Jokers in American Mahjong

Why are Jokers in Mahjong so confusing???

They are meant to be the tile you dream of - your best friend!  However, these provoke the most questions of any tile and also account for the most errors in Mahjong!  Let us help.

In American Mahjong, Jokers can replace ANY TILE.  You can make a Joker anything you want it to be.  However, Jokers can ONLY BE USED IN A GROUPING OF THREE OR MORE IDENTICAL TILES!

What does this mean?

Let's say the below combination is a line on the NMJL card:

2222 444 NEWS 666

Because the groupings of 2's, 4's and 6's have three or more digits and are all identical, you can use a Joker to replace any of those tiles.  Since the grouping "NEWS" is not four identical tiles, even though the grouping is 3+ tiles, you can never use a Joker.

What do we mean by groupings of 3 or more?  Let's take a look at this line below:

11 333 5555 777 99

In this line, a Joker can be used to replace a 3, 5 or 7 tile.  The groupings of 3, 5 and 7 are all groupings of three or more identical tiles.  However, you could never use a Joker for the 1 or 9 because these are only in a PAIR.  You can never use a Joker in a single or a pair.  

Here are a few examples of where you could never use a Joker:

22

6

NEWS

123

99

1

NO JOKERS EVER IN SINGLES OR PAIRS!

NO JOKERS EVER IN GROUPINGS OF 3 OR MORE TILES THAT ARE NOT IDENTICAL!

We hope that this helps you on your Mahjong journey.  As a heads up, in Mini Mahjer, as we seek to teach beginners to play the game, we do allow Jokers in Singles and Pairs in our Beginner and Intermediate sections as everyone gets up to speed and progresses into the full rules of the game.