How to Play Riichi Mahjong | The Mahjong Archive

Q: I called chii to complete one of my sequences - does my hand still count as pinfu?

No. Pinfu requires the entire hand to be fully concealed, not just the pair or the wait. Calling chii still leaves every set as a sequence, so the shape looks right, but any call - chii included - breaks the closed status pinfu depends on. It's not that chii specifically is banned; it's that pinfu is really "all sequences + closed," and chii ends "closed."

02 · The Walkthrough

Everything you need for your first hand

The Goal

Collect 14 tiles that form four sets of three plus one pair, worth at least 1 han from yaku alone, before anyone else does.

Requirements

Four players. Seats are East, South, West, North; both seating and play run counterclockwise. Draw lots for seats; whoever draws East is the first dealer.
136 tiles. Three suits 1–9 (four copies each), four winds and three dragons (four copies each). No flowers or bonus tiles. Red fives are a common house addition worth an extra han each; full rules in Section 03.

Setup

Deal. The dealer takes 14 tiles; everyone else takes 13. One dora indicator is flipped from the dead wall before play starts. The wall-building and dealing procedure is in Section 05.

Gameplay

Take turns: draw one, discard one. East goes first, then South, West, and North, counterclockwise. On your turn, draw one tile from the wall, then discard one face-up. Exception: East (with 14 tiles) discards on the first turn.
Claim discards (optional). Claiming (pon, kan, or chii) skips your draw, not your discard: take the tile, then discard one from your hand. Full rules in Section 06.
Win.Your hand must pass two checks: Shape (four sets plus a pair, or a special shape) and Value (at least 1 han, from yaku only; the patterns are in Section 07). Pass both, declare your win.

03 · Tiles

What's on the table

Suits · 108Characters (manzu 萬), dots (pinzu 筒), bamboo (souzu 索). 1–9, four copies each. A character tile pairs its number with 萬; a dot tile shows that many dots; a bamboo tile shows that many sticks – except the 1 of bamboo, which commonly shows a bird instead of a single stick.

Characters
萬 · manzu

1萬 2萬 3萬 4萬 5萬 6萬 7萬 8萬 9萬

Dots
筒 · pinzu

1● 2● 3● 4● 5● 6● 7● 8● 9●

Bamboo
索 · souzu

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Honours · 28Four each of the winds 東南西北 and dragons 中發白. A triplet of dragons, your seat wind, or the round wind is a value honour (yakuhai): a yaku in its own right, and the cheapest path to clearing the one-yaku gate – which is why honours drive so much of Riichi strategy.

東

East ×4

南

South ×4

西

West ×4

北

North ×4

中

Red Dragon ×4

發

Green Dragon ×4

White Dragon ×4

Red fives · 3One red 5 per suit, physically distinct from the ordinary black 5s. Off under strict WRC play, but common at casual and online tables (Tenhou, Mahjong Soul). If your group plays with them, just swap one normal 5 in each suit for its red copy – nothing else in this chapter changes. Full scoring in Section 08.

Red fives
赤ドラ · aka dora

5萬 5● 5

Total: 136 tiles = 108 suits + 16 winds + 12 dragons

04 · Building a Hand

What a winning hand looks like

The goal. A winning hand is 14 tiles: four sets, plus one pair – or one of two special shapes. Between turns you hold 13; the 14th is the tile that completes your hand, whether you draw it yourself or claim it from a discard.

The sets · you need four, any mix

Sequence (chii)Three consecutive tiles, one suit. Never wraps (no 8-9-1), and honours never form one. Only the next player in turn may claim one from a discard.

Triplet (pon)Three identical tiles. Any player may claim a discard to complete one.

Quad (kan)Four identical tiles, concealed or melded, counting as a single set. Declaring one draws a replacement tile from the dead wall; how and when you can form one is in Section 06, and its dora consequences are in Section 08.

Any combination of these counts. Your hand does not need one of each.

The pair · exactly one

PairTwo identical tiles, the hand's only non-set piece. Claimable from a discard solely as your winning tile, never mid-hand to build the pair itself.

Two special shapes skip this four-sets-plus-pair structure entirely: Seven Pairs (seven different pairs, no sets at all) and Thirteen Orphans (one of every terminal and honour, plus a duplicate of any one). Both are defined fully as scoring patterns in Section 07.

