Mahjong 101: Dealing

One person is selected to be East. You can choose East by throwing the dice, arbitrarily choosing the hostess or by actual seating arrangement.

To begin dealing, East throws the dice. The number on the dice indicates where East will break her wall. If, for example, East throws a 10 on the dice, she will take ten groups of two tiles from the right end of the wall and keep them separate. They are reserved until the end of the game.

East takes four tiles (two groups of two) from the remainder of her wall. Then the player to the right of East takes four tiles and then the next player to the right takes four, etc. When East’s wall is exhausted of tiles, the player to the left of east pushes out her wall and the players continue to pick until each player has three groups of four (12 tiles).

When each player has 12 tiles, East then picks the first and third tile from the wall. The player to the right of East takes the bottom tile, the next player takes the tile on top, and then the last tile gets picked so that each player has 13 tiles and East has 14. The number of tiles remaining in the wall will be determined by the number East originally threw on the dice. For example, if East threw 11, only one tile will remain.

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