What is riichi in mahjong?

Riichi is a declaration that your closed hand is one tile from winning (tenpai). It costs a 1,000-point stick, locks your hand, and adds 1 fan plus the chance of ippatsu.

How many yaku are there in riichi mahjong?

The standard set has 26 normal yaku plus 13 yakuman. The most common ones — riichi, tanyao, pinfu and yakuhai — cover the majority of winning hands.

What is the easiest yaku for beginners?

Tanyao (all simples) is the easiest: build four melds and a pair using only 2-8 tiles, avoiding terminals and honors entirely.

Riichi Mahjong Yaku: The Complete List

Every yaku you need to win at riichi mahjong — 1-fan basics, 2-fan patterns, and the yakuman hands — with plain-language explanations.

Published 2026-07-20 · Updated 2026-08-13

What are the 1-fan yaku you need most?

The yaku that win most real games are the 1-fan basics: riichi (declared readiness with a fully concealed hand), tanyao (all simples, only 2-8 tiles, no terminals or honors), pinfu (all sequences with a two-sided wait and a non-honor pair) and yakuhai (a triplet of dragons, your seat wind or the round wind). Rarer 1-fan yaku include haitei and houtei (winning on the very last tile of the wall, by draw or by discard), rinshan (winning on the replacement tile after a kan) and chankan (robbing another player's added kong). On this site the engine detects all of these through @kobalab/majiang-core, but two are never credited in the MVP: ippatsu and ura-dora are not tracked, so the fan total you see never includes them and reflects exactly the rules the game actually implements.

Which yaku are worth 2 fan or more?

Two-fan patterns are where hands start to get serious. Double riichi is 2 fan when you declare riichi on your very first turn; chiitoitsu (seven distinct pairs) is 2 fan and is always scored as a fixed 25-fu hand; sanshoku is 2 fan for the same 1-2-3, 2-3-4 or similar sequence appearing in all three suits; and ittsu (a one-dragon run of 123, 456 and 789 in a single suit) is 2 fan. All-triplets hands (toitoi) are 2 fan and combine naturally with yakuhai triplets, since a triplet of dragons or your wind is itself a yaku. At the top of the ordinary scale, honitsu (mixed one-suit, one number suit plus honors) is 3 fan closed and 2 open, while chinitsu (pure one-suit) is 6 fan closed and 5 open, which almost always crosses the mangan boundary.

What are the yakuman hands?

Yakuman are the maximum hands, worth 13 fan or a flat yakuman payment, and every one of them is a headline event. The classic set includes kokushi musou (13 orphans, one of every terminal and honor plus a duplicate of one), daisuushii (big four winds), daisangen (big three dragons), suuankou (four concealed triplets), tsuuiisou (all honors), chinroutou (all terminals), ryuuiisou (all green, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 bamboo plus green dragons) and chuuren poutou (nine gates). On this site these are declared automatically: the scoring engine detects the hand, marks it as yakuman, and the settlement shows the full 32,000/48,000 point value instead of a fan-counting exercise, so a correctly built maximum hand always pays its full worth. Each yakuman is worth exactly the same maximum in this engine (there are no double-yakuman bonuses here), so building any one of them is equally decisive.

How do riichi, ippatsu and menzen tsumo reward a closed hand?

Three yaku specifically reward keeping your hand closed. Riichi (1 fan) declares that you are tenpai, locks your hand and places a 1,000-point stick on the table; after the declaration you may not change your waits. Ippatsu (1 fan) is the bonus for winning within one turn of your riichi declaration, before anyone else calls a tile (a standard yaku in full riichi, but, as noted above, it is not tracked in this site's MVP). Menzen tsumo (1 fan) rewards winning on your own draw with a fully concealed hand. Because these three stack, a closed riichi win frequently reaches 3 fan before you count a single named pattern. That is precisely why closed hands dominate competitive riichi and why the site's AI is built around them. The 1,000-point stick is collected by the winner, which is why closed riichi hands carry both a fan and a point bonus.

What do the 3-6 fan patterns look like?

