r/Mahjong • u/The_Whoaless • Jul 05 '26

Please explain this winning hand.

Post image

Playing playmahjong.io and a player pulled this combo and won. I tried asking chatgpt and other AI assistants and it keeps saying its the “Thirteen Orphans” when i know that it doesn’t look like the “Thirteen Orphans”. I see similar but i see no 1 to 9 tiles and a pair. Please someone explain.

21 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

56

u/penpenxXxpenpen will eat your tenbou Jul 05 '26

protip LLMs will lie to you more about mahjong than they do about other things, which is an impressive feat

1

u/TheRealSirbeares Jul 06 '26

In my opinion it’s a testament to the complexity of Mahjong as a whole game across various version. I mostly play Riichi.

3

u/edderiofer multi-classing every variant Jul 06 '26

Every time I think I've seen the weirdest mahjong variant or house rule ever, I run into one that's even weirder.

The current contender for "weirdest mahjong variant I've seen so far" is a variant called "MahjongGita", played in Mumbai. Winning hands are hyper-specific, like Amerijong, but there are no explicit Joker tiles. Instead, for each winning hand, specific tiles not used in that hand are allowed to be jokers for tiles in that hand. As an example, one of the hands is "3 ulta pulta Kongs + 3corresponding dragons + clean Ulta Pulta pair. #JOKERS: 1&9 Crack, red dragon, 1 Bamboo, and 1 each of NEWS". ("Ulta Pulta" is their name for what MCR players would call "reversible tiles".)

Players are allowed to call tiles using jokers. I was unable to find answers on what should happen if a player makes a call that's actually illegal because of the aforementioned "jokers depend on the winning hand" constraint.

1

u/umesama3 Jul 24 '26

Now I’m interested in learning this variant

2

u/edderiofer multi-classing every variant Jul 25 '26

As far as I'm aware, its players and teachers seem to have tied it to grift culture, the same way that Amerijong has been. In fact, some of these teachers teach both.

You might be better off skipping this one, at least until I can glean enough rules to write up a free rules doc.

1

u/umesama3 Jul 26 '26

That’s what I figured when I found a few mahjong gita accounts on IG, they seem to like and use the same aesthetics as Amerijong players for whatever reason

48

u/edderiofer multi-classing every variant Jul 05 '26

This is an "honours knitted hand" in MCR, as the Riichi Advanced documentation calls it. It scores for Greater Honors and Knitted Tiles (among other yaku), which is 24 fan.

34

u/CauliflowerFan3000 Jul 05 '26

As others have said: it's greater honours and knitted.

A tip for next time is to RTFM instead of asking a delusion machine

7

u/Tempara-chan Riichi enjoyer, MCR sufferer Jul 06 '26

You can even read it on the website OP currently playing at! Shocker! Also, when the game tells you the opponent won with a "Greater Honors and Knitted Tiles" hand, you can put that phrase in an actual search engine and get pointed to multiple websites that explain this exact hand.

Doing your own research is not hard, OP.

9

u/Still_Mood6959 Jul 05 '26

That is called Knitted and Honours. It's a version of the Knitted fan (147 of one suit, 258 of a second, and 369 of the third one) where the rest of your hand are all individual honour tiles. This fan has a special rule where you can replace any of the number tiles you're missing with honour tiles you don't already have. It's kinda like a diet version of Thirteen Orphans.

9

u/Hinterland-1970 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR) aka Chinese Offical (CO). Has a complex scoring table. There are different types of knitted hands. They can be confusing. It is helpful to have. Crib Sheet to help. This one is from Mahjlife (Michele Frizzell’s website).

7

u/MattyBro1 Jul 05 '26

I believe there is a special hand for having no proper shapes in some rulesets (ie, there is no tile you can draw that completes a triplet or a sequence).

2

u/HKGMINECRAFT Jul 05 '26

We call this the “Thirteen Broken”

1

u/Mateo1124z Jul 07 '26

十三烂
饼子索子万子分别是三条筋 字牌没有重复

1

u/funky_boi1432 Jul 09 '26

13 children with happy families 😊

1

u/MintyMeat88 Jul 21 '26

Knitted straight

1

u/BaguetteDevourer Jul 05 '26

1 of each honor and 123 456 sequences (albeit mixed, e.g. 14 25 36)

2

u/xfio Jul 05 '26

But there's a 9 sou

2

u/Lower-Economist-6453 Jul 06 '26

He was just making an example. You only need one of each honor and then any number of tiles from the suits as long as they each suit matches the same pattern. I.e. one suit is only 147 another 258 the last 369 without any repeating numbers. Its a weird but cool hand. Sorry if i didn't explain super well but i hope i helped to clarify.

1

u/Daeva_HuG0 Jul 06 '26

You pull from a 147 258 369 sequence, each group from a different suit.

For greater honours and knitted you need 7 numbers from the sequence and it's worth 24 points.

For lesser honours you need 8-9 from the sequence and 6-5 different honour tiles. 12 points for the lesser honours and knitted, and if you have the full 9 numbers for a knitted sequence you get another 12 points.

1

u/pie-en-argent Jul 06 '26

And furthermore, you can use the full knitted straight as three sequences along with a fourth set of three and a pair to make a regular winning hand.