Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Shanghai / Hong Kong new style › Hong Kong old style › Nanyang variants › Filipino style
Filipino style
16-tile hand, honours as flowers
Sources
The documents this entry rests on, as published. Each can be opened and checked; nothing in this part is anybody’s reading of them.
Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 2b: Identifying a Mah-Jongg Variant." Sloperama. canonical checked 2026-09-18
https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq02b.html
chart’s note Tile counts, hand sizes, flower handling and scoring for roughly 50 named variants. Primary source for most leaf nodes in this chart.
Also cited on: Chinese archaic, Late Qing style, Chinese pre-classical, Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Hong Kong old style and 44 more · bibliography #1
Ging's Brain. "How to Play Filipino Mahjong." cross-check checked 2026-09-18
https://gingsbrain.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-play-filipino-mahjong.html
AI summary A play-level account of the Filipino game, cited by Sloperama's catalogue. Confirms the 17-tile winning hand and the flower and season sets.
Only cited here · bibliography #58
Wikipedia. "Mahjong." cross-check checked 2026-09-18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong
AI summary The main article's regional-variations section, which describes most branches of this tree independently of the chart's own sources.
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Chinese classical, Hong Kong old style, Taiwanese style, Singapore style, Vietnamese classical and 7 more · bibliography #54
Analysis
Written by an AI model from the sources above. It is a reading of them, not a source in its own right: every figure in it points back to a numbered source, and where the two disagree, the source is right.
Assessment
- Confidence
- catalogued listed in a variant catalogue with tile counts and hand sizes, but no rules text verified
- Evidence
- corroborated two or more independent sources agree on the facts that define this variant
Cross-comparison
What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.
| Source | Tiles | Hand | Flowers | Scoring | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | 144 (possibly more); certain tiles may be designated as jokers | 16, out on 17 | melded instantly; winds and dragons are treated the same as flowers | count doubles, convert to points | winner only (?); thrower pays double |
| [2] | — | 16, and you must have 17 tiles to win | — | — | — |
| [3] | 144, the standard set | — | groups all dragon, wind, season and flower tiles as flowers for bonus points | — | — |
- [1] kongs get paid at the instant they are melded
- [2] cited by Sloperama's own catalogue. Confirms