Thirteen tiles and a gap
At any moment between turns you hold thirteen tiles. When you draw, you briefly hold fourteen and must discard back down to thirteen. The aim is to reach a position where one specific extra tile — drawn from the wall or claimed from another player's discard — completes a legal winning hand of fourteen.
Thinking of the hand this way helps beginners enormously. You are not trying to collect "good tiles"; you are trying to reduce the number of tiles you still need. Experienced players talk about being "two away" or "one away", and the whole game is a race to shrink that number faster than the other three players.
The three kinds of set
A chow is three consecutive numbers in the same suit, such as 3-4-5 of bamboo. Honours — winds and dragons — have no numbers, so they can never form chows. A pung is three identical tiles, such as three red dragons. A kong is four identical tiles; because it uses an extra tile, the player who declares a kong draws a replacement so the hand still has the right count.
Sets can be concealed (built entirely from tiles you drew) or exposed (made by claiming another player's discard and laying the set face up). Many scoring systems reward concealed hands, because they are harder to complete and give opponents less information.
The pair, or eyes
Every standard winning hand needs exactly one pair. Beginners often forget it and end up with four complete sets and two unrelated tiles. Some styles restrict which pairs score — in Japanese mahjong, for example, a pair of dragons or of your own wind adds fu — but any pair completes the shape.
Because the pair is so easy to overlook, teachers often suggest choosing your "eyes" early. If you already hold two of the same tile, keep them unless a better use appears. A hand with a pair and three nearly finished sets is usually closer to winning than it looks.
Being ready
When your thirteen tiles need only one more to win, you are ready — tenpai in Japanese, "calling" or "fishing" in some English rule books. The tiles that would finish the hand are called your waits. A hand waiting on several different tiles is far stronger than one waiting on a single tile.
In some styles you must announce readiness — the Japanese riichi declaration is the best-known example — and in others you keep it secret. Either way, learning to recognise your own waits, and to guess at your opponents', is the first real step from beginner to player.