Example · a legal winning hand

2●3●4● 456 6萬7萬8萬 3●3●3● 7萬7萬

Three sequences (2–3–4 pin, 4–5–6 sou, 6–7–8 man), one triplet (3–3–3 pin), one pair (7–7 man): one legal mix among many, using every tile from 2 to 8. Counting the han:

All Simples (tanyao)1 han – no terminals or honours anywhere in the hand.

Total1 han – clears the win gate on its own. No dora, no other yaku needed.

To win, your hand must pass both checks

① ShapeFour sets + one pair, 14 tiles – or one of the two special shapes above.

② ValueValue is measured in han, this variant's scoring unit. Your hand needs at least 1 han, counting yaku only – dora never counts on its own. Every way to earn han is in Section 07.

A hand can pass Shape and still fail Value: a structurally complete hand with no yaku is not a legal win yet, even one tile from finishing. Keep improving it, or declare riichi and wait – full rules in Section 06.

05 · Setup

Seats, wall, and the deal

SeatsPlayers draw lots for their seat winds. Whoever draws East takes the East seat and is the first dealer; the others take South, West, North. Seating and play both run counterclockwise: South sits to East's right, West across from East, North to East's left. Each player's seat wind is reassigned every hand as the deal rotates.

Seating & turn direction. East's panel is outlined in red with the starting dot. The swept arrows run counterclockwise, East → South → West → North, before returning to East.

Three directions in one setup The break is counted one way, the deal runs the other way, and turns run back the first way. Keep them straight and the rest of setup is easy.

The three directions. Counting the break runs counterclockwise from East; dealing then runs clockwise from the break point; turns during play run counterclockwise again, matching the swept arrow in the seating diagram above. The deal and the play sweep opposite ways – this is the setup step beginners get wrong most often.

WallAll 136 tiles are shuffled face down. Each player builds a wall section 17 stacks long, 2 tiles high – 34 tiles per side. The four sections are pushed together into a closed square.

Wall build. Top-down view of the four 34-tile wall sections forming a closed square. Each bar is one player's wall, two tiles high.

BreakRiichi uses one dice throw to find the break. East rolls two dice and sums them. That single number does two jobs: it counts seats counterclockwise from East (East's own wall is 1) to pick which wall breaks, then counts the same number of stacks from that wall's right-hand end to mark where. East takes the first four tiles, then dealing runs leftward from the break.

Break point (example). A single throw of the dice has selected West's wall and the stack on it. The marker shows where the wall opens; the arrow shows the direction tiles are drawn into the live wall.

Dead wallCounting back from the break, the last 14 tiles of the wall form the dead wall (seven stacks); everything else is the live wall. It holds the dora indicators and supplies replacement tiles for kans, and always stays 14 tiles – each time a kan pulls a replacement from the break-side end, the last live tile slides onto the far end to top it back up.

DoraA bonus indicator, flipped face-up from the dead wall at the start of the hand. Whatever tile comes next in sequence after it is the dora – hold a copy in your finished hand and it adds +1 han each, on top of your yaku. Dora never counts toward the win gate by itself; full rules, including the kan-dora and ura-dora that join it later, are in Section 08.

Dead wall, labelled. Reading from the break end: stacks 1–2 hold the four replacement tiles (drawn R1 → R2 → R3 → R4, top of a stack first then its bottom, working inward). The top of stack 3 is the initial dora indicator (D), with its ura-dora directly beneath; the kan-dora indicators K1–K4 flip along the top row toward the live-wall side, one for each kan made. When a kan empties a replacement slot, the last live tile slides onto the far end so the dead wall always holds 14 tiles.

DealDealing runs clockwise from the left of the break. Starting with East, each player takes four tiles (two stacks) in turn, three times around – twelve tiles each.

Dealing, right-to-left stack pattern. Starting at the stack nearest the break, East takes a full stack of 4, then South, West, and North each take the next stack of 4 to the left – three full passes until everyone holds 12 tiles.

The chan-chan finale. East does not take a neat stack of two. From the next two stacks, the first column's tiles go to East (top) and South (bottom); the second column's go to West (top) and North (bottom); then East jumps to grab the top tile of the third stack alone – the "jump" tile, and the click of East and South's tiles together is what names the motion. Result: East 14 (12 + 1 + 1), and South, West, North 13 each (12 + 1).

After the deal: East holds 14, South · West · North hold 13 each.

No pre-play exchange Japanese Riichi has no flowers to reveal and replace, and no passing phase. Once the deal is complete and the initial dora indicator is flipped, play begins immediately with East's first discard.

