Lesson 1 of 5
The Basics:
The Tiles & How to Win
A guide to winning, tiles, suits, and melds.
The Goal
To win in Filipino Mahjong, you must be the first to arrange your hand into 5 melds and 1 pair.
1 Pair
5 Melds + 1 Pair
Melds
There are 3 kinds of melds you can form:
Chow
Three-tile straight of the same suit.
Pong
Three-of-a-kind (identical tiles).
Kang
Four-of-a-kind.
Suited Tiles
There are 3 suits with numbers 1 to 9 of each:
Balls
Sticks
Characters
Winning Hands
Let's put it all together, here's what a winning hand look like:
Flower Tiles
In Filipino Mahjong, all the other tiles—Winds, Dragons, Seasons, and Flowers—are all simplified to "Flowers":
These are not used for building melds and if they're in your hand, you always replace them.
Note: While other versions use Winds and Dragons to build sets, Filipino Mahjong treats them as bonus tiles that grant instant payouts and extra turns.
Full Tileset
There are 4 copies of every suited tile: