Check out the video below for a summary of the concepts taught in this post!
As mentioned in our post about scoring basics, another way to add to your score is via Special Bonuses. These occur most often based on the circumstances of your win. Remember that multipliers stack, so the more, the better. They also raise the Ceiling of your score, allowing you to make hands worth BIG money! Let's get into it!
Doubled Score Events
Certain situations lead to the winning score being doubled for a round. This applies to the Ceiling, too, which becomes 100x the value of a Flower instead. We recommend having something like a coin next to the table to track when a round is doubled.
The first situation is when no tiles are left in the Mahjong wall, and no player completes a winning hand. This would result in a tie for that round and cause the next round's scores and Ceiling to double.
The second situation depends on the dice thrown at the beginning of the game. If the two numbers thrown are identical, then scores and Ceiling are doubled for the round. Furthermore, you might notice that the 1 and 4 on Authentic Mahjong dice are coloured red. If you enjoy doubled hands, you can add another rule that if a 1 and 4 comes up, the round is doubled too.
If more than one of these happens in the same round, you can either choose to QUADRUPLE scores for the round or just also double the next round.
Self-Drawn vs Taken from Others
Whenever you create a winning hand, you collect money from other players based on the value of your hand. However, who you collect from depends on where the winning tile came from.
If you draw the winning tile from the Mahjong wall yourself, it is known as Tsumo (or Zimo in Chinese pinyin), and you collect money from all the other players.
However, if you take the winning tile from someone else's discard, then you would only collect money from the player who discarded the tile.
Draw from Back of the Wall
Whenever you first acquire a Flower tile, perform a Kong, or perform a Self Kong, you must draw a tile from the back of the wall to replace it. If you draw a winning tile from this, then you earn a 2x multiplier on your score.
Note that these all qualify as Tsumo (since you are still drawing the tile yourself), so you would collect money from all players. However, in the case of Kong, the player who discarded the tile that allowed you to Kong would be responsible for paying for all three players.
Stolen Kong
This is a niche rule that only occurs very, very rarely. However, it is quite fun when it happens, so we figured we might as well include it! Here's the situation:
If a player does a Pung, then they will have a Matching Set of 3 revealed in front of them. If, later in the round, they draw the fourth copy of the tile, they would be able to Kong and create a Matching Set of 4. However, if the tile in question was the tile someone else needed to create a winning hand, then that player could steal the Kong. There is no extra multiplier for this, but the player who attempted the Kong would then have to pay in place of the other players.
Essentially, the player who steals the Kong earns the same money he would have gotten from a Tsumo, but it all comes from the player who attempted the Kong. Note that this rule does not apply to a regular Kong where a player directly creates a revealed Matching Set of 4, nor to Self Kongs.
Last Tile Fishing
If you have 4 revealed Sets in front of you, then you are left with only one hidden tile in your hand. This is what we call "fishing" (or Dan Diao in Chinese, which is more like a construction crane), as you are only trying to find that last tile to complete your final pair.
If you manage to acquire the last tile, then the value of your hand receives a 2x multiplier. This rule rewards people for taking the risk of relying on only one tile to win.
Clean Win
If you have no revealed sets at the moment before you create a winning hand, this is known as a clean win and applies a 2x multiplier to your score This means you cannot have done any Chow, Pung, or Kong throughout the game since these would have led to revealed sets. Self Kongs are allowed in a clean win since you technically drew them all yourself, even though they are revealed.
You can still take the winning tile from another player when achieving a clean win.
Final Tile Win
If you create a winning hand using the final tile in the Mahjong wall, you get a 2x multiplier to your score.
"If you are not ready to win, you are allowed to not draw the final tile. This saves you from having to risk an additional discard at the end of the game!"
Heavenly and Earthly Hands
These are so incredibly rare that some Mahjong players may not even remember they exist. We're not sure if there is even a reasonable value to assign to them, so you can decide that yourself! They are so rare, in fact, that Tim's parents (who have played Mahjong since they were in high school) have collectively only seen one Earthly hand EVER.
A Heavenly hand is when your initial 14 tiles form a winning hand. This can only be achieved by the player going first since they are the only one with 14 tiles at the start of the game.
An Earthly hand is when a player forms a winning hand using the first tile discarded. This can only be achieved by players not going first since the first player has to be the one discarding it. When a second tile is discarded, Earthly hands are no longer possible.
If you ever achieve one of these, please let us know because it really is something to memorialize in a picture frame somewhere.
8 Flower Tiles
You know when we said Heavenly and Earthly hands were rare (like about one paragraph ago)? Well, here's one more fun situation you'd be lucky to encounter!
If a player ever acquires all 8 Flower Tiles in one round, then they automatically win the round. We're not sure about the statistics on this, but let's just say Tim's parents haven't even seen this one happen...
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