A win is not just a win. Every winning hand is priced by its fan 番 — pattern bonuses that stack on top of each other — and the price decides who pays you what. This lesson walks from a finished hand to the exact number of points that changes hands.
Three steps, in this order:
A plain hand wins 1 point. A plain hand won on your own draw in a single suit wins 6, and if it also contains two four-of-a-kinds it wins 8. Beginners count the shape; good players count the stack.
| Pattern | Chinese | Fan | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base win | 平胡 | 1 | Any standard win — four sets plus a pair. The floor of the whole table. |
| All triplets | 大对子 碰碰胡 | 3 | All four sets are triplets or kongs — no runs anywhere. Worth 1 + 2. Exposed melds count. |
| Golden hook | 金钩钓 | 3 | All four melds are exposed (pongs/kongs) and your hand is down to a single pair waiting on one tile. |
| Seven pairs | 七对 | 4 | Seven distinct pairs, no melds exposed. Replaces the base win. |
| Dragon seven pairs | 龙七对 | 8 | Seven pairs that contain a four-of-a-kind. The four-of-a-kind is already inside this number — it is not counted again as 根. |
| Eighteen arhats | 十八罗汉 | 16 | All four of your melds are kongs — a legendary shape most players never see. |
| Pure all-triplets | 清对 | 8 | Package deal: all one suit and all triplets. |
| Pure golden hook | 清金钩钓 | 8 | Package deal: all one suit and a golden-hook shape. |
| Pure seven pairs | 清七对 | 16 | Package deal: all one suit and seven pairs. |
| Pure dragon seven pairs | 清龙七对 | 32 | Package deal: all one suit and dragon seven pairs. This is the cap. |
Note the two kinds of number in that table. 平胡 → 大对子 → 七对 … are single tiers: a hand gets exactly one. 清对, 清七对 and friends are package prices — they exist because multiplying the two ideas together is worth more than adding them, so the tier is quoted as one number instead of being stacked piece by piece.
| Pattern | Chinese | Fan | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| All one suit | 清一色 | +4 | Every tile in the hand, melds included, is from a single suit. Skipped when your tier is already a pure 清 package. The big one. |
| Terminals everywhere | 带幺九 | +2 | Every set and the pair contains a 1 or a 9. |
| No terminals at all | 断幺九 | off | No 1s and no 9s anywhere. Not part of the Sichuan table — it is a national-standard and Japanese-rule pattern. This site ships it as a switch, off by default, so you can see the difference. |
| Four of a kind | 根 | +1 each | Per tile you hold four of. Skipped for seven-pairs hands, where 龙七对 already pays for it. |
| Self-draw | 自摸 | +1 | You drew the winning tile yourself rather than taking a discard. |
| Kong blossom | 杠上花 | +1 | The winning tile was the replacement tile drawn after a kong, and you drew it yourself. |
| Kong cannon | 杠上炮 | +1 | You won off a tile that someone was forced to discard right after their kong. |
| Robbing the kong | 抢杠胡 | +1 | Someone tried to add the fourth tile to their pong and you won on it. The kong does not happen — no kong money changes hands. |
| Last tile | 海底 | +1 | The win came off the very last tile in the wall. |
Add-ons are applied after the tier, so a self-drawn all-one-suit hand is 1 + 4 + 1 = 6, not 4. 自摸 and 杠上花 also stack with each other: a self-drawn win on a kong replacement is +1 +1.
A normal four-sets-plus-a-pair win across three suits, drawn by you.
| 平胡 base | 1 |
| 自摸 self-draw | +1 |
| Total | 2 fan → 2 points |
Nobody has won yet, so all three opponents pay 2 each and you collect 6.
Every tile is dots. You take the final tile from an opponent's discard.
| 平胡 base | 1 |
| 清一色 all one suit | +4 |
| 自摸 (not self-drawn) | — |
| Total | 5 fan → 5 points |
On a discard win only the player who discarded the tile pays — 5 points, from one person.
