TVB Mahjong Brain Fitness Championship (Australia Entry)【Mahjong Rules】

TVB Mahjong Brain Fitness Championship 2026 (AUS)
【Mahjong Rules】

A.    Code of Conduct:

1.    Participants must comply with the Competition Rules and maintain discipline at the venue, and must follow the referee’s instructions.
2.    Participants should dress appropriately and behave in a polite and civilized manner.
3.    All electronic devices (e.g. mobile phones, video cameras, earphones) must be switched off.
4.    Smoking and drinking are strictly prohibited during the Competition.
5.    Except for Mahjong-specific terms (e.g., “Kong”, “Pong”), participants must not communicate with any other participants in any form.
6.    Any form of gambling is strictly prohibited.
7.    Any form of cheating is strictly prohibited.

B.    Mahjong Rules:

1.    All participants are required to have basic Mahjong knowledge. These Mahjong Rules set out only the important and exceptional rules for the Competition.

2.    The following tiles are used in the Competition: characters (36 tiles), dots (36 tiles), bamboos (36 tiles), wind tiles (East, South, West, North) (16 tiles), and dragon tiles (Red, Green and White dragons) (12 tiles), for a total of 136 tiles. No flower tiles are used in the Competition.

3.    Basic terms:

a.    Hand: Each winning hand or a drawn hand counts as 1 hand. The dealer role rotates to the next participant even if the dealer wins a hand or the hand ends in a draw.
b.    Wind round: 1 complete round in which each of the 4 participants serves as dealer once.
c.    Game: 4 wind rounds, i.e. 16 hands, constitute 1 game.
d.    Sequence: 3 tiles of the same suit in consecutive numerical order.
e.    Triplet: 3 identical tiles. A triplet formed by calling “Pong” (as defined below) is an exposed triplet, and a concealed triplet is one not revealed in the hand.
f.    Pair: 2 identical tiles. A winning hand must have 1 pair.
g.    Honor tiles: East, South, West, North, and the Red, Green and White dragons.
h.    Suit tiles: Characters, dots, and bamboos.
i.    Chow: After the participant to one’s left discards a tile, the participant who calls “Chow” takes out 2 tiles from their hand to form a sequence and reveals that sequence in front of them.
j.    Pong: After any participant discards a tile, the participant who calls “Pong” takes out the matching pair from their hand to form a triplet and reveals that triplet in front of them.
k.    Kong: 4 identical tiles. A declared Kong is an exposed Kong, and a concealed Kong is one not revealed in the hand.
l.    Self-draw win: Winning by drawing the winning tile oneself and declaring a win.

4.    Rules for drawing and discarding tiles:

a.    At the start, each participant draws 13 tiles, while the dealer draws 14 tiles, and the dealer discards first.
b.    Participants take turns drawing and discarding in counterclockwise order (the participant on the left is the previous player; the participant on the right is the next player).
c.    Mahjong tiles are arranged in clockwise order.
d.    Once a tile is discarded, it is considered exposed and cannot be taken back.
e.    The participants must announce the name of the tile when discarding it.
f.    Participants may not draw before the previous player has discarded.
g.    Once the discarding participant has announced the tile, and the next player has drawn and added the tile to their hand, the discard can no longer be claimed for Pong or Kong.
h.    Participants must draw until the last tile from the wall. If the last tile is not a winning tile, the drawing participant must discard 1 tile.
i.    Priority order, from highest to lowest: Win → Pong → Kong → Chow.

5.    Rules for winning:

a.    A winning participant must declare a win, arrange and reveal the hand, then raise the sign and call the referee over to calculate the score. The other 3 participants must not lay down their hands until the referee has submitted the signed Scorecard to the organizer.
b.    The minimum winning hand is 1 Fan, and the maximum is 10 Fan. A concealed Kong cannot be used to win.
c.    Discarder-Pays-All: The winning participant scores, while the participant whose discard allows another to win loses points. For a self-draw win, all the other 3 participants lose points.
d.    Intercepted Win: If more than 1 participant can win at the same time, the participant on the left (the previous player) has priority.
e.    Robbing Kong: If a participant draws a Kong tile, and that Kong tile can be won by another participant, that other participant may “rob” the Kong tile to win.
f.    Twelve-Tile Liability for Self-Draw: (Only applicable if the winning hand is a Full Flush, Big Three Dragons, Big Four Winds, or All Honors) If a participant has already revealed 3 sets of Pong, Kong, and/or Chow tiles (i.e. at least 9 revealed tiles), and another participant discards a tile that allows that participant to form another Pong, Kong, or Chow and thus reveal 12 tiles in total, the discarding participant must “bear the self-draw liability”. In other words, if that participant who has revealed 12 tiles subsequently wins by self-draw, the discarding participant must bear all losses of the other 2 participants in addition to its own.

6.    Violations and penalties: