HOW I GOT BETTER AT MAHJONG • THIS PRACTICE TECHNIQUE! transcript

Do you want to get better at American Mahjong? Well, this is a great way to practice not only the Charleston, but also how to take it all the way through to a Mahjong hand. So, what I like to do is I take all of my tiles, I put them in a bag, I mix them up nice and good, and then I make sure I've got my rack and my National Mahjong League card ready to go. I'm going to deal all 13 tiles randomly from the bag, and then I'm going to show you how I do a complete Charleston.

I'm going to show you what my thought process is, what I'm going to keep, what I'm going to pass, why I'm going to do that, and then I'll actually take 25 tiles and see if I can get Mahjong within that 25. So, join me for the first practice round of the Charleston. All right, let's practice the Charleston. I put all my tiles in a bag, they're completely mixed up, and I'm going to randomly deal myself 13 tiles. Now, once I have my 13, I'm going to show you how I organize, and then I'm going to show you my thought process of how I go through the Charleston, and what I think I'm going to pick, what I'm going to keep, what I'm going to pass, because as a beginner, it's always the hardest thing, knowing what to do in the Charleston before the game even begins.

So, here we go. Here's my 13 random tiles. All right, now I'm going to organize. When I do my tile organization, I always put flowers on my left, because this is where they're written on the card. I don't happen to have any flowers right now. I'm then going to put all of my suits together in ascending order. So, these are my dots. This is a Amazon set of classic tiles. Wow, look at all those dots. I do have one joker.

I put all my jokers together. I'll put my cracks together. I'll put my winds together. Another four dot, look at that. Uh, put my winds, I'll put my bams together. Wow, lots of pairs today, looking good. Okay, so this is what we've got. If I If I had any dragons, I would put them together as well. I've got threes and fours. I've got eights and a nine. I've got a pair of nines and then I've got this eight. Bam. It looks like a nice hand.

I've got a couple winds. I've got a joker. So, as a beginner, I always say when in doubt, count it out. Meaning, how many even tiles do you have versus odd? I have 1 2 3 4 5 6. I have six even tiles and I've got a pong and a pair, which is fabulous. In terms of odds, I have 1 2 3 4 with one pair. Now, just so you know, the East and the West, they go with your even tiles. You'll see East and West in the 2 4 6 8 category or you'll see it in the winds and dragons category with the even tiles.

And your North and South goes with your odd tiles. So, something to kind of keep note of. Um, I definitely have a lot of evens right now. So, I'm thinking of going with the 2 4 6 8 category. If I do that, I would not need this three dot. I would not need a nine crack. I wouldn't need either nine crack, right? And I probably wouldn't need the South since the East and the West are what go with the even numbers. But, I'm never going to pass someone a pair.

I'm just never going to do that. So, I'm going to split these up amongst my passes. So, I will pass a three dot, a nine crack, and I'll give them a South. All right? So, it's going to look like that. That's going to be my first pass to the right. Put that down right here and I'm going to take my first three tiles. Now, if I get a joker, I have to give it back cuz you can never pass a joker in the Charleston. Oh my gosh, right away I get a joker.

That's kind of funny. Okay, pick another tile. I got a three bam. And I've got another nine crack. I guess the nine cracks really like me. And now I have a two bam. Okay, well I like the two potentially for my evens. And I'm not even looking at a at a hand right now. I just look for category, especially in the first round of the Charleston. I don't need the three. I don't need this nine, and I don't need this nine. But guess what?

I really hate to give two of the same number, even if they're different suits. I don't like to do that if I don't have to. So that means I could put in the east instead of one of these nines. It just kind of depends. There is a nice hand that has easts and wests with the even tiles. So I'm going to just go for it. I'm going to give two nines even though I really don't like to do it. And this is going to be my pass over.

Then I'm going to get three tiles. Let's see what I get. I've got a three bam. We already had that. I've got a seven crack. Won't be needing that. And I've got a two crack. Well, I like the two crack cuz now I've got a two bam and a two crack. So we're going to get rid of the three bam. I don't need the seven, and I don't need the nine. So I'm getting rid of a three, a seven, and a nine. And if I had wanted, this is my first left.

