Mahjiku

MahjikuPattern library › Small Dragons

Winds & dragons

Small Dragons

小三元 · Siu Saam Yuen

10faan
Mahjiku's default value, from the patterns block of the shipped Hong Kong ruleset. Your table can price it differently; the engine reads whatever your rule set says.

What Small Dragons means

Triplets of two of the three dragons, and a pair of the third.

How to spot it. Two dragon triplets plus a pair of the last dragon.

An example

RRRdefines it
GGGdefines it
WWdefines it
234filler
567filler

The bright sets are the ones that make it Small Dragons; the faded sets are ordinary filler that any hand needs.

What the engine scores that hand at

These are not illustrative numbers: the tiles above were passed to Mahjiku's scoring engine (won on a discard, with sets claimed from the table, seat wind North, round wind North) and this is the breakdown it returned.

Line the engine emittedFaan
Half Flush混一色+6
Small Dragons小三元+10
Base+1
Total17

The 10 faan for Small Dragons is only part of it. The same tiles also satisfy Half Flush (+6) — patterns stack in Hong Kong scoring, which is why a hand named for one shape often pays a good deal more than that shape's own value.

What 17 faan actually pays

Faan is not the score by itself — it is the number the table turns into points, and Hong Kong tables do that two different ways. Both are shipped in Mahjiku; the additive model is the default.

Payout modelOne payer owesSelf-draw 自摸Discard 點炮
Additivefaan is the payout17+51+17
半辣上half spicy384+1152+384
全辣上full spicy8192+24576+8192

Self-draw: all three opponents pay. Discard: only the player who threw the tile pays. Both columns are the winner's gain, straight out of the app's settlement function.

Worth knowing. Both doubling tables stop at 13 faan, so this 17-faan hand is paid at the 13-faan row — 384 points under 半辣上 and 8192 under 全辣上. Everything above 13 faan pays the same. The additive model has no ceiling, so there the extra faan still count.

How it interacts with other hands

Try it yourself

The free faan calculator opens with this hand already selected — add whatever else your hand had and watch the points move.

Open the calculator with Small Dragons already ticked All 0 patterns

Related hands

Dragon Pung 箭刻 1Big Three Dragons 大三元 18Small Winds 小四喜 10Big Four Winds 大四喜 18Seat / Round Wind 門/圈風 1

More context: the pattern library lists every hand by family, the scoring guide explains how faan becomes points, and the FAQ answers the questions people ask before their first game night.

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© 2026 Steven Eka Halim · Mahjiku records game points only. Pencatat skor mahjong. Bukan judi, tanpa taruhan.