All posts in The NMJL Card

If American Mahjong has a rulebook, this is it. The NMJL Card is a small, densely packed card published every year by the National Mah Jongg League, and it’s the single source of truth for what counts as a winning hand. This guide covers what…

The first time most players open the NMJL Card, it looks like a wall of colored numbers and letters. It isn’t random — it’s a compressed notation system, and once you understand the handful of symbols it uses, every line reads like a short sentence…

The NMJL Card doesn’t print its hands as one long undifferentiated list — it groups them into named categories, and while the specific hands inside each category change every year, the category names and general logic tend to persist from one card to the next….

Every hand on the NMJL Card carries a C or X marking, and that single letter shapes a lot of your decision-making during play. Understanding what it actually commits you to — and why concealed and exposed versions of similar hands are valued differently —…