06 · Playing a Turn

Draw, act, discard, react

Your turn

1 · DrawOne tile from the live wall.

2 · Act (optional)Declare a kan (replacement tile + new kan-dora), declare riichi, or win by self-draw (tsumo).

3 · DiscardOne tile face-up in your row. The reaction window opens, and closes the moment the next player touches the wall.

Declaring riichi

RequirementsClosed and tenpai: one tile from a complete hand, with no calls made.

DeclareSay "riichi," discard your chosen tile sideways, and stake a 1,000-point stick as your deposit. It goes to whoever wins the hand next.

Locked inYour hand is fixed from this point on. Only a qualifying concealed kan may still change it.

RewardsRiichi is itself a yaku, worth 1 han on its own. Win within one uncalled go-around and you also gain ippatsu; winning at all reveals the ura-dora.

WRC exceptionsDeclaring is still allowed below 1,000 points, while furiten, and on the wall's very last tile.

Reactions to a discard

A reaction window opens on each discard and closes the moment the next player draws. Only the most recently discarded tile can be claimed, and you cannot claim your own discard.

PonAny player holding a matching pair claims the discard for a triplet. Reveal, discard; skipped players lose that turn.

KanAny player holding a matching triplet claims the discard for a quad. Draw a replacement, flip a new kan-dora.

ChiiNext player only, a sequence in the same suit.

RonWin on the discard. Hand must be complete, hold at least one yaku, and not be furiten.

Priority: RON > PON / KAN > CHII · tied rons: nearest counterclockwise after the discarder wins it (head-bump) · one winner per hand

Swap-calling (kuikae) is forbidden You can't claim a tile and immediately discard that same tile, nor claim a tile for a sequence and discard the tile from the other end of it. For example: calling a 1-pin to meld 1-2-3 pin, then discarding a 4-pin, is not allowed.

Declaring a win: the checks

① ShapeFour sets + one pair, or Seven Pairs, or Thirteen Orphans.

② GateAt least one yaku. Dora never satisfies this on its own. If the only thing your hand has going for it is dora, you cannot declare – keep playing.

③ Blocked?Furiten blocks a ron win only; self-draw is always still allowed. Discard furiten: any of your own discards would complete your hand, blocking ron on every wait for as long as it sits in your pool. Temporary furiten: you passed up a winning discard this go-around, clearing on your next draw or call. Riichi furiten: passed after declaring riichi, lasting the rest of the hand.

Special winsChankan: ron the tile an opponent adds to a melded kan. Rinshan: win on your own kan replacement, which counts as a self-draw. A concealed kan can never be robbed this way.

④ DeclareTsumo: say "tsumo," reveal, keep the winning tile visibly apart so its fu and yaku can be read. Ron: say "ron," reveal, leave the tile in the discarder's pool.

False win (chonbo)Declaring with no yaku, the wrong shape, or on a tile you're furiten on: the hand resets and the offender pays a heavy penalty to the other three players (a common value is mangan-sized). Being tenpai with no yaku at an exhaustive draw is completely fine on its own – it only becomes a chonbo if you actually declare a win without one.

07 · The Scoring Pattern Catalog

Every scoring pattern in standard play

This catalog is your hand's Value, itemized. Every pattern below is a yaku: a named hand pattern worth a set number of han. Clearing the win gate means qualifying for at least one yaku on this list – keep this section open while you decide what your hand is trying to become.

ClosedNo melded groups anywhere in your hand – a concealed kan still counts as closed. Required for riichi, pinfu, and every other CLOSED-marked yaku below.

OpenThe moment you claim a pon, kan, or chii from a discard, your hand becomes open. CLOSED-only yaku are unavailable for the rest of the hand; yaku marked ↓ still score, just for one han less.

CLOSED = closed hands only · ↓ = one han less when open

Honor Based

Value Honour役牌A triplet/quad of dragons, your seat wind, or the round wind. Each one scores; a double wind scores twice.1

Little Dragons小三元Two dragon triplets plus a pair of the third; the triplets also score as value honours.2

All Honours字一色Only winds and dragons.YKM

Little Winds小四喜Three wind triplets plus a pair of the fourth wind.YKM

Big Dragons大三元Triplets/quads of all three dragons. May trigger liability.YKM

Big Winds大四喜Triplets/quads of all four winds. May trigger liability.YKM

Sequence Based

Pinfu平和Four sequences plus a valueless pair, won on a two-sided wait. Zero fu by design. Closed hands only.1

