All Terminals 清幺九

What It Is

All Terminals (清幺九, Qing Yao Jiu) is a hand of only 1s and 9s, from any suits. Terminals can’t make a Chi on their own (1-2-3 has a 2 in it), so it’s four Pongs or Kongs and a terminal Eye. No winds, no dragons.

Add winds or dragons and it becomes Terminals & Honours, a much smaller hand. The pure version is the limit.

What It Pays

At a Singapore table All Terminals pays the limit, 5 tai, and replaces every other tai: 128 points on a discard. Terminals & Honours, its mixed cousin, pays 2 tai.

How Realistic Is It?

Not very. There are only twenty-four terminal tiles in the set, and you need fourteen of them in just six kinds. Most of the time, a hand that starts heavy in 1s and 9s should aim for Terminals & Honours or a plain Pong Pong Hu, and keep this as a hope.

If you do hold three or four terminal pairs early, Pong them as they come. Other players throw 1s and 9s freely in the first few turns, because they’re awkward in runs, so early claims are easy. Later, they get held.

Once you have one honour set, the pure hand is gone. That’s fine: Terminals & Honours with Pong Pong Hu is still a good hand.

One more trap: a 1 or a 9 is the easiest tile to give up when someone else’s hand looks dangerous, so you’ll often be holding exactly the tiles the cautious players are throwing. Enjoy that while it lasts, and expect it to stop once your sets are on the table.

How Others Spot It, And Bao

Three Pongs of 1s and 9s face up is a strange sight, and a clear one. From then on, every terminal is a risk.

At a Singapore table it works like the honour and flush cases: with three terminal Pongs face up, a discard that wins them All Terminals, or a terminal they claim for a later win, is Bao, and you pay for everyone. Throw middle tiles or honours instead.

At Other Tables

Hong Kong pays All Terminals the limit, the limit, 10 faan. Malaysian 3 Kaki uses one numbered suit, so there are only two kinds of terminal and the hand can’t be made.

In Riichi it’s Chinroutou, a yakuman.