How many tiles are in a mahjong set?

A standard set has 144 tiles: three number suits (1-9, four copies each = 108), 28 honor tiles and 8 flower/season tiles. American play adds jokers.

What do the mahjong suits mean?

The three suits are characters (万), bamboo (条) and dots (筒), each running 1-9. Honors (winds and dragons) have no numerical sequences.

What is the difference between suits and honors?

Suits are numbered tiles 1-9 in three families; honors are the winds and dragons, which have no sequences and score through triplets.

Mahjong Tiles Explained: Suits, Honors and Special Tiles

A complete beginner guide to mahjong tiles — number suits, honor tiles, dragons, winds and the special sets used in American mahjong.

Published 2026-07-02 · Updated 2026-08-13

Mahjong Tiles Explained: Suits, Honors and Special Tiles

What are the three number suits in mahjong?

Classic mahjong is played with 136 tiles divided into three number suits: characters (万, also called crack), bamboo (条, also called bam) and dots (筒, also called circles). Each suit runs from 1 to 9, and every tile exists in four identical copies, giving 108 number tiles in total. The 1 and 9 of each suit are called terminals, and players naturally group the ranks into 1-2-3, 4-5-6 and 7-8-9 sequences. In written notation a 4 bamboo is written as s4, a 7 dot as p7 and a 2 character as m2. This shorthand appears throughout the game logs and tutorials on this site, and the letters m, p and s simply stand for the three suits. Each suit has exactly the same structure, which is why the game's math (waits, probabilities and defense) is identical across suits and only the tile faces change.

What are honor tiles: winds and dragons?

The honor tiles are the winds (East, South, West and North) plus the three dragons: Red (中), Green (发) and White (白). Each of the seven honor types appears four times, adding 28 honor tiles to the 108 number tiles for the standard 136-tile set. Winds carry directional meaning: the round wind applies to the whole hand while your seat wind applies to your own seat, and either one can add points in many scoring systems. A triplet of dragons, your seat wind or the round wind is called yakuhai in riichi and is worth 1 fan. That is why a pair or triplet of honors is one of the fastest ways to secure a winning hand even when no sequence exists. That consistency also makes honors readable: counting the winds and dragons you can see tells you instantly how many copies of a potential triplet are still available.

What special tiles does American mahjong add?

American mahjong is the big exception to the 136-tile model. The National Mah Jongg League game adds 8 jokers and 8 flower tiles, bringing the wall to 152 tiles: the standard 144 (108 numbers, 16 winds, 12 dragons, 8 flowers) plus the 8 jokers. Jokers stand in for any tile inside a meld of three or more, while flowers are scoring extras drawn from the wall and set aside. The NMJL 2026 card (the card this site uses in American mode) groups hands by section such as quints, kongs, pungs, runs and singles-and-pairs, and the matching engine validates every 14-tile hand against it automatically, so a hand only wins when it matches one of the card's lines. The joker and flower rules are what make the American game feel so different from the 136-tile versions.

How many of each tile are in the set?

The counts matter more than most beginners expect. The core 136-tile set breaks down as 108 number tiles (3 suits × 9 ranks × 4 copies) and 28 honor tiles (7 types × 4 copies). Adding 8 flower tiles gives 144, and American sets add 8 jokers for a total of 152. Because every tile exists exactly four times, a tile is effectively dead once all four copies are visible. This is the foundation of riichi defense, where players track which tiles are still live to decide what to discard. The single most useful habit for a new player is simply counting: when a fourth copy of a tile leaves the wall, every hand holding that tile can no longer complete it, and your discards become much safer than you might think. American games also add a Charleston before play, where players pass three tiles (a detail covered in the American mahjong guide on this site).

What is the difference between terminals and honors?

The 1 and 9 of each suit are terminals (端牌/幺九牌), while 2-8 are simples (中张牌). Many scoring systems group terminals together with honor tiles as "honor-like" tiles, and the distinction drives whole strategies: a hand made only of simples is called tanyao in riichi and is worth 1 fan, while any hand containing a terminal or honor can never be tanyao. The same boundary defines yaku such as chanta and junchan, which reward sequences built around terminals and honors. For a beginner the practical takeaway is that all-simples hands are the classic training target (no terminals, no honors, just clean 2-8 sequences and triplets), and this site's Classic mode makes them even friendlier by counting any legal win as at least 1 fan. The same counting applies to honors: with only four copies of each wind, a pair of Easts in front of you means at most two remain for everyone else.

How do the winds and dragons affect scoring?

The winds (East, South, West, North) map to seats and rounds, with the dealer conventionally seated at East; the dragons, Red (中), Green (发) and White (白), are pure scoring tiles with no directional meaning. In riichi, a triplet of dragons, your seat wind or the round wind is yakuhai, worth 1 fan. In the classic scoring used on this site, wind and dragon triplets feed the bigger patterns: all honors (字一色) is worth 64 fan and pongs of all four winds (大四喜) is 88 fan. The white dragon is often printed as a blank tile, and on this site it is rendered as 白 with a distinct border so it is never confused with a tile's plain white back (a small detail that prevents a very common beginner mistake).

What are red fives and dora in riichi?

Two riichi extras deserve a mention even though this site's MVP omits one of them. Red fives (赤五, one marked 5 in each suit) add 1 fan each in many rulesets, but this site's games do not include them. Dora (宝牌) work differently: the dora indicator is drawn from the dead wall, and the tile after it in rank order (9 wraps to 1, and z7 wraps to z1) is the dora, adding 1 fan for each copy you hold; this MVP uses a single indicator per hand. Crucially, dora fan never counts toward the minimum yaku requirement; you still need a named yaku to win, but it can push a 1-fan hand into mangan territory, which is why experienced players watch the indicator from the moment it is revealed.

Sources & references

FAQ

How many tiles are in a mahjong set?: A standard set has 144 tiles: three number suits (1-9, four copies each = 108), 28 honor tiles and 8 flower/season tiles. American play adds jokers.
What do the mahjong suits mean?: The three suits are characters (万), bamboo (条) and dots (筒), each running 1-9. Honors (winds and dragons) have no numerical sequences.
What is the difference between suits and honors?: Suits are numbered tiles 1-9 in three families; honors are the winds and dragons, which have no sequences and score through triplets.