Twin Sequences一盃口Two identical sequences: same numbers, same suit. Closed hands only.1

Double Twin Sequences二盃口Two independent pairs of twin sequences. Closed hands only.3

Mixed Sequences ↓三色同順The same sequence in all three suits. (1 han open.)2

Full Straight ↓一気通貫1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9 sequences in one suit. (1 han open.)2

Triplet Based

All Triplets対々和Four triplets/quads and a pair; no sequences.2

Mixed Triplets三色同刻The same-numbered triplet in all three suits.2

Three Concealed Triplets三暗刻Three triplets/quads formed without claiming.2

Three Quads三槓子Three kans in one hand.2

Four Concealed Triplets四暗刻Four concealed triplets/quads. Closed hands only.YKM

Four Quads四槓子Four kans. May trigger liability payment.YKM

Terminal & Honor Triplets

Common Terminals混老頭Only terminals and honours.2

Perfect Terminals清老頭Only terminals (1s and 9s), no honours.YKM

Suit Based

Common Ends ↓混全帯幺Every set and the pair contains a terminal or honour; at least one sequence and one honour. (1 han open.)2

Perfect Ends ↓純全帯幺Every set and the pair contains a terminal, no honours; at least one sequence. (2 han open.)3

Common (Half) Flush ↓混一色One suit plus honours only. (2 han open.)3

Perfect (Full) Flush ↓清一色A single suit, no honours at all. (5 han open.)6

All Green緑一色Only bamboo 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and the Green Dragon.YKM

Nine Gates九蓮宝燈1-1-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-9-9 in one suit, plus any tile of it. Closed hands only.YKM

Number Based

All Simples断幺Only 2–8 suit tiles; no terminals or honours.1

Special Hands

Seven Pairs七対子Seven different pairs. Always 25 fu. Closed hands only.2

Thirteen Orphans国士無双One of each terminal and honour, plus a duplicate of any. Closed hands only.YKM

Win Manner & Timing

Fully Concealed Hand門前清自摸和Self-draw win on a fully concealed hand. Closed hands only.1

Last Tile Draw / Claim海底 / 河底Self-draw on the wall's last tile, or ron on the very last discard.1

After a Quad嶺上開花Won on the replacement tile drawn after your own kan.1

Robbing a Quad搶槓Ron on the tile an opponent uses to promote a quad.1

Riichi-Specific Declarations

Riichi立直Declared riichi and won. Closed hands only.1

Ippatsu一発Won within one go-around of declaring riichi, no calls in between. Closed hands only.1

Double Riichiダブル立直Riichi declared on your very first discard, no calls before it. Closed hands only.2

First Round Wins (役満 unless noted): base 8,000 each

Blessing of Heaven天和East wins by self-draw on the opening deal. Closed hands only.YKM

Blessing of Earth地和A non-dealer wins by self-draw on their first draw. Closed hands only.YKM

Blessing of Man人和Ron before your first draw. Worth mangan, not a yakuman; not cumulative with anything else.5

08 · Dora

Bonus tiles, not a set type

At the deal, one tile on the dead wall is flipped face-up as the dora indicator. The indicator does not score itself – it points to the tile that does: the next tile in sequence after it. Every dora tile in your final hand is worth +1 han, on top of anything else the hand already earns.

Reading an indicator

Suit tileThe next number up, wrapping 9 back to 1. An indicator of 4-pin points to 5-pin as the dora.

WindEast → South → West → North → East. An indicator of East points to South.

DragonGreen → Red → White → Green. An indicator of Green points to Red.

Three more dora families

Kan-doraOne extra indicator flips for every kan made during the hand, by anyone.

Ura-doraHidden indicators sitting beneath the face-up ones, revealed only if you declared riichi and won.

Red fives (aka dora)If your table plays with them, each red 5 in hand is +1 han, on top of normal dora. WRC tournaments leave these out; most casual and online tables (Tenhou, Mahjong Soul) keep them in.

Dora cannot open the gate A hand whose only value is dora, including red fives, is not a legal win. You still need at least one real yaku first – dora and red fives only inflate a hand that already qualifies.

