Peter Gao

I am a code writer, pickleballer, video gamer, manga reader, and graphic design dilettante. I love and suck at Riichi Mahjong.

This is the standard teaching method we use at Queen City Riichi. Like most existing teaching methods, we introduce rules one at a time, but instead of “teaching yakuless mahjong then yaku”, we start with the idea of riichi, before we even teach chii and pon (read the Hands-on Time section for details). Benefits of this teaching method are as follows:

  1. since we start by requiring beginners to call riichi before winning, the idea of yaku as a winning requirement will be a natural progression and much easier to digest
    • in contrast, in our old teaching method, we first teach people to win with just x sets and 1 pair, allowing chii and pon. When we finally introduce yaku, we have to contradict the previous teachings by saying “now you can’t win without yaku; riichi is a yaku; if you chii or pon you can’t riichi”. This is a lot of rule changes to take in at once and often where the beginners get confused and frustrated.
  2. This helps beginners form three good habits:
    • they will learn what a “ready hand” is and to always check if their hand is ready (this will also help with their reasoning/efficiency)
    • they will learn to plan for riichi or another yaku (when we taught chii and pon before yaku, the beginners tend to open blindly and hope for an impossible yaku later, since they are used to winning without a yaku)
    • they will understand the timing of riichi and call it whenever possible

Overall Ideas

  • Repeat each step as necessary.
  • After introducing each major rule, ask students to build valid hands from revealed tiles, to check/reinforce their understanding.
    • Credit to Marcus from Riichi NoCo for this great idea!
  • Explain basic efficiency (e.g., why someone shouldn’t cut number tiles if they have a singleton honor).
  • Play with revealed hands first; switch to concealed hands once students are comfortable with the basic efficiency and game flow.
  • Avoid unnecessarily explaining rules that “come up” (i.e., don’t mention furiten when the students are still learning chii)

Hands-on Time

  1. Initial setup:
    • replace any special tiles with regular tiles to minimize confusion (e.g., red fives -> normal fives).
    • start with pinzu and souzu tiles only. Explain the deck composition (2 suits of numbers 1-9, 4 copies each).
    • explain the goal: building 1 pair and 2 sets – a complete hand has 8 tiles.
  2. Leave the tiles face up in the middle. Ask the students to construct a valid 8-tile hand from all available tiles.
  3. draw a random 7-tile starting hand as the shared hand of the table. Engage the students in a “draw and discard” exercise to demonstrate how to complete a hand from scratch.
  4. introduce tsumo: play a game where the only valid way to win is tsumo.
  5. introduce riichi and ron: in order to win from other players, a student must declare riichi after getting a ready hand. Make a reference to “UNO!” if you’d like.
  6. add in honors. Now play for 1 pair + 4 sets.
  7. introduce 3 beginner yaku: tanyao, toitoi, honitsu.
    • ask students to construct valid hands from face-up tiles that must include one of those yaku
    • emphasize that now they can call ron without riichi – just need to have (another) yaku.
  8. introduce the 4th beginner yaku: yakuhai.
  9. add in pon and chii; explain that stealing tiles disables riichi.
  10. add in manzu tiles

Quick Reference:

  1. pinzu + souzu. 1 pair + 2 sets.
    • practice building full hands from all available tiles
    • show how to “draw and discard” to complete a hand from scratch
  2. tsumo.
  3. riichi and ron.
  4. honors. 1 pair + 4 sets.
  5. tanyao, toitoi, honitsu.
  6. yakuhai.
  7. chii + pon = no riichi.
  8. manzu.

Going into the weeds

Once the students are confident with the above rules, introduce these:

  1. furiten (“can’t call ron on ANY tile if you discarded one of your waits, etc.”).
    • Unlike teaching yakuless mahjong, which can lead to a bad habit of going yakuless, it’s okay to omit furiten in the beginning, since players won’t form a bad habit of going furiten if they play the game normally.
  2. simplified scoring system (1k -> 2k -> 4k -> 8k -> 12k, etc.)
  3. dora and kan

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