Mahjiku › Questions › What is a limit hand in mahjong?
A limit is the ceiling a table puts on what a single hand can pay. Hands big enough to reach it are said to ride the limit — they all settle at that same top price no matter how much further they would have counted.
Left uncapped, mahjong scoring runs away from itself: the rarest hands are worth many times an ordinary win, and on a doubling curve the gap becomes absurd. So most tables set a limit — a maximum a hand may count to. Reach it and you are paid the ceiling; count past it and you are still paid the ceiling.
Two details decide how it behaves, and they are worth getting right:
Mahjiku's default Hong Kong sheet ships with no ceiling at all — it is additive, so what a hand counts to is what it pays, and a big hand is genuinely expensive. Tables that want a cap set one in House Rules; tables that like the drama leave it off.
Which hands actually get there? The ones every player learns the names of first — Thirteen Orphans, Nine Gates, Big Three Dragons, Four Kongs, All Green. On Mahjiku's sheet those five run from 18 to 27, so at a table with a cap anywhere in the usual range, every one of them rides it.
Last updated: 2026-08-27 · editorially reviewed 2026-08-27.
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