Mah-jongg is a classic game. It has elements of luck, frustration, strategy, frustration, cool tiles, frustration, several modes of play, frustrasion, millions of special hands . . . did I mention frustration. Although can be a frustrating game to play, it is all the more rewarding when you finally beat off your rivals and score a big special hand.

The basic game is deceptively simple, sort of like super "rummy". Take 144 tiles, "twitter the sparrows" (mix tiles on table face down", build 4 walls, two tiles high (making sure no evil spirits escape) then each player takes a hand of 13 tiles from the wall. The object is to get a hand of four (4) lots of three (3) duplicate tiles (pung) (or run of three 3 tiles (chow)) and a pair of duplicate tiles. This can only be achieved by picking up a 14th tile from the wall or another players discard. If you don't meet this requirement (and hence go "mah jong"), you pick one of your tiles to discard. Generally you must pick a tile from the wall, as you can only pick up another player's discard if you are completing a pung or chow.

In the basic chinese game, players go mah-jong as quickly as possible and gambling is often involved. In the western version things are changed with the introduction of "special hands". These are very high scoring hands that give a lot more variety to what a player can collect to go mah-jong and allows players who don't have a "standard" hand to still be in the running to go "mah-jong".

The game can run for many rounds over several hours and is deep, involving and fun. The clear chinese flavor of the game is also a big plus, with the phrases to be used and names of special hands. This game is throughly recommended, and mah-jong sets are pretty plentiful on ebay and in jumble sales etc. All come with rules which are almost indecipherable. I'd recommend getting rules of this site, and start building a database of special hands you like, so that when you have a woeful hand going nowhere, you can grab for the "special hands" sheet and search for that "Imperial Plum blossom wind garden of dragonly delights" that will be your ticket to victory.

That is, until your spouse discards the only remaining tile you require when you can't pick it up.