
Also cited on: Chinese archaic, Late Qing style, Chinese pre-classical, Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Hong Kong old style and 45 more · bibliography #1
Encyclopedia Wikipedia (Chinese). 〈四川麻將〉 (Sichuan mahjong). cross-check checked 2026-10-02
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B%E5%B7%9D%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%87
AI summary The Chinese article on Sichuan mahjong and its Chengdu rules: 108 suit tiles, no chows, a hand of at most two suits, play on after the first win (血战到底). Tagged as unreferenced.
for this variant Independent confirmation of every Sichuan rule Sloper gives, and of Andersen's Chengdu details.
Also cited on: Sichuan bloody rules, Sichuan 72-tile game · bibliography #214
Commercial 黄金岛 (Huangjindao). 〈长沙麻将 游戏规则〉. Official site of the Huangjindao online game platform. cross-check checked 2026-10-02
https://www.80166.com/guide/rule/csmj.html
AI summary An online platform's full rules for Changsha (Hunan) mahjong: 108 tiles, 2-5-8 pairs for small wins, opening-hand wins, big wins with any pair.
for this variant Confirms the Hunan rule Sloper gives: the 2-5-8 pair, with the bigger hands exempt.
Only cited here · bibliography #215
Commercial "我国麻将游戏的种类有多少？" 91麻将游戏网 (mj.91y.com), 28 February 2015. cross-check checked 2026-10-02
https://mj.91y.com/mjxz13.html
AI summary An online mahjong site's survey of six regional styles: Changsha, Sichuan, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Guangdong and the national competition rules.
for this variant A second source for both the Changsha and the Sichuan rules.
Also cited on: Mainland regionals · bibliography #213
Guide Osamuko (David). "Mahjong Teaching Method, Tibet Rules." Osamuko's Mahjong Blog, 13 May 2016. Cited from the Wayback Machine capture of 7 February 2026; the osamuko.com registration lapses on 15 October 2026. cross-check checked 2026-10-02
https://web.archive.org/web/20260207141034/https://osamuko.com/mahjong-teaching-method-tibet-rules/
AI summary Benjamin Boas's 'Tibet Rules', as used to teach at PAX East 2016: a stepwise way into mahjong with no honours, no chows and pon only, ending at 13 tiles in two suits.
for this variant Matches Sloper's 'Tibetan style' point for point: suit tiles only, no chows, pungs allowed, two suits. Sloper credits his Tibetan information partly to Boas.
Only cited here · bibliography #216
Guide "Tibetan Mahjong." Compendium of Personal Ignorance (xiongnu.org wiki). cross-check checked 2026-10-02
http://www.xiongnu.org/wiki/doku.php?id=games:riichi_mahjong:tibetan_mahjong
AI summary A wiki note on 'Tibetan Mahjong, or Mahjong Tibet Rules': a teaching method, brought from Japan by Benjamin Boas, whose name has no known origin.
for this variant A second account that the name belongs to a teaching method, not a game from Tibet.
Only cited here · bibliography #217
Analysis
Written by an AI model from the sources above. It is a reading of them, not a source in its own right: every figure in it points back to a numbered source, and where the two disagree, the source is right.
Assessment
- Confidence
- catalogued listed in a variant catalogue with tile counts and hand sizes, but no rules text verified
- Evidence
- partial sources agree on some points but disagree or say nothing on others
Cross-comparison
What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.
