Mahjong is a tile-based game that originated in China and has become popular in many parts of the world, including Macau. The game is typically four-person, but in Macau, a two-person version of Mahjong exists. The two-person variant of Mahjong is known as “point Mahjong”, or “Hong Kong-style”. This variant is the version played in Macau.
The goal of Mahjong is to collect four sets of tiles and one pair of tiles. A set consists of three or four identical tiles, and the four sets may be of any type. The pair must be two identical tiles. To win a hand, a player must have all four sets and one pair.
In order to play, each player starts with 13 tiles. During the game, tiles are added and removed from a common pool of tiles, called the “wall”, and players discard tiles in turn. Players can discard tiles from their own hands, or draw tiles from the wall.
In a variant of the game called “match Mahjong”, players also draw tiles from the wall in order to make matching pairs. Once a player has found a matching pair, they can discard the pair and receive additional points.