Since this page went up, I've had letters from people who want to learn, from Ohio, from California and from one gentleman in Canada whose late wife played. So here are the basics, the way I'd explain them if you sat down at my table on a Thursday. It's not the whole rule book. The League sells that, and you should have it.

One thing first: you need this year's card. American Mah Jongg is played from a card of hands issued every year by the National Mah Jongg League, and you can only win with a hand that's on the current card. The hands change every year. I'm not going to type any of them here. Order your own card from the League; each player at the table needs one.

What you need · The tiles · Setting up · The Charleston · Playing · Calling a discard · Jokers · Mah Jongg! · Paying · When things go wrong · Manners

Four players. An American set of 152 tiles. Four racks, one each, to stand your tiles on and push your wall forward with. Two dice. A card for every player. A card table, a good lamp, and something to eat (see our Snacks Hall of Fame).

There are three suits, numbered one through nine, with four of each tile. Then the honors, the flowers and the jokers.

Turn all the tiles face down and mix them up. That's the noisy part, and the whole condo can hear it. Each player builds a wall in front of her rack, nineteen tiles long and two high, and the four walls get pushed together into a square.

One player is East, the dealer. East rolls the dice and counts that many stacks along her own wall to decide where to break it. Then everyone takes tiles in turn, four at a time, going around until East has fourteen tiles and everyone else has thirteen. Stand them on your rack where only you can see them. Take out your card. Look worried. Everyone does.

This is the part of the American game that the Chinese game doesn't have, and it's the part I love best. Before anybody plays, everyone passes tiles she doesn't want to the other players, three at a time, face down.

• The first Charleston everyone has to do: pass three to the right, three across, and three to the left.
• The second Charleston is optional. It goes the other way: left, across, right. If anyone at the table wants to stop after the first one, it stops.
• The courtesy pass comes last: you and the player across from you can trade up to three tiles, if you both want to. If she'll give you two and you wanted three, you both pass two.

On the last pass of each Charleston you may pass along tiles you were just handed without looking at them. That's called a blind pass, or stealing. And no jokers, ever, in any pass.

The Charleston is where you decide which hand on the card you're going for. Don't decide too fast. Don't decide too slow, either. Bev decides during the shuffle.

East starts by throwing one tile into the middle of the table, since she has fourteen. Then play goes to the right. On your turn you take the next tile from the wall, decide what you don't need, and discard it face up in the middle, saying what it is out loud: "two bam," "four crak," "soap," "flower." That's where our name comes from.

You're working toward fourteen tiles that make one hand on the card exactly. Until then, it's draw one, throw one, around and around.

When somebody throws a tile you need, you can call it instead of waiting to draw, but only to finish a group of three or more of the same tile (three is a pung, four is a kong, five is a quint) or to make mah jongg. You can never call a discard for a single tile or a pair, unless it's the very last tile of your mah jongg.

When you call, you take the tile, put the whole group face up on top of your rack where everyone can see it (that's an exposure), and then discard. Play goes on to your right, so anybody in between just lost her turn. If two people call the same tile, mah jongg beats an exposure, and otherwise it goes to whoever's turn would come first. And speak up before the next player has picked her tile from the wall and put it on her rack, or it's too late.

Some hands on the card are marked as concealed. For those, you can't call anything except the last tile for mah jongg.

• A joker can stand in for any tile in a group of three or more.
• A joker can never be used for a single tile or in a pair.
• Jokers never go in the Charleston.
• If somebody has an exposure on her rack with a joker in it, and you have the real tile it's standing in for, you may trade her for the joker on your turn. This is called redeeming a joker, and it is the most satisfying thing you can do at a card table without winning.

When your fourteen tiles match one hand on the card exactly, whether you drew the last tile from the wall or called it, say "Mah Jongg!" and lay your rack down so everyone can check it. Everyone will check it. Then East moves one seat to the right and you start again.

The League way: every hand on the card has a value printed next to it. When you make mah jongg, the player who threw your winning tile pays you double that, and the other two pay the value. If you drew the winning tile from the wall yourself, all three pay you double. There's more to it than that, and it's in the League's rules.

Our way: a quarter a game from each of the other three, no matter what hand you made. We like it better. Nobody has to do arithmetic but me, and I enjoy it.

A dead hand. If somebody has exposed tiles that couldn't possibly fit any hand on the card, or she has the wrong number of tiles, the others can call her hand dead. She stops trying to win and just keeps drawing and discarding until the game is over. And yes, she still pays.

A wall game. If the wall runs out of tiles and nobody has made mah jongg, nobody wins and nobody pays. Throw them in and shuffle. In our house, that's when somebody goes for more coffee.

• Name every discard, clearly. (Lil.)
• Keep your hands off other people's racks.
• Don't hold the game up. Think during everybody else's turn.
• Don't sigh when a tile goes by. Everybody at the table knows what a sigh means.
• Win graciously. Lose graciously. Bring something good to eat either way.

That's the basics. The rest you learn by losing quarters. If you have a question, write to me at [email protected] and I'll answer it, and if I'm not sure I'll ask Bev, and Bev is always sure.