THE DAILY DRAW · A NEW TABLE AWAITS
That one tile.
That little rush.
You know the feeling. Your hand is nearly there. Every discard suddenly looks interesting. And then… the tile you’ve been waiting for.
Japanese Mahjong has a word for being that close: tenpai. And now you can experience its particular brand of suspense on Mahjong.Live.
Japanese Riichi is here. Play with friends, or pull up a chair against the bots.
A game with a passport
Mahjong has always travelled well. Tokyo had a Mahjong club by 1924; over the following decades, Japanese players developed the game we now call Riichi. One of its defining moments is wonderfully dramatic: you announce that your closed hand is ready, put down a 1,000-point stick, and commit.
Everyone knows you’re close. You can’t casually rebuild your hand. Now the next tile really matters.
You don’t need to learn everything tonight.
Start with one small thing. Our refreshed Learn section takes you from recognising tiles to making decisions at the table, with short illustrated Hong Kong lessons and practice along the way. Already through Beginner? Intermediate helps you think about discards, waits and when to claim.
For your Japanese adventure, there are 107 Riichi flashcards across three levels. Try recalling a word, reveal its meaning, then check yourself. You can begin these straight away—no Hong Kong course required.
A little Japanese for your next hand
Imagine you’re waiting for one final tile. That’s tenpai: a ready hand.
You draw the winning tile yourself? Tsumo. Someone else discards it and you can legally win? Ron. Two small words, two very satisfying ways to finish.
There’s one catch worth remembering: your hand needs a yaku—a qualifying scoring pattern or win condition. Dora and red fives add bonuses, but can’t make a hand eligible to win by themselves.
And Riichi? With an eligible closed hand in tenpai, you can make that 1,000-point declaration. Your hand then locks, with limited exceptions. Think of it as saying, “I’m ready. Let’s see what comes.”
Your turn: you draw the tile that completes your legal winning hand. Do you say Ron or Tsumo?
Tsumo! You already know more Japanese Mahjong than you did a minute ago.
A helping hand at the table
We’ve given Riichi a clearer table, easier-to-read mobile tiles and detailed winning-hand scores. In Guided or Semi-guided mode, open Guide to compare discards, explore possible scoring patterns and look at conditional scores for ready hands. It helps explain your options; it can’t promise what the wall will give you.
If a score has you curious, build the hand in our Riichi calculator and explore it at your own pace.
And around the rest of the table…
Voice chat is simpler: minimize to keep chatting, close to leave voice. Winning-hand share cards have a fresh look, and your personal invite link makes it easier to bring a friend along. Mahjong Gita’s rules pages and our Tools section have had a refresh too.
If you’re the person who’s always persuading someone to try Mahjong, have a look at Become an MLA. We’d love more people to discover the game with you.
See you at the table,
Madam Mahjong