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By Tom Sloper
February 22, 2026 Column #813 |
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By Tom Sloper
February 22, 2026 Column #813 |
American Mah Jongg (NMJL card and rules). A lot of people today are learning the NMJL game from social media (getting many varied answers) or from books (newly written books by newly minted authors). There are even new books titled Mah Jongg Made Easy, "borrowing" the title of the NMJL's official rulebook. More than once, I've seen Facebook posts by people who were confused by conflicting information from new books, so I decided to check out these new books myself.
Mahjong Made Easy | How to Play Mahjong for Beginners, by Caleb Martin: This book does not describe American mah-jongg, except for a partial page in the back of the book. Recommendation: if you want to learn American (NMJL) mah-jongg, do not buy this one.
American Mah Jongg Made Easy (Subtitle omitted due to my word count limit) by Ethan M. Zhou: Poorly written, with broad brushstrokes lacking detail. But worse, there are factual inaccuracies (for example, East deals to the players; double score for winning on the last tile from the wall...). Recommendation: Do not buy.
American Mah Jongg Unlocked (Subtitle omitted) by Astrid Amira Young: This book seems to have been written by AI. There are several incorrect descriptions of rules, and a lot of repetition and unnecessary text that does not clarify. In the early chapters, just about every paragraph ends the same way, words to the effect that "Mastery of this concept will allow you to play with confidence and skill." Examples of incorrect rules in this book: Honor tiles play pivotal roles in specialty hands (special hands are a concept in other forms of mah-jongg, not NMJL); Discards should be placed in rows of six (orderly discards are a feature of Chinese Competition Rules and Japanese riichi/dora majan, not NMJL); Flowers factor into bonus points (that's a feature of many Asian variants, not NMJL); Players select a wind tile to determine seat position (that's a feature of many Asian variants, not NMJL). Recommendation: do not buy.
American Mah Jongg for Beginners (Subtitle omitted), by Noah Pierce: this book is frequently touted on Facebook by Shia Zena, who might possibly be Noah Pierce. I did not find many factual errors in this book (I did see that Pierce says discards should be orderly rather than haphazard, which is incorrect as noted above). There were many places, though, where sentence construction seems like Chinese sentence construction. It's as if the book was written by someone raised bilingual in Chinese and English. Recommendation: okay to buy. But note: there is another book with the same title (American Mahjong for Beginners) by Ronald J. Grubbs, below. That one is complete garbled nonsense. It even cites "the National Mah Jongg the League of Legends Inc." Stay away from Grubbs' book for sure!
In conclusion: buy any book you want, as a secondary source, even my book, The Red Dragon & The West Wind, but if you are going to play NMJL rules, you need the official NMJL rulebook, Mah Jongg Made Easy, as your primary source on American rules.
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