Mahjiku › Questions › What are house rules in mahjong?
House rules are the choices the ruleset leaves open and the table settles for itself — what each hand is worth, the minimum to win, whether there is a ceiling, how flowers count, who pays on a discard, and whether the dealer keeps the deal on a draw.
Mahjong has no world governing body, and "Hong Kong rules" is a family, not a rulebook. What a ruleset fixes is the machinery — what a set is, what wins, how a hand is named. Almost everything with a number attached is left to the table. That is not sloppiness; it is how the game travelled.
The choices that actually come up, roughly in the order a table has to settle them:
Write it down before the first hand. Almost every mahjong argument is really a house-rule that was never agreed. Mahjiku turns a table's sheet into settings the app then applies for you — every value editable, nothing assumed. Points only.
Last updated: 2026-08-27 · editorially reviewed 2026-08-27.
Game points only. Mahjiku records mahjong points for a friendly table — no betting, no money, nothing to cash out.
Mahjiku is a live scorekeeper with fully custom house rules — points only, no wagering.
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