Mahjong Tiles (cont.)

Matching Tiles in Mahjong Tiles

In five of the seven suits, you can only match tiles that are exactly identical by number and picture. You can't match tiles that have the same number only. Two tiles with 9 of Circles match, but a 9 of Circles and a 9 of Bamboo don't match.

In two special suits, Seasons and Flowers, you can match any tiles in that suit. In Seasons, you can match any of the seasons together (Spring and Winter or Summer and Fall, for example). In Flowers, you can match any of the flowers together.


Note that the tiles you get in a game will depend on the number of tiles in the layout, so not all layouts will include Seasons and Flowers.

Notes and tips:Sometimes a tile will have more than one free match. In this case, try to remove tiles that free up other tiles in preference to stand-alone tiles

Note: Next I will post some simple strategies to play Mahjong Tiles.

Mahjong Tiles (cont.)

How to Play Mahjong Tiles

Mahjong Tiles can be played with one or two players. In Mahjong Tiles, you try to find and remove matching tiles. You can only match tiles that are "free" and can be removed without moving other tiles. You can play with one or two players.

The layouts of Mahjong Tiles beside the classic layout as above, also can be customized in any shapes or layouts that you like, examples heart, apple, blocks, bridge, pyramid and etc.

There are many versions of Mahjong Tiles been developed for computer games.

To play Mahjong Tiles, find pairs of matching tiles, and remove the matched tiles from the layout. Only tiles with no other tiles on top of them, and at least one side exposed (left or right side not touching another tile) are considered free and can be removed. Both tiles must be free.
Keep matching pairs until there are no more pairs in the layout, trying to end with the fewest tiles remaining. The game ends if there are no more matches, and you can then stop and begin a new game, or reshuffle the remaining tiles and continue to try to solve the puzzle.

When playing with 2 players in head-to-head play, players take turns finding matches on a shared layout. Timer can be set, so that players must find a match within the time allocated, or lose his turn. The player who find most matches win the game.

Mahjong Tiles

Background
Mahjong Tiles (sometimes known as Taipei) is a simplification of Mah Jongg, which itself is an American simplification of a Chinese game of the 19th century. (The Chinese original was played by different rules and known by different names throughout that country; one name that's come down to us translates roughly as "Game of the Four Winds.")

An American businessman named Joseph Babcock, who was living in Shanghai at the close of World War I, played the Chinese game and fell in love with it. He thought it would appeal to Americans, so he set about codifying (and streamlining) the rules. Babcock coined the name Mah Jongg for the new version; supposedly, he took this name from the bird that appears on one of the game's tiles. The bird represents a mythical figure called by the Chinese (this is an approximation) Mah Jongg, "Bird of a Thousand Intelligences."

Babcock might not have been as smart as that bird, but his hunch about the gaming marketplace was sound. Mah Jongg became a thunderous hit in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia in the 1920s. The game is still played today, though it no longer commands an army of fanatics as it did 70 years ago.Mah Jongg is superficially similar to Dominoes in that both games use tiles, or bones, and because the arrangement of the tiles forms the "board." Mahjong Tiles shares that similarity with Dominoes; it also resembles certain card games, such as Solitaire, where uncovering hidden cards is the order of the day.

** Note: Next I will talk about how to play Mahjong Tiles.

Start of Blog for Rules of Games

I always interested in a lot of classic games, board games, card games and etc.
So I decided to setup a blog to post all the rules of games that I know or found.