Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Babcock rules › Western / British Empire style
Western / British Empire style
Descends into
- Wright-Patterson — USAF spouses, Ohio
- India / Mumbai style — rotating round rules
- Israeli Mah-Jongg Association
- Nepalese — 11-tile winning hand
- Pusser's Bones — Royal Navy
Caveat from the source chart
All Pairs and All Green flowed backwards out of this branch into most other modern rulesets, meaning the Western / American branch fed the Chinese branch, which no tree layout shows.
Cross-comparison
partial — sources agree on some points and are silent or divided on others
| Source | Tiles | Hand | Flowers | Scoring | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | 144 or more (jokers optional and variable in number) | 13, out on 14 | melded instantly when received | 20 for Out, then points for pongs/kongs/pairs, then double | all players earn points |
- [1] 70-80 special hands varying book to book; optional Charleston or Razzle exchange, and a Goulash after a drawn game. Sloperama calls this 'Vanilla Western' and suggests 'British Empire style' as the better name; played in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India and Italy
- [2] PARENTAGE TENSION: calls Western classical a descendant of the version Babcock introduced, which matches the chart, but then says the term today largely refers to the Wright-Patterson rules used in the US military. The chart makes Wright-Patterson a child of this node rather than a synonym for it
Reading it
The rules are well attested by Sloperama and the descent from Babcock is independently confirmed. The relationship to Wright-Patterson is not: Wikipedia treats Western classical as largely meaning the Wright-Patterson rules today, while the chart makes Wright-Patterson one child among five. Sloperama's own naming discussion, preferring British Empire style precisely to separate it from American variants, suggests the chart's separation is the more careful reading, but the sources genuinely differ.
Sources
Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 2b: Identifying a Mah-Jongg Variant." Sloperama. canonical checked 2026-09-18
Tile counts, hand sizes, flower handling and scoring for roughly 50 named variants. Primary source for most leaf nodes in this chart.
https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq02b.html
Also cited on: Chinese archaic, Chinese pre-classical, Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Hong Kong old style, Modern HKOS and 43 more · bibliography #1
Wikipedia. "Mahjong." cross-check checked 2026-09-18
The main article's regional-variations section, which describes most branches of this tree independently of the chart's own sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong
Also cited on: Chinese classical, Hong Kong old style, Taiwanese style, Singapore style, Filipino style, Vietnamese classical and 6 more · bibliography #54
British Mahjong scoring, as tabulated on the wiki's own Western Mah Jong page. supporting
The wiki attributes All Green, Seven Pairs and the Jewel Dragons to this tradition flowing back into Chinese rulesets. No book is named.
http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:western-mah-jong-scoring
Only cited here · bibliography #32