09 · Settlement

Han, fu, and the payments they set

Running bank: each player starts a hanchan with 30,000 points (WRC; many casual tables use 25,000). Every hand moves points between the four pools; no money is ever part of the rules. A hand's value is built from two units that multiply together: han (from yaku and dora, roughly doubling per han) and fu (minipoints, which only matter below 5 han – from 5 han up, fu is ignored entirely).

base = fu × 2^(2+han), capped at 2,000 · × seat & win type · round up to 100

Counting han first

Han is a running tally: every yaku your hand qualifies for (Section 07), at its listed value, plus +1 for every dora tile (Section 08). An open hand loses a han on any yaku marked ↓. Once you have the total: 1–4 han needs a fu count below; 5+ han skips fu entirely and reads straight off the limit tiers.

Counting fu (only for 1–4 han hands)

Base – 20Every hand starts here, with two shortcut shapes that skip everything else: Seven Pairs is always 25 fu, flat. Pinfu is 20 fu on a self-draw, 30 fu on ron – if either applies, you're done.

How you won+10 for ron on a closed hand (menzen kafu). +2 for self-draw (tsumo) – unless the hand is pinfu, which never takes this 2.

Triplets & kansSequences score 0. For each triplet or kan, start at 2 and double for each condition: ×2 concealed, ×2 terminal or honour, ×4 if it's a kan. A concealed terminal triplet is 2×2×2 = 8; a concealed honour kan is 32.

The pair+2 if the pair is a dragon, your seat wind, or the round wind. +4 if it's a double wind (both seat and round). Any other pair is 0.

The wait+2 for a single-sided wait: an edge wait (the 3 of a 1-2, or the 7 of an 8-9), a closed/middle wait (the gap inside a sequence), or a pair wait. A plain two-sided wait is 0 – that's what lets pinfu reach zero.

Round upRound the total up to the next 10: 22 → 30, 32 → 40, 40 stays 40.

The shortcut most players actually use After a few games you recognize the common results on sight: 20 fu is pinfu + self-draw · 25 fu is seven pairs, always · 30 fu is most open or simple hands, and pinfu by ron · 40 fu is a concealed triplet or a closed-ron hand · 50–110 is rare, mostly honour triplets and kans – count those out by hand.

Limits (5+ han: fu is ignored)

5 hanMangan (満貫) · base 2,000

6–7 hanHaneman (跳満) · base 3,000

8–10 hanBaiman (倍満) · base 4,000

11–12 hanSanbaiman (三倍満) · base 6,000

13+ hanCounted yakuman (yonbaiman) · base 8,000 · does not stack with a true yakuman

YakumanBase 8,000 per yakuman. WRC allows no double yakuman for special waits.

WRC kiriage: 4 han 30 fu and 3 han 60 fu both round up to mangan.

Two worked examples

Worked example · closed, ron, riichi + 1 dora (non-dealer)

HanRiichi (1) + All Simples (1) + 1 dora (1) = 3 han

Fubase 20 + closed ron 10 + one concealed simple triplet 4 + closed wait 2 = 36 → round up to 40 fu

Base40 fu × 2^(2+3) = 1,280

Settlementdiscarder pays 4× base = 5,120 → round up to 5,200

Winner receives5,200

Worked example · the easy case – pinfu, self-draw, riichi (non-dealer)

HanRiichi + Pinfu + Fully Concealed (tsumo) = 3 han

Fupinfu self-draw is fixed at 20 fu

Base20 fu × 2^(2+3) = 640

Settlementdealer pays 2× base = 1,280 → round up to 1,300; the other two each pay 1× base = 640 → round up to 700

Winner receives1,300 + 700 + 700 = 2,700

Settlement

RonThe discarder settles the whole amount alone: 4× base on a non-dealer win, 6× base on a dealer win.

TsumoAll three others settle. Non-dealer win: East pays 2× base, the other two pay 1× each. Dealer win: each of the three pays 2× base.

Honba+300 per continuance counter, added on top: +100 from each player on tsumo, +300 from the discarder alone on ron. The winner also collects every riichi deposit sitting on the table.

Liability (pao)Feeding the final piece of Big Dragons, Big Winds, or Four Quads: the liable player settles that yakuman in full on a self-draw, or splits it with the discarder on ron.

Optional – converting points to a table stake Tables that want to track a stake can agree a flat rate per point before play starts. This is a table convention layered on top of the score, never part of the rules.

10 · The Full Game

Rounds, ranking, and the finish

HanchanEast round plus South round, four hands or more each (repeats add hands). A round ends when the original East player returns to the East seat. WRC plays no West or North round.

Dealer repeatEast stays on by winning, or by being tenpai at an exhaustive draw (tenpai renchan); each repeat adds a honba. Otherwise the South player becomes East, everyone shifts one seat counterclockwise, and honba reset.

