Best for groups who know basic mahjong and want a fast, lively four-player game with bonus-tile payouts and a low one-tai win gate.
Singaporean uses the complete base set – all three suits, all seven honours, and the full flowers-and-seasons bonus group – then adds one extra group that gives the variant its character: the four animals.
The goal. A winning hand is 14 tiles: four sets, plus one pair – or Thirteen Orphans, the one non-standard shape allowed, and itself a maximum hand. 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.
Any combination of these counts. Your hand does not need one of each.
No Seven Pairs here, unlike Riichi and several other variants – a winning hand is always four sets plus a pair, or Thirteen Orphans.
To win, your hand must pass both checks
The floor is low enough that most ordinary hands clear it on a single dragon pung, a seat flower, a self-drawn win, or a half flush.
After any claim, the claimed tile joins the exposed group, the claimer discards, and play resumes from the claimer. Players skipped by the claim lose their turn that round.
Four extra bonus tiles beyond the usual flowers and seasons: Cat (貓), Mouse (鼠), Rooster (雞), Centipede (蟲). They behave like flowers in every mechanical sense – melded face-up the moment they're drawn, replaced from the dead wall's tail, never part of a set – but they carry their own payout rules on top.
This catalogue is your hand's Value, itemized. Every pattern below adds tai, and clearing the 1-tai win gate means qualifying for at least one of them: keep this section open while you decide what your hand is trying to become.
Direct payout: no starting point pool, no running bank. Add up the tai from every scoring pattern the hand qualifies for (Section 08), then convert that tai total into points with the doubling table below. Points, not tai, are what actually change hands.
| Tai | Score |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 8 |
| 5 or more | 16 |
The score doubles for each tai up to four, then caps: any hand of 5 tai or more is worth a flat 16-point base score. Several patterns already include the tai for their own components, noted where relevant in Section 08, so you don't double-count.
Who pays, and how much, depends on how the hand was won and whether a pay-for-all player is on the hook (below).
A single dangerous discard can make one player liable for the whole table's share. The common triggers:
Separate from the hand's main settlement, several bonus-tile events pay out the moment they happen, mid-hand:
"Each" in the bonus-tile table means from each of the other three players. A concealed kong of tiles you were dealt does not trigger (it was not "drawn later"); a kong completed during play does. These bonus settlements are handled immediately and are separate from the hand's main settlement.
Only if you're waiting on more than one tile. A pair wait – waiting only to complete your final pair – doesn't qualify for a discard win under this pattern. Any other wait shape (two-sided, edge, closed) is fine.
Almost – self-draw works for any wait type, with one specific exception: if you've melded (exposed) all four chows and are only waiting to complete your pair, even a self-draw doesn't count for this pattern.
The pair can't be a dragon or a valued wind (your seat wind or the prevailing wind), but a guest wind (any other wind) is fine.
The wait rules and pair restriction are identical. The only difference is animal, flower, and season tiles: Little (Smelly) Ping Hu allows them, full Ping Hu (4 tai) requires you to have none at all.
No – only one. The player nearer in turn order after the discarder takes it. There's only ever one winner per hand.
No – this pattern is worded around exposed pungs specifically (“if an opponent adds a fourth tile to an exposed pung”). A concealed kong is placed all at once from your own hand, so there's no equivalent moment to rob.
East keeps the deal on both a win and any drawn hand – the dealer only changes when a non-dealer wins. Unlike Riichi, where repeating as dealer adds a small per-hand bonus (honba), Singaporean adds nothing extra for the repeat itself, and the dealer pays and is paid on exactly the same scale as everyone else.
No other reveal or settlement step – a drawn hand is simply a draw, no points change hands, and the dealer keeps their seat for the next one.
No – several of them settle instantly, the moment they're completed, paid by every other player, regardless of whether you go on to win the hand at all (or even if you later lose). This covers concealed kongs, melded kongs, Wedding (holding both the flower and season matching your own seat wind), Bite (a matched animal pair – Rooster+Centipede or Cat+Mouse), and completing the full Flower Set or Animal Set. These are settled the instant they happen, separately from whatever the hand's main settlement ends up being.
Yes, and it's the opposite of what you'd expect – being dealt the completing tile as part of your starting hand actually pays more (4 points from each other player) than finishing the same pair later during play (2 points each). Concealed and melded kongs work differently: they only pay out if completed during play at all – an already-complete kong sitting in your starting hand doesn't trigger anything.
Not right away. This is the “sacred discard” rule – after you discard a tile, or after you pass on a tile you could have claimed, you're locked out of claiming an identical tile (to win or to pung) until after your own next turn. The one exception is chow: you can still chow a tile you're otherwise locked out of.
A handful of specific danger zones, mostly tied to how low the wall is or how far along a big hand looks. With 7 or fewer tiles left in the wall, discarding any fresh tile not yet seen makes you pay-for-all if it's claimed for a kong. Drop to 5 or fewer, and the same applies to a discard that's claimed to win outright. Separately, if an opponent already has 4+ tai showing in melded animals, flowers, or honor pungs, or two dragon pungs, three wind pungs, or 3+ tiles of one suit melded, discarding the exact tile that completes their big pattern (a dragon, their wind, the matching suit, and so on) makes you liable for the whole table if they win big enough off it.
You don't just pay your own share – you absorb what the other two players would have settled too. On a discard win you caused, you alone pay the full 4× the score; on a self-draw you enabled, you alone pay the full 6×. Everyone else at the table pays nothing for that hand.
This is a guide to Singaporean Mahjong, built from community-sourced Singaporean mahjong references (Singaporean_Mahjong_Reference.pdf).
Played it differently at your table, or think there's a more common way to run a rule? Let us know – genuinely appreciated, and repeated feedback can shape a revision.
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