If I wanted, I could do a blind pass right now. If I didn't want to pass those, I could pass however many I want to. Say I only wanted to pass two. Then I would take the three tiles that someone is passing me. I would take one of those, and I would do that as my pass. But I'm not going to do a blind pass right now. I'm going to be passing these. So this is my first left. Looks like that. That's my first left. I'm going to take three random tiles.

I would love some more east and west. That would be nice. Oh, we got a two dot. This is looking really pretty. A three dot and I will put it in because sometimes when you put that tile in, maybe I'm going to switch to consecutive run. You never know. And I got another south. All right. I personally still think I should be going with the 2 4 6 8. Now, somebody could stop the Charleston right now. I'm not going to stop the Charleston because I don't have 10 tiles towards Mahjong and I'm not going to stop the Charleston unless I do.

So, I'm going to get rid of this three dot. I really want to keep these if I can. I for sure want to keep my twos because there's a 2 4 6 8 hand with Kongs and you could use the twos in it. So, if I have to, I could do um something like that. So, I could either get rid of these. I hate giving two winds together, but I could or I could get rid of the eight. Because I'm not really sure that I'll be able to use it. But, then I also see I have two eights.

What if I go to any like numbers? What if I get a bunch more? So, for that reason, this will be my second left. All right. So, that's second left. I'm going to reach in. Let's see what I get. I have a north. The winds are headed my way. I have a one crack. And I have a three crack. Now, I have this run, but it doesn't help me at all. I still just want the two. I don't need the three. And I don't need the north. So, this will be my pass over.

Let's see what we get. Do you notice that I haven't even opened the card yet? I'm not even looking at what hand. I'm just collecting everything I can to benefit a 2 4 6 8 hand. So, we've got a west. We've got our first dragon and I've got a flower. Always good to have a flower. They're in so many hands and you never know when you're going to need it. We don't pass a flower if you can avoid it because it's really handing someone a gift.

So, I never pass a flower. If I don't want a flower, I'm going to discard it right away when the game begins cuz maybe someone can't take it yet. Maybe they don't have enough to grab it for the pong or the kong. But, right now I'm going to keep it there. I've got the 2 4 8. I don't have any sixes, but I do have this joker. So, maybe if we need to do something, we'll do that. Now, I have to do my final right. I can do a blind pass in the final right.

Now, I don't have enough east and west to keep this. So, I'm going to get rid of our west. I really don't want to get rid of a dragon, but I don't think I'm going to need the red dragon. So, I'm going to get rid of this dragon. And I really don't want to get rid of my twos. As I said, I'm going to keep the eight as well. I'm going to do the blind pass right now because I can on the second right. And this is what it's going to look like.

If I get three tiles passed to me, I cannot look at them. So, say they're face down, somebody hands me these three tiles. That's what they passed me. They should say from this side. They passed me these three tiles. I only want to pass two. So, I'm going to take one tile that was passed to me. And that's what I'm going to pass. I cannot look at it. I'm going to put that away. I'm going to pass that as my final right.

And then I can open up Oh, I got another two dot. And then look at that. I got another red dragon. Okay, I've now done two rounds of the Charleston. I have gone from I don't really have that much to I think I'll do 2 4 6 8 category to I have a nice looking hand right here. There's a few different things that we could do. Now, I have the optional pass. I can pass zero, one, two, or three tiles. Well, I don't think I'm going to be using this red dragon.

If it was a soap, it would be different because that's the pair dragon for dots, but it's not. And I don't really know what I'm going to do with the twos and the eights. I probably don't honestly need this eight at this point. I'm not going any like numbers. I have too much going for 2 4 6 8. So, personally, I think that I could pass this tile. I'm going to pass two in the optional pass. I'm going to randomly take two.