| Source | Tiles | Hand | Flowers | Scoring | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | 108 (suit tiles only; no winds or dragons) | 13, out on 14 | none | — | winner only; discarder pays for all |
| [2] | 108 (筒, 条, 万 only) | — | none | fan doubling, 2^fan; 1 fan for all simples, all pungs, a kong ('root'), robbing a kong and others; 2 fan for seven pairs, full flush, terminals in every set; usually capped at 3 or 4 fan | the discarder alone pays; self-draw collects from every player still in |
| [3] | 108, 'no honours, no flowers' | 13 (dealer 14) | — | small win needs a pair of 2s, 5s or 8s; big wins (all pungs, all-2-5-8, full flush and others) take any pair; opening-hand wins (四喜, 板板胡, 缺一色, 六六顺, 三同); bird tiles (扎鸟) after a win | — |
| [4] | Changsha 108 | — | — | — | — |
- [1] Hunan: 5 ways out, hand must include a pair of 2s/5s/8s else seven pairs or pure. Tibetan & Sichuan: no more than two suits, punging OK, chowing not permitted
- [1] Read again at the source for its provenance. The Tibetan information is credited to 'Jo Vandeweghe and Benjamin Boas … posted September 2006 on the mahjong newsgroup'; Morten Andersen's November 2007 newsgroup report adds that in Chengdu play continues until three players are out, and a hand still holding all three suits at the end pays a penalty. 'Books: none in English'
- [2] Read at the source (an unreferenced article). Pung and kong allowed, chow not; a winning hand must lack one suit (缺一门) or it is a false win; 血战到底: after one win the others play on until three have won or the wall runs out; at a draw a hand still in three suits (花猪) pays. A local Sichuan variant, 断卡根, drops the characters as well and plays ten-tile hands
- [3] Read at the source. Pung and kong from anyone; chow only from the player on the left
- [4] Read at the source. Changsha: 108 tiles without winds or dragons, adding 四喜, 板板胡, 六六顺 and 缺一色 and 扎鸟; Sichuan: 打缺门 and 刮风下雨
- [5] Read at the source. Boas's 'Tibet Rules': 'No chiing / No honors / no yaku', building from 4 tiles in one suit up to '13 tiles two suits' and '13 tiles three suits', with pon as the last step, 'which is "Tibet rules"'
- [6] Read at the source. 'Tibetan Mahjong, or Mahjong Tibet Rules, is the name given not so much to a particular mahjong ruleset, but rather to a teaching methodology for Riichi Mahjong'; 'it appears that it was brought over as a teaching method from Japan … but the etymology remains a mystery'
Reading it
Two of the three games stand up; the third may not be a regional game at all. Sichuan: Chinese Wikipedia (unreferenced) and a 2015 games site confirm Sloper's rules independently: 108 suit tiles, no chows, a winning hand short of one suit, and the Chengdu custom that play goes on after the first win and a hand still holding three suits at the end pays. Hunan: an online platform's Changsha rules and the same games site confirm 108 tiles and the 2-5-8 pair, with the bigger hands (full flush, seven pairs and others) exempt. Changsha allows a chow from the left, so 'no chows' belongs to Sichuan only. Tibetan: no source describes mahjong as played in Tibet. Sloper credits the Tibetan information partly to Benjamin Boas, and Boas's 'Tibet Rules' is a teaching method for riichi players: no honours, no chows, pon only, up to thirteen tiles in two suits. That is exactly Sloper's 'Tibetan style'. The likeliest reading is that the method's name was taken for a place; that is this compendium's inference, and the name's origin is unknown. The node joins at least two real regional games, Sichuan and Changsha, that share only the 108-tile set.
Looked for, not found
- Law No law bears on these games.
- Historical No history of when Sichuan or Changsha dropped the honour tiles was found.
- Scholarship No academic study of Sichuan, Hunan or Tibetan mahjong was found.
- Journalism No press account of mahjong in Tibet was found; Sichuan coverage is of record-setting mass games (The Diplomat, 2013, on the Mainland regionals node).
- Organisation No regional association's rules were found online for either game.
- Collection No museum or library record bears on these games.
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.
- Forum Vandeweghe, Jo, and Benjamin Boas. Posts on Tibetan style, rec.games.mahjong, September 2006 — Sloper's source for 'Tibetan style'; would show whether Boas meant a game from Tibet or his teaching method.
Where: Google Groups archive of rec.games.mahjong. Tried: Google Groups refuses automated reads (HTTP 429 earlier in this project). - Forum Andersen, Morten. Post on Sichuan style in Chengdu, rec.games.mahjong, November 2007 — The first-hand Chengdu report Sloper summarises.
Where: Google Groups archive of rec.games.mahjong. Tried: Same as above. - Encyclopedia riichi.wiki, "Tibet rules" — The riichi community's own page on the teaching method; may give its origin.
Where: https://riichi.wiki/Tibet_rules. Tried: HTTP 403 to both curl and WebFetch.
In the tree
Descends from Mainland regionals, as the source chart draws it.