SLOPER ON MAH-JONGG

By Tom Sloper
March 22, 2026
Column #815

American Mah Jongg (2026 NMJL card).

The new card is here, and it's almost two weeks early!

First thing most people will notice is the flower sextet hands. You need a bouquet of SIX! There are two such hands. One sextet is in Any Like Numbers (#1). The other is in Consecutive Run (#6). While we're admiring bouquets, check out 2468 #7 - two flower pungs (six flowers, but bitesize chunks). There's another two-pung bouquet in Winds-Dragons (#5). No kongs of flowers this year.

A noteworthy new thing is the use of E and W in 2468. Those two winds are traditionally associated with even numbers (E for East, E for Even), and now there's an E-W hand (dare I say "line"?) in 2468. Which should draw your attention next to Odds. 13579 #3 is a N-S hand. Pairs of N and S bookend low odds or high odds. The 2468 E-W hand is four pairs, making it harder, raising its value to 30. The 13579 hand is only three pairs, but it, too, is valued at 30.

Another noteworthy feature of this card is the "chow" (a 3-number 3-tile sequential run) in Consec (#2). There's a 4-number 4-tile sequential run in W-D (#2). Don't call that one a chow, though. Because it's not a chow. It's a four-number Rummy run.

The perennial "most powerful hand on the card" is at the #4 spot in Consec this year. It's a pung-pung-kong-kong structure this year, one suit or two, two pungs in the first suit and two kongs in the second. Look for its cousin hands in Evens (2468 #1) and Odds (13579 #2) and 369 (#1). These hands are on the card every year, in alternating structures. Last year the structure was pung-kong-pung-kong (one suit or two suits, a pung and a kong in each suit). These hands can sometimes be confused for one another, when a player is displaying two exposures. That's one of the things that makes Consec #4 the most powerful hand on the card; another is the absence of any pairs, which make jokers "universal donors" of sorts, usable in every part of the hand. A third thing that makes Consec #4 so powerful is its flexibility. Since you can use any consecutive numbers, it's easy to shift numbers, at least until the time that you have two exposures. It's a regular-value hand that's easy to make, is extremely flexible, and can be mistaken for cousin hands. That makes this the most powerful hand on the card. "The most powerful line on the card" doesn't ring for me, but if that sounds more like it to you, that works too!

Another feature? Three-dragon hands. I call your attention to Any Like #2 (3 singles), W-D #2 (two pungs and a kong), and S&P #1 (3 singles).

Also of note, someone on social media pointed out that exposures of two same-number pungs are a dead giveaway: the only hands/lines on the card that can use same-number pungs are Concealed hands: 2468 #8 (eights) and Consec #8 (any number from 3 to 8).

麻雀

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Questions about the 2025 NMJL card? See FAQ 16

Where to order the yearly NMJL card: Read FAQ 7i. But you're missing a bet if you don't order your NMJL card directly from the National Mah Jongg League! You'll thank me later.

Need rules for American mah-jongg? Tom Sloper's book, The Red Dragon & The West Wind, is the most comprehensive book about the American game, a good supplement to the League's official rulebook. Note that every owner of the book also needs the errata, which are updated ongoing, as needed. AND see FAQ 19 for fine points of the American rules (and commonly misunderstood rules). AND every player should have a copy of Mah Jongg Made Easy, the official rulebook of the National Mah Jongg League (see FAQ 3 for info on mah-jongg books).

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