Where do I get the NMJL card?

The official card is published each year by the National Mah Jongg League and sold directly through them. It is inexpensive (around $15) and is released every spring.

Why does the mahjong card change every year?

The National Mah Jongg League releases a new card annually with a fresh set of valid hands. This keeps the game challenging and current, so players relearn and adapt their strategy each year.

What do the colors on the mahjong card mean?

Color on the card indicates that tiles must come from different suits. Matching colors mean tiles share a suit; different colors mean the groups must be in different suits. The colors themselves are not specific suits.

How to Read the NMJL Card: A Beginner's Guide to Mahjong Hands

The first time you look at the National Mah Jongg League card, it looks like a wall of colored numbers and symbols written in a secret code. It isn't — it's a remarkably compact, logical system, and once someone shows you how to read a single line, the whole card opens up. This guide teaches you that system: how the card is organized, what the colors and numbers mean, and how to translate one line into actual tiles in your hand.

About this guide We explain how to read the card, using general examples in our own words. We don't reproduce the League's actual hands here — those are the NMJL's copyrighted material and change each year. You'll want an official current card in hand as you read along. You can buy one directly from the National Mah Jongg League.

What the card is

The card is a small folded leaflet listing every winning hand that is legal for the current year. In American Mahjong you can only win with a hand that matches one of these printed patterns — so the card is simultaneously your menu of goals and your rulebook for what counts as a win. A brand-new card is released every spring, and the previous year's hands expire when the new one takes over.

How the card is organized into sections

Hands are grouped into labeled sections, usually by a theme. Common section themes you'll see year after year include things like consecutive runs, like numbers, a quints section, a section built around the current year's digits, winds-and-dragons, and so on. The exact sections change annually, but the idea of theming is constant.

Why this matters for beginners: when you're choosing what to aim for, you scan sections, not individual lines. If your starting tiles are heavy in one suit with several consecutive numbers, you'd look at the consecutive-run section first. Thinking in sections is how experienced players navigate the card quickly.

Reading the numbers and groups

Each hand line is a string of numbers and symbols that spells out exactly which 14 tiles you need, read left to right. The building blocks are the same ones you already know from the basic rules:

A single digit repeated shows how many of that tile you need. Two of the same digit shown together is a pair; three is a pung; four is a kong; five is a quint.
Letters stand for non-numbered tiles — for example a letter for a dragon, or for North/East/West/South winds, or for flowers.
Groups are visually separated so you can see where one group ends and the next begins.

So a line might translate to something like "a pair of one number, a pung of another number, a kong of a third number, and a group of dragons" — all in specified suits. You read each cluster, identify whether it's a pair/pung/kong/quint, and note which suit and number it calls for.

Reading tip Work through a line one group at a time, left to right, and physically arrange your tiles to match as you go. Decoding feels slow at first and becomes automatic within a few games.

What the colors mean

This is the single most important concept, and the one beginners most often get wrong. On the card, color does not mean a specific suit. Instead, color tells you about sameness and difference between groups:

Groups printed in the same color must be in the same suit as each other.
Groups printed in different colors must be in different suits from each other.

So if a hand shows three groups in three different colors, you need those three groups in three different suits — but you choose which actual suits (dots, bams, or craks) to use. The colors are a relationship map, not a suit assignment. Once this clicks, most of the card's mystery disappears.

Concealed vs. exposed, and other notes

Next to many hands you'll find small notations and footnotes. The most common tells you whether the hand must be played concealed (built entirely from your own draws, with no called/exposed groups) or may be played exposed (you're allowed to call discards and show groups). Concealed hands are generally worth more. Other footnotes flag special restrictions — for instance, certain hands where jokers are not allowed at all. Always check the notation before committing to a hand, because it changes how you're allowed to build it.

Point values

Every hand has a point value printed beside it — lower for easier, common hands and higher for difficult ones. You don't calculate anything; you just read the number. (For how those values turn into payouts, see our scoring guide.)

How to practice reading it

The fastest way to get fluent:

Pick one line and build it from a full set. Lay out the actual tiles a single hand calls for. Doing it physically cements how the notation maps to reality.
Practice the color rule deliberately. For a multi-colored hand, consciously assign different suits and check you've satisfied "different colors = different suits."
Start with the lower-value, common hands. They're simpler to decode and more likely to come up in real play.
Read sections, not the whole card, during a game. Narrow to the section that fits your tiles, then compare a few lines within it.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I get the card?

From the National Mah Jongg League directly. It's released each spring and is inexpensive (around $15). A tile set does not include it.

Why does the card change every year?

The League issues a fresh set of hands annually to keep the game challenging and current, so players adapt their strategy each year.

Do the colors mean specific suits?

No. Colors show which groups must share a suit and which must differ — you choose the actual suits. Same color = same suit; different colors = different suits.

What does a concealed-hand notation mean?

It means the hand must be built entirely from your own draws, without calling discards to make exposures. Concealed hands typically score higher.

Keep learning New to the game overall? Begin with American Mahjong Rules: The Complete Beginner's Guide. Then see how the Charleston works and how scoring works.