Two of your four sets were claimed from discards, so only eight tiles sit in your hand — the other six are on the table as pongs. This is still all triplets, and nothing in the hand is a 1 or a 9.
| 大对子 all triplets (1 + 2) | 3 |
| 清一色 (two suits in play) | — |
| 断幺九 (switch is off, and not a Sichuan pattern) | — |
| Total | 3 fan → 3 points |
Exposed melds never reduce a shape fan: the tier is judged on the shape of the hand, not on how many tiles are left in it. A common confusion, and the reason this page spells it out.
Seven pairs in one suit, and the four 3条 is what makes it a dragon.
| 清龙七对 pure dragon seven pairs | 32 |
| 根 four of a kind | — (already inside 龙七对) |
| 清一色 all one suit | — (already inside the 清 package) |
| Total | 32 fan → 32 points (capped) |
Two things to notice. 七对 replaces 平胡 rather than adding to it — you either win as seven pairs or as a standard hand, never both. And the pure tiers are quoted with everything already inside them: this hand does not collect 4 + 8 + 4 + 1 on the way up, it simply lands on 32.
| How you won | Who pays | How much each |
|---|---|---|
| Self-draw 自摸 | Every player who has not yet won this round | The full fan value, each |
| Off a discard 点炮 | Only the player who discarded that tile | The full fan value, alone |
Two consequences worth internalising. First, self-draw is worth roughly three times a discard win, because three people pay instead of one — which is why 自摸 is worth chasing. Second, because this is battle to the end 血战到底, "who has not yet won" shrinks as the round goes on: the third winner is paid by one player, not three.
Kong points do not wait for the end of the round. They change hands the moment the kong is made:
| Kong type | Chinese | Who pays | Each pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exposed kong (from a discard) | 直杠 | The player who discarded the 4th tile | 2 |
| Concealed kong (all four in hand) | 暗杠 | All three opponents | 2 |
| Added kong (on your own pong) | 补杠 | All three opponents | 1 |
One exception: if someone robs your added kong 抢杠胡, the kong never happens and no kong money changes hands at all. Your pong stays a pong, and the robber takes the tile plus one extra fan.
Kong money is only yours if you eventually win the round. A player who collects kong points and never wins has to give every point back at settlement. This is the single most surprising rule for newcomers — and it is why a kong is a commitment, not free money.
If the round ends without three winners, nobody wins and penalties are charged instead:
| Settlement | Chinese | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Ready check | 查叫 查大叫 | Every player who is not ready (下叫) pays each ready player the fan value of that player's best wait — so the better your wait, the more you collect. |
| Flower pig | 查花猪 | Anyone still holding tiles of their declared missing suit pays 16 points to each player who cleared theirs. The most expensive mistake in the game. |
| Tax refund | 退税 | Everyone who never won refunds all the kong money they collected. |
Read those three together and the game's whole incentive structure appears: clear your missing suit, get ready (下叫), and keep your wait as fat as possible. Almost every strategic idea in Sichuan mahjong is downstream of that sentence.
Sichuan mahjong fan values genuinely differ from table to table and city to city — all-one-suit is worth 2 in some places and 4 in others, and rare fan names shift too. All-triplets is normally 大对子 on a Sichuan table (the rest of China says 碰碰胡). 金钩钓 and 十八罗汉 are kept as two separate patterns here because they are two different shapes — an all-exposed hand with a single-tile wait, versus four kongs — even though some tables use the same name for both.
断幺九 is deliberately off. It is a real pattern in the Chinese national standard and in Japanese mahjong, but it is not part of the Sichuan game; the Sichuan counterpart is 带幺九. It stays in the rules file as a switch so the difference is visible rather than asserted.
Where a name is genuinely contested, this site uses the term its own engine computes and says so, rather than quietly teaching one region's vocabulary as if it were universal.
Every number on this page is exactly what the table and the calculator on this site will compute, so the lesson and the scores can never disagree. Treat it as one clearly documented preset — then check your local table's house rules before you play for anything that matters.