Mahjong, contrary to what is commonly played over the lot of published casual online games now is originally played by a set of four players, which play similar to that of western card game “rummy”, having clusters of sculptured tiles for the draws instead of the cards, which is likewise a game of skill, strategy, calculation, and luck.

The original game is played with a total of 144 tiles that are detailed with Chinese characters and symbols. Although pertaining to have several varieties in the total number of tiles, in most of the variations, players are handed out a total of 13 start-up tiles. In turns, each of the players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand (sequenced values of tiles) using the 14th drawn tile to form four groups and a pair.

Following up on the basic rules of the game, there are a few key points onto how each piece is drawn (from the cluster of facedown tiles), how a piece is stolen from another player, the use of simples (numbered tiles) and honors (winds and dragons), the kinds of sequences and pairs (legal hand), and the order of dealing.

The game is based on draw-and-discard card games that were popular in 18th and 19th century China. They pertain to detail similar values in them like stripped deck of money-suited cards, the coins (circular figures), myriad of strings (bamboos), several wild cards like flowers and seasons, and inscriptions (characters). Similar to most card games too, there are multiple copies of each tile in the game.

In a more recent propagation of the game in the Chinese culture, Old Hong Kong fairly standardised the mahjong set to what is known to most enthusiast nowadays (for the number of tiles and their design), as well as utilizing the basic features found in most of its earlier variations of the game - complete with a simple scoring system.

A modern set nowadays include counters (to keep score), dice (to decide how to deal) and a marker to signify the current dealer and which round is being played. A set of mahjong tiles usually has at least 136 tiles (most commonly 144) split into three basic categories namely the suits, honor, and flowers. Bringing the values of its origins, three sets of suits are valued 1 to 9 include bamboos, characters, and circles. There are four identical copies of each number in each of the suits giving a total of 108 basic tiles. Other than that, two different honor suits play much like bonus/wild cards to easily pair with similar suits to easily form a legal hand (as they don’t have numerical values).

During the game, each of the players (in turns) picks up a tile from an established draw pool of tiles called “wall” (as it looks like one) and then discarding a tile by throwing it into the center. The circulation of turns continues until one player has a legal winning hand and calls out mahjong while revealing their hand. During play, the number of tiles maintained by each player should always be thirteen tiles (meaning in each turn a tile must be picked up and another discarded). Not included in the count of thirteen tiles are flowers and seasons set to the side and the fourth added piece of a kong.

One basic element that makes the original mahjong a great game is the variation of limits it can endow the playing party to build the elementary rules of bets in the game - getting to furnish different quality legal hands, penalties, multipliers and stuff. It is difficult to master, but nevertheless just as enjoyable as any card bet game.