Two cards. Seventy hands each. Free.

You've played off a card for years. Have you ever stopped to ask what it is? Here's the unglamorous truth: the card is a menu. A list of winning hands — each one a recipe of fourteen tiles — that says what counts as mahj this season and what it pays. You pick a hand, you build toward it, you change your mind twice, and somebody at the table wins before you do. That's the game, and it's wonderful.

The card itself was never the magic. The magic is the table. So we built a card the way a menu ought to be built — every hand tested before it's served, organized so you can find what you're hungry for — and then we did the one thing nobody expected. We made it free. This year, next year, every year.

Reading a hand

Every line on the card is one winning hand: fourteen tiles, read left to right, points at the end. Spaces split the line into groups — the building blocks you collect. The shorthand, in full:

• 1–9 — number tiles. 33 is a pair of 3s; 2222 is four of a kind; 135 is a 1, a 3, and a 5 in one suit of your choice.
• 0 — the White Dragon, better known as the Soap.
• D — any one dragon, your pick.
• R / G — the Red or Green Dragon, exactly.
• Z — any one wind, your pick.
• N, E, W, S — that wind, exactly. NEWS — one of each.
• F — any flower.
• C — a concealed hand: nothing exposed until you win.

That's the whole alphabet. Ten minutes with it and the card stops being a puzzle and starts being a menu.

Our sections

Nine sections. Ours, named by us, and organized by how the hands are actually built — easy at the top of each, showpiece at the bottom.

1. High Fives — every hand holds a five-tile group — usually five of a kind, more copies than the set carries of most tiles. This is joker country; bring snacks.
2. Small Wonders — the singles and pairs that carry these hands are exactly where jokers can't go.
3. The Compass Club — hands that ride the four winds. Membership is open; the dues are luck.
4. Dragon's Hoard — dragons stacked like treasure. Guard yours.
5. Full Bloom — four flowers or more in every hand. For players who also deadhead the petunias.
6. Echo Echo — pick one number and let it bounce around the whole hand.
7. Leapfrog — skip-counting hands. 1-3-5 energy, all the way down.
8. Step by Step — numbers marching in order. The scenic route.
9. Kitchen Sink — a little of everything, cheerfully combined.

Jokers, in three rules

Three rules, and the table runs itself:

1. Jokers live in big matched groups. Any printed group of three or more identical tiles can seat a joker.
2. Everything else is sacred. Never a pair, never a single, never a run like 135, never NEWS — those tiles must be the real thing.
3. In a big matched group, a joker is whatever you need. A 7, a dragon, a wind, a flower — the group decides, the joker obliges.

Count the tiles in the group, and check they're identical. That's the whole test. Flowers all count as the same tile for this test.

Points, honestly

Here's how points have traditionally been set: by feel. Experienced feel, respectable feel — but feel. We did it differently, because we could. Before any hand earns a line on our card, we deal it and play it in simulation, over and over, far past the point of reasonableness, and watch how often it actually gets finished. Hands that come home easily pay 25. Hands that make you earn it pay 50 and up. The number on the line is measured difficulty, not somebody's hunch.

Two things we'll say plainly, because plainly is how we'd want it said to us. Our points won't always match what tradition would have charged for a similar-looking hand — when feel and evidence disagreed, we went with the evidence. And the numbers are estimates: excellent ones, built on more dealt hands than any of us will see in a lifetime, but estimates. As real tables play real games, they'll keep sharpening, and when they move, we'll tell you.

Read the full notation guide →

The card is sitting right there — free to download, prints on plain paper, readable at arm's length without anyone pretending they don't need their glasses. Print four copies. Text the group. Put out the good snacks. Somewhere in the second hour, somebody will win off a section called Kitchen Sink and laugh about it, and that's the whole business plan working as intended.

Play it this week, while the opinions are fresh. The card is yours now — it can take it.