American Mahjong Card Hands

American Mahjong is built around card hands. Instead of making any legal hand, you choose a pattern and improve your tiles toward that pattern.

Practice while you read Open the American Mahjong trainer to try the Charleston, jokers and card-style hands.

Read the pattern first

Look for required suits, repeated numbers, flowers, winds, dragons and pairs.

A good beginner target is one where your natural tiles already match several parts of the pattern.

Pairs must be natural. Jokers cannot complete a pair, so protect useful natural pairs during the Charleston.

Groups of three or more are more flexible because jokers can often help them.

This site uses original practice patterns for learning. It does not reproduce official yearly cards.

The goal is to understand the flow so real card play feels less confusing later.

No. It uses original practice patterns for training.

Choose a pattern that already matches your strongest natural tiles and useful jokers.