Let's see what I get. I've got Oh, I've got one more flower. They show it as a wind in this set. And I've got it a east. Okay. I don't really need this east. I'm going to start my discard pile over here at this point. I like these. Now, let's look at some hands now. Now that that Charleston is over, look at the 2026 card. Now, there's a pung of twos, a pung of fours, a kong of sixes, and a kong of eights. That would be an option.

I have the or the pung of fours. I need one more two. I don't have any sixes, so that kind of hurts. But, I also have these eights. So, all in one suit, that's a possibility. Now, there's also a hand that has three flowers. It has a pair of twos, a pair of fours, a pung of sixes, and a kong of eights. So, I kind of like that one even more because I already have the two pairs. I would have to get rid of one of these, which always hurts.

And I don't have any sixes, but I can pick them up, and it's three of them instead of four of them. So, personally, I think I'm going to go with one of those hands. Let's see if I can do it in 25 tiles. I've seen people do this with 24 tiles or 25. It doesn't really matter. We're just practicing right now. But, let's see if I could take from the bag one at a time and get mahjongg in less than 25 tiles. So, I'm taking from the wall.

I get a west. I don't need it. I'm going to discard. I say west. I'm taking from the wall. Look at that. I just got another flower. So, we're going to go over here. I now have the three flowers for that particular hand. So, I'm kind of loving that. Okay, I'm going to discard. I say east. What do we got? A nine dot. I don't need nine dot. It's not part of 2 4 6 8 category. I discard. Seven crack. I don't need it. Fourth discard.

Joker, finally. I wanted more jokers. I need that because I don't have any six dots. I think I have to discard 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. If you ever don't know, that's what you got to do. So, I've got to now give up one of these cuz I'm not giving up any of that. That's my fifth discard. I got 20 more tiles to get Mahjong and I kind of feel good about it. One bam, I don't need it. Nine bam, I don't need it. Seven bam, all the bams.

Let's make sure we're mixing these up good. Eight Oh, we got the eight dot. I like that cuz I need a kong of them. This is looking so good right now. I'm going to discard my two bam. Three bam, we don't need it. I am now down 10 tiles. We got a few more to go. Three dot, I don't need it. Five bam, don't need it. This is such a great way to practice the game. A west tile, I don't need it. It helps you practice the hands.

It helps you see the card, touch the tiles, know the tiles. One crack, no go. Soap, oh remember I said the soap pairs with the dots, but we don't need it at this point. I'm not doing any hand with the dragons. I discard. I'm 15 down, now 16 down. Are we going to get it? We are so close. I don't need a three crack. I need a six dot, I need an eight dot, or I would take some jokers. Another soap. Nope. Uh-oh, we're getting kind of low here.

Seven bam, nope, don't need it. Ooh, I got another joker. I wish this would happen in my real life, pulling all the jokers. Now, what do we need? We are basically going for this hand. So, this is going to be my next discard right here. We've got the twos, we've got the fours. I need one more six, or this could be all of my six dots and I need one more eight. So, it can go either way. I'm liking that. I'm going to discard.

I've got to pull it in five more tiles. What do you think? Do you think I can do it? Three bam, that's a no-go. Five bam, oh, come on. I want the eight dot, a six dot, or a joker. Are you on the edge of your seat like me? Red, no. I've got two more tiles before I hit the 25. Let's go, let's go. I just need one more tile. That's it. That'll be my 14th tile for mahjong. CAN I DO IT? OH, I PULLED A SIX DOT. OKAY, that means I can put this here and I have mahjong.

I've got three flowers, I've got a pair of twos, I've got a pair of fours, I've got a pong of six dots, and a kong of eight dots. Now, this is something that you should do, too. If you're trying to get better at the game, practicing with your tiles, practicing with the National Mahjongg League card is such a great way to just get used to the hands. The The you see them, the more you touch the tiles, the more you put these hands together, the better you're going to get.

So, if you're someone who gets a little overwhelmed in the Charleston, do this as often as you can. Before you know it, you're going to be picking it up faster and faster. So, please give this video a like, a share, a comment below. Let me know if you want to see more Charleston demos cuz I'm happy to do more. And of course, please subscribe to the Ladies That Moz YouTube channel.