Mahjong

Mahjong is a tile-based game for three or four players, typically played with a set of 144 tiles bearing Chinese characters and symbols, though regional variations add or exclude certain tiles. Each player sits at one of four positions named for a compass wind, East, South, West and North, and after drawing an opening hand of thirteen tiles, players take turns drawing a tile and then discarding one from their hand, with other players sometimes able to claim a discarded tile under set conditions. The object of each round is to complete a legal hand, most commonly four melds and a pair, from drawn or claimed tiles, though special hands outside that usual pattern can also score; players carry a persistent score across rounds until the game ends.