Workshop: Scoring Hands
Designed for players who know the basic rules but have not learned how the hands are scored exactly. Presented at Longhorn Riichi’s second meeting in Fall 2023 (9/23/2023).
Why Learn Hand-Scoring?
To motivate learning hand-scoring, we’ll first go over why placement is important in Japanese Mahjong.
After each Riichi game ends, players receive a bonus/penalty based on their placement, which can be easily worth tens of thousands of points. For example, in our club rules, the placement bonus spread for 4-player South games is +16/+8/-8/-16, which means, e.g., first place receives 16,000 points’ worth of bonus, while the last place loses the same amount.
As a result, our goal in each hand is to end up with a (more) favorable placement. To do this, we need to know how the hands are scored so we can predict how the placements may change if we take different actions (e.g., “if I open this hand, this hand will only be worth 1000 points, which is not enough to pull me out of 4th, so I will keep this hand closed”).
Overview
A hand’s score depends on the following:
- whether you are dealer
- whether you won by ron or tsumo
- number of han (from yaku and dora)
- number of fu (explained later)
- number of dealership repeats (+300 for each repeat in yonma)
For example, if you tsumo’d a 3-han 30-fu hand as dealer with 0 repeat, everyone at the table pays you 2000 points.
What the Fu?
Some call fu the “mini-points” because its influence on the score is small relative to han.
Here’s how fu is calculated:
- some hands have a fixed fu value (e.g., seven-pairs is always 25 fu)
- for other hands, you start with 20 base fu. You’ll add fu for each criteria you meet (see table below), and round the sum to the next 10.
Example
I am not the dealer, and the dealer has dealt into my following hand with 
. The dora indicator is 
. There is one dealership repeat. How much will the dealer pay me?
- han: 2 (pure straight in open hand +1, dora +1)
- fu: 30 (base 20, one 2~8 pon +2, round to next 10)
The dealer will pay me 2300 points (2-han 30-fu non-dealer ron: 2000, one repeat +300).
Challenge
The first person to answer this correctly gets a mahjong tile sticker!
You are the dealer, and Peter has dealt into your following hand with . The dora indicator is . There is one dealership repeat. How much will Peter pay you?
Click to Reveal Answer
Peter will pay you 6100 points (3-han 30-fu dealer ron: 5800, one repeat +300).
+2) +8, single wait +2, exactly 30)
Practical Advice
It takes a lot of practice to be able to score quickly. If you are a beginner, it is sufficient to remember this much during each hand: 1-han hands are ≈ 1000, 2-han ≈ 2000, 3-han ≈ 4000, 4-han ≈ 8000. You can use the reference sheet and/or our business card to help with scoring a hand precisely. If you absolutely don’t feel like doing it, you can use online score calculators like this one.
Relevant Links
If you want a more comprehensive guide (e.g., the formula for score given fu and han), you can refer to Japanese Mahjong Scoring Rules from riichi.wiki.
In case of confusion, you can use a score calculator like this one
Use this Riichi scoring trainer so you can train to score faster.