Hong Kong mahjong fan calculator. Tick the patterns in the winning hand; it applies the minimum fan and cap, scores on the half-spicy or full-spicy table, and shows what each player pays.
Mahjong Scoring HK Style (港式麻将番数计算)
How to use
Agree the house rules first
The minimum fan (commonly 3), the cap (commonly 8, 10 or 13), half or full spicy, and who pays on a discard.
Tick how the hand was won, and the flowers
Self-draw, concealed hand, last tile and so on. Flowers count only as a seat flower, a full set or no flowers.
Enter value pungs and the hand pattern
Dragon and wind pungs are counts. Small and big three dragons and terminals-and-honours already include the pungs they contain, so ticking them clears the duplicate.
Read the fan and what each player pays
Below the minimum it says the hand cannot win. Otherwise it shows what each opponent pays on a self-draw, and what the discarder and the others pay on a discard.
How Hong Kong mahjong turns fan into points
Hong Kong mahjong (香港麻雀, also called 廣東牌 or 清章) is played with thirteen tiles in hand, and a win is scored in fan (番). Most tables need at least 3 fan to win and cap a hand at 8, 10 or 13 fan. The Hong Kong Mahjong Association's tournament rules use 3 and 10.
Two payout tables
Full spicy (辣辣上) doubles for every fan: 3 fan is 8 points and 10 fan is 1,024. Half spicy (半辣上), the traditional table and the one the Association uses, doubles only every second fan above 4: 5 fan is 24, 6 fan 32 and 10 fan 128. At a 10-fan cap, the top hand is worth eight times as much on the full table.
Who pays
On a self-draw, each of the other three players pays half the table amount. On a discard, some tables make the discarder pay it all (全銃); others have the discarder pay half and the other two a quarter each. Other splits exist too.
Where the tables agree, and where they do not
Published tables agree on the everyday hands: all chows 1, all pungs 3, half flush 3, full flush 7. They disagree on rarer ones. Small four winds is 6 on Wikipedia's tables and a limit hand for the Association; four concealed pungs is 8 on one and a limit on the other. Flowers score only as your seat flower (1), a full set (2) or no flowers at all (1), and the Association's tournament rules leave flowers out entirely.
Singapore and Malaysia
The mahjong most often played in Singapore and Malaysia is a related but different game: it adds animal tiles and scores in tai with a lower ceiling. This calculator scores Hong Kong fan only.
Sources: the Hong Kong Mahjong Association tournament rulebook (revised 17 May 2023); 香港麻雀胡牌列表 and Hong Kong mahjong scoring rules on Wikipedia. Home games vary; agree the rules before you play.
What counting every complete Hong Kong hand shows
A 136-tile set can make about 11.35 trillion complete fourteen-tile hands of four sets and a pair. Fourteen random tiles are complete about once in 374,330 tries.
By shape, 59% of complete hands are all chows. On shape alone, before self-draw, a concealed hand or flowers, fewer than 1 in 400 reach 3 fan, which is why a 3-fan table pushes everyone toward half flushes and all pungs.
By shape, thirteen orphans is about as common as a full flush, roughly one complete hand in 8,600. All honours, big four winds and all terminals are far rarer.
Real games differ because players steer toward flushes. In a large record of Japanese riichi games, a different variant, full flushes were won about 28 times as often as thirteen orphans. No such public record exists for Hong Kong games.
Fan (番) means doubling. An older Hong Kong game, 雞四, let a chicken hand win and topped out at 4 fan.
Each kong adds a tile, which is why four kongs is called 十八羅漢, "eighteen arhats": eighteen tiles in hand.
Mahjong took shape in the 19th century; the earliest surviving sets date from around 1870.
Hong Kong mahjong is played with 13 tiles in hand and Taiwanese mahjong with 16, and they score differently.
Frequently asked questions
No. Taiwanese mahjong uses 16 tiles, scores in tai, and treats flowers differently.
No. The common Singapore and Malaysian variants add animal tiles and score in tai, not Hong Kong fan.
Whatever your table agreed. The default of 1 shows the plain table points.
Most tables require 3 fan, as do the Hong Kong Mahjong Association rules. The older 雞四 game let a chicken hand win. Below your minimum, the tool says the hand cannot win.
Commonly 8, 10 or 13. Association tournaments use 10 and count every limit hand as 10. Here, limit hands are worth whatever cap you set.
A hand with no chow, pung or kong claimed from a discard. Under the Association rules a concealed kong also counts as exposed.
Only your seat flower scores, 1 fan each. All four of one set is 2 fan, and no flowers at all is 1 fan. Other flowers score nothing, and the Association tournament rules use no flowers.
Not normally in Hong Kong. Some tables allow it at 4 fan, so the tool lists it under house rules.
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