Mahjong is an ancient Chinese game that has been around for centuries. The objective of the game is to collect the four tiles of each suit - bamboo, circles, characters, and winds - to acquire the maximum score. In Egypt, the game is usually played with two or four players.
To begin the game, each player is dealt 13 tiles. They take turns to either draw a tile from the “wall” – the tableau of tiles – or from the remaining tiles of another player in order to make a “meld” or a set. These sets can be “pungs” (three identical tiles), “kongs” (four identical tiles) or “chow’s” (three consecutive tiles of the same suit).
Once a set is achieved, the player has the option to “call a tile” from the opposite player and they can then do one of two things – either call “mahjong”, indicating that they have won the game, or “pass”. If the player passes, the tile is automatically added to the wall.
Players continue to draw tiles in a clockwise fashion until the wall is depleted. As soon as one player has collected the four tiles in a suit, the game ends.