Mahjong in Japan: How Riichi Works, and Why Four Dora Still Won't Win
A hand holding four dora can be worth zero. In riichi the bonus multiplies a hand that already scores, which is why a newcomer's first month at a Japanese table usually produces dozens of dead hands.
Thirteen tiles, four dora, no yaku
Two bamboo pungs, a run of circles, a pair of dragons and four dora scattered through the hand. You draw the tile you were waiting on, close it, and the player across the table says it doesn't count. Nothing was misplayed. The hand has no yaku.
Riichi sets a floor. Every hand needs at least one named pattern, and dora is not on that list. Dora multiplies. It adds han to a hand that already scores, and zero times four is still zero.
That one rule is the first break from the Hong Kong game most beginners meet, where the table asks for 3 fan and the entire argument is about value. Here the question lands earlier: does this hand have a name?
136 tiles, and fourteen nobody draws
The Japanese set holds 136 tiles, 34 faces in four copies. The eight flowers and seasons stay in the box, and that subtraction is not about saving material. It makes room for the dead wall: fourteen tiles set aside in seven stacks.
The dead wall works for a living. Every kan draws its replacement from it, and the dora indicator is flipped from it before the first discard. Anyone counting tiles to know when the wall runs dry has to subtract those fourteen first.
The indicator also trips up visitors. It is not the dora. The dora is the next tile in suit order: a 3 of bamboo points at the 4, a 9 wraps back to the 1. Honors wrap on their own track, with North pointing at East and the red dragon pointing at the white.
Riichi is a bet, not a style
Only a closed hand can declare. You need to be one tile from winning, hold at least 1,000 points, and push exactly that to the middle of the table. Then the hand freezes: draw, discard what you drew, change nothing until you win or somebody wins first.
The stick is not yours. Whoever takes the hand collects it, even from the far side of the table, and a drawn hand leaves it lying there to stack up for the next one.
Those 1,000 points buy three rights. Ura dora, the tile hidden under the indicator and turned face up only for a riichi winner. Ippatsu, a win inside one full turn and before anyone calls. And the right to win without ever opening the hand. With fewer than four tiles left in the live wall, no declaration is allowed.
Furiten: your own discard shuts the door
If a tile that completes your hand is already sitting in your own discard pile, you cannot claim a discard from anyone. A self-draw still wins. That rule covers the whole hand, bet or no bet.
There is a second door. Letting a winning discard pass also puts you in furiten, and after a riichi declaration it holds until the hand ends.
Which is why riichi players check their own pile before settling on a wait. The probability side, suji and safe tiles, sits in Mahjong and luck. This page stays on the rule.
What the hand actually pays
One han is the floor. One han at 30 fu pays 1,000 to a non-dealer and 1,500 to the dealer. Above that the table moves in fixed steps: 8,000 at mangan, 12,000 at haneman, 16,000 at baiman, 24,000 at sanbaiman and 32,000 at yakuman, all on a non-dealer's card.
A game starts at 25,000 and returns 30,000. Finishing on 25,000 is a loss even if you never went broke, because the score is your balance at the end of the hanchan, not how long you survived.
Repeated hands add honba, 300 points each, a hundred from every opponent. That is what keeps a table moving through a hand nobody wants to open up.
Even a draw sends a bill
When the live wall runs out with no winner, everyone shows. Players who are not one tile from winning pay: 3,000 points split among those who are. One tenpai against three noten collects the whole 3,000; two tenpai collect 1,500 each; three collect 1,000 each.
That rule reshapes the end of a hand. Holding a cheap wait with no yaku at all can beat chasing a close, because the wait is already built and the bill for a draw lands on everybody else.
Three players, 108 tiles
Sanma drops the 2 through 8 of characters and leaves 108 tiles on the table. Hands close faster, North usually doubles as a bonus tile, and a game fits in twenty minutes.
Outside Japan most players meet riichi on a screen long before they touch a set. Japanese apps turned the parlor game into a fifteen-minute match with a ladder, and plenty of people can count han without ever having shuffled acrylic tiles.
Where to start
Learn riichi from the cheapest yaku to see: a dragon or the round wind, worth one han once the pung is complete. Count dora afterwards, never first. A hand with a yaku and six dora is enormous. A hand with six dora and nothing else is dead weight.
The exception is a family table that refuses to count points. There the 144-tile Hong Kong set teaches the same mechanics of pungs, runs and waits without the 1,000-point penalty. And when four players are not available, Mahjong Solitaire covers the pair-hunting half with 112 tiles and nobody to claim your hand.
The comparison with New York, Chengdu and Hong Kong lives in How Mahjong spread around the world, and the Culture index collects the rest.