The 3-6 fan band holds the hands that define mid-game strategy. Honitsu (mixed one-suit, 3 fan closed, 2 open) combines one number suit with honors and is the classic open-hand target; chinitsu (pure one-suit, 6 fan closed, 5 open) is all one suit and almost always reaches mangan. Chanta (2 fan) requires every sequence to contain a terminal or honor, junchan (3 fan) forces terminals into every sequence, and honroutou (2 fan) is all terminals and honors (a common bridge toward yakuman). Aggressive melding is rewarded too: sanankou (three concealed triplets, 2 fan), sankantsu (three kongs, 2 fan) and toitoi (all triplets, 2 fan) all pay for hands built from triplets rather than sequences, and they stack with the yakuhai triplet yaku that such hands naturally contain. The pattern to remember is that open hands trade fan for speed: every call makes the hand faster and weaker at the same time.

How do fan and fu combine into points?

Fan and fu combine through the formula base points = fu × 2^(2 + fan), which is then multiplied by 4 for a non-dealer ron, by 6 for a dealer ron, or spread 2/1/1 across the players for tsumo payments. Seven pairs is the only hand scored at 25 fu; almost everything else lands between 30 and 40 fu, so the fu component barely moves the result. The reason 5 fan always scores mangan is that any hand whose base points reach 2,000 is capped at the flat mangan value regardless of its fu. You never need to run this calculation yourself; the game log on this site shows the fan, fu and points after every win, and the riichi-scoring guide on this site walks through the full table with worked examples. Round-ups to the nearest 100 are the only hidden step, and the game log shows them too.

How does your wait shape change the score?

Your wait shape changes both the fu and which yaku are available. A two-sided wait (ryanmen) is worth 2 fu and is required for pinfu; a single-tile wait (tanki) is also 2 fu but blocks pinfu, as do edge (penchan) and closed (kanchan) waits, each worth 2 fu. Because fu is such a small number, squeezing out an extra 2-4 fu matters far less than adding a fan from a named yaku. The practical rule of thumb: aim for riichi plus one more yaku and the hand will usually land at 3-4 fan, near or above mangan; chasing an extra 10 fu is worth almost nothing by comparison. Preserve good waits for the same reason (a ryanmen that keeps pinfu alive is worth more than a shape that looks prettier in the hand).

What are the most common beginner mistakes?

The most common beginner mistakes are all avoidable with one careful habit. Declaring riichi with an open hand is simply not allowed; riichi requires a fully concealed hand, and this site enforces it. Forgetting that furiten blocks ron is the costliest error: if any of your winning tiles is already in your own discard pile, you may not call ron (tsumo still works), and this site applies that check to concealed tenpai hands. Calling tiles that break a closed-hand yaku like pinfu or riichi is the third classic mistake, and chasing a yakuman while a solid 3-fan hand sits in front of you is the fourth. The fastest training plan is to play for tanyao + riichi first, add pinfu once that is automatic, and use the AI difficulty setting on this site to practice each pattern without pressure.

Yaku at a glance

Yaku	Han	What it needs
Riichi	1	Declare ready with a concealed hand, bet a 1,000-point stick
Tanyao	1	All simples — no terminals or honors
Pinfu	1	All sequences, two-sided wait, non-honor pair
Yakuhai	1	Triplet of dragons or your seat/round wind
Ippatsu	1	Win within one turn of riichi (not tracked in this MVP)
Menzen tsumo	1	Self-draw win with a concealed hand
Haitei / Houtei	1	Win on the very last tile of the wall
Rinshan	1	Win on the replacement tile after a kan
Chankan	1	Win by robbing a kan
Chiitoitsu	2	Seven distinct pairs
Sanshoku	2	Same sequence in all three suits
Ittsu	2	One suit: 123, 456 and 789
Toitoi	2	All triplets
Honitsu	3 (2 open)	One suit plus honors
Chinitsu	6 (5 open)	One suit only
Yakuman	13	Kokushi, four concealed triplets, big three dragons and more

Sources & references

FAQ

What is riichi in mahjong?: Riichi is a declaration that your closed hand is one tile from winning (tenpai). It costs a 1,000-point stick, locks your hand, and adds 1 fan plus the chance of ippatsu.
How many yaku are there in riichi mahjong?: The standard set has 26 normal yaku plus 13 yakuman. The most common ones — riichi, tanyao, pinfu and yakuhai — cover the majority of winning hands.
What is the easiest yaku for beginners?: Tanyao (all simples) is the easiest: build four melds and a pair using only 2-8 tiles, avoiding terminals and honors entirely.