How To Count Tai

Where Tai Come From

Secure Your First Tai

In Scored Hand and Full Match, four sets and an Eye are not enough: as at most tables, a win also needs at least 1 tai, a unit of the hand’s value. The quickest tai come from a Pong or Kong of any dragon, of your Own Wind or of the Round Wind, from the flower or season with your seat’s number, and from any animal. At this table a Men Qing hand, one with no claimed sets, also earns 1 tai on a Zi Mo.

Plan for your tai early. Two of a dragon, or of your Own Wind or the Round Wind, are worth keeping: one more copy makes a Pong worth a tai. Patterns such as Pong Pong Hu, Hun Yi Se and Qing Yi Se earn more, and the next lessons show them.

Count Your Tai Sources

At this table, a dragon Pong gives one tai. A Pong of your Own Wind gives one tai, and a Pong of the Round Wind gives one tai. If your Own Wind and the Round Wind are the same, that Pong gives both tai.

Winning on a replacement tile adds one tai: Hua Shang after a bonus, Gang Shang after a Kong. So does a Men Qing hand won by Zi Mo. Count each hand pattern, bonus and winning event once so you do not add the same award twice.

The Tai Table

Add up every row that applies; each counts once. Payment stops at the 5-tai limit, so a hand worth more is paid as 5 tai.

Dragon And Wind Sets

Hand Patterns

How You Win

Bonus Tiles

Patterns That Pay More

Build Pong Pong Hu

Pong Pong Hu has four Pongs or Kongs and an Eye: every set a Pong, not a single run. At this table, Pong Pong Hu earns two tai. Dragon sets and matching wind sets can add more.

Check all four sets: just one sneaky Chi and the hand isn’t Pong Pong Hu.

Hun Yi Se & Qing Yi Se

A Hun Yi Se (mixed one suit) uses one numbered suit together with winds or dragons. A Qing Yi Se (pure one suit) uses only one numbered suit, with no winds or dragons. You still need a complete hand.

At this table, a Hun Yi Se earns two tai and a Qing Yi Se earns four. Lots of tiles in one suit looks promising, but it only counts once you finish the hand.

Understand Ping Hu

At this table, Ping Hu needs four Chi and no bonus tiles. The Eye cannot be dragons, your Own Wind or the Round Wind. To win on a discard, you must have been waiting for more than one kind of tile. On a Zi Mo, that waiting-tile rule does not apply.

Ping Hu earns four tai. At this table it is paid like any other 4-tai hand; SPGG gives it its own price instead (20 full, 10 half). If you have bonus tiles but meet the other conditions, the hand counts as Chow Ping Hu (“smelly” Ping Hu, spoiled by a bonus) for one tai instead. Four Chi alone are not enough.

More On Bonus Tiles

Complete Bonus Sets

At this table, all four animals give five tai in total. All four flowers or all four seasons give two tai in total. The matching-seat tai is already included in those two tai.

Collecting all eight flowers and seasons has a separate special-win rule. Having seven is not enough on its own: how the eighth is drawn or claimed also matters.

Bites & Marriages

Cat bites Rat, and Rooster bites Centipede: each makes a matching animal pair. At this table, the flower and season that both match your seat number also form a marriage (kahwin, as the table says).

Scored Play pays for these pairs as soon as you collect them. A pair already in your initial deal, before bonus replacements, pays more than one completed later. These payments are separate from the tai you count when winning a hand.

Limit Hands

Some hands skip the count. At this table each of these is paid at the 5-tai limit, in place of every other tai.

Recognise Special Hands

13 Wonders, also called Thirteen Orphans, has the 1 and 9 of each suit, all four winds, all three dragons, and a second copy of any one of those tiles. Other special hands include Shi Ba Luo Han (four Kongs), Jiu Lian Bao Deng (nine gates, a set one-suit shape), Zi Yi Se (only winds and dragons), All Terminals and four concealed Pongs.

Scored Play allows 13 Wonders, its listed automatic dragon, wind and flower wins, and its listed normal hand patterns. Limit hands, such as Shi Ba Luo Han, Jiu Lian Bao Deng, four concealed Pongs won by Zi Mo (Kam Kam Hu) and Gang Shang Gang (a win on the replacement after two Kongs in a row), pay the table’s limit. It gives no award for Seven Pairs, and a Men Qing hand earns its 1 tai only on a Zi Mo. Guided Hand only checks for four sets and an Eye.

Minimum And Limit

The minimum tai decides whether you can win. The cap is the most tai used to calculate payment. With a one-tai minimum and five-tai cap, a zero-tai hand cannot win and a six-tai hand is paid as five tai: man tai, right at the limit.

Scored Hand and Full Match use this one-tai minimum and five-tai cap, as most tables do. Guided Hand has no scoring, so you can practise making sets and taking turns first. Other tables may agree different limits.

Payments Double With Each Tai

At this table, start with the base payment for the hand’s tai. If you win on a discard, the shooter (the player who threw it) pays twice the base. The other two players each pay the base. You receive four times the base in total.

On a Zi Mo, each opponent pays twice the base, giving you six times the base. The practice questions give you the base amount and leave out Bao. In Scored Play, one to five tai use base payments of 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 practice points. Earlier Kong and marriage payments are separate.

When One Player Pays: Bao

Bao means one player may have to pay for the whole hand instead of sharing the bill. It comes from a claim or a win, never from a discard alone. If an opponent has two dragon Pongs face up, think twice before throwing the third dragon.

Scored Play’s main Bao cases at this table: feeding a third dragon set, a fourth wind set, or a Pong of a dragon, their Own Wind or the Round Wind that takes a player’s face-up tai to the 5-tai cap; a discard that wins a Qing Yi Se for a player showing three sets in that suit; and a fresh tile, one nobody has discarded yet, that wins when five or fewer live tiles are left.