Tonpuusen – the short game Many casual and online tables play a tonpuusen (East round only) for a quicker session. WRC's competitive standard is the full East + South hanchan.

Exhaustive draw

If the live wall runs out with no winner, players reveal whether they are tenpai (ready) or noten (not), declaring in turn from East. The noten side collectively pays the tenpai side:

1 noten playerPays 3,000 – each of the three tenpai players collects 1,000.

2 noten playersEach pays 1,500 – each of the two tenpai players collects 1,500.

3 noten playersEach pays 1,000 – the lone tenpai player collects all 3,000.

0 or 4 notenNo payment either way.

Riichi deposits stay on the table for the next winner. A tenpai player may choose to declare noten and hide their hand – except after declaring riichi, which forces a tenpai reveal.

Session end

When it endsThe hanchan ends when the South round's final hand resolves, or when a time limit is reached.

No agari-yameEast cannot stop the game by winning the last hand while in the lead. Under a time limit, when the gong sounds, players finish the current hand and play one more (or two, if a hand had just ended).

AbortsNone under WRC: no nine-terminals, four-winds, or four-kan aborts. No fifth kan is allowed. No nagashi mangan. No bankruptcy: play continues below zero.

Determining the winner

Players rank by final points, adjusted by uma placement bonuses (+15,000 / +5,000 / −5,000 / −15,000, split on ties). The break-even point is 30,000, with no oka. Across a tournament, the player with the highest sum of hanchan scores wins; recommended tiebreakers are most first places, then fewest fourth places, then highest single hanchan.

Frequently Asked

Questions players actually ask

Can pinfu's pair be an honor tile?

Yes, but only a guest wind – one that's neither your seat wind nor the round wind. Dragons and valued winds are never allowed, because those pairs already carry their own yaku value on their own, and pinfu specifically requires a “valueless” pair. If your pair is a dragon or a valued wind, the hand doesn't qualify for pinfu (though the pair might still score its own separate yaku).

I called chii to complete one of my sequences – does my hand still count as pinfu?

No. Pinfu requires the entire hand to be fully concealed, not just the pair or the wait. Calling chii still leaves every set as a sequence, so the shape looks right, but any call – chii included – breaks the closed status pinfu depends on. It's not that chii specifically is banned; it's that pinfu is really “all sequences + closed,” and chii ends “closed.”

If two players can both ron the same discard, do they both win?

No – only one. The win goes to whichever eligible player sits nearest counterclockwise after the discarder (the “head-bump”); how fast anyone calls doesn't matter. There's only ever one winner per hand.

After calling a tile to complete a sequence, can I discard the tile from the other end of that same run?

No. This is called swap-calling (kuikae), and it's forbidden two ways: you can't claim a tile and immediately discard that exact same tile back, and you can't claim a tile to complete a sequence and then discard the tile from the other end of that same run. For example, calling a 1-dot to meld 1-2-3 dot and then discarding a 4-dot right after isn't allowed – it's functionally the same swap.

Can I rob a concealed kan (ankan) the way I can rob an open one?

No. Robbing the kan (chankan) only applies to a kan made by adding a tile to an already-exposed pon – that's the one moment where the completing tile is out in the open before it's folded into the meld. A concealed kan is placed all at once, straight from your hand, so there's no equivalent moment to rob. Declaring an ankan is always safe from chankan.

Does this ruleset use red fives (aka dora)?

Not by default – the WRC 2025 tournament ruleset this book follows leaves them out entirely. If your table wants them, it's a common house addition worth +1 han per red 5 you hold, but it isn't part of the standard ruleset taught in this chapter.

Does the dealer keep their seat after winning, or does it always rotate?

The dealer stays if East wins, with a continuance counter (honba) added. It's not a fixed rule regardless of outcome, though – on a draw it depends on East's own status: if East is tenpai, the deal repeats and a honba is added; if East is noten, the deal rotates like a loss and all honba reset.

What happens if the hand ends in a draw?

If the live wall runs out with no winner, every player reveals whether they're tenpai or noten. The noten side collectively pays 3,000 points to the tenpai side, split evenly across however many players are on each side – so a lone tenpai player collects the full 3,000, while three tenpai players each collect 1,000 from a single noten player, and so on. Whether the dealer stays afterward depends on East's own tenpai status (see above).

Japanese Riichi

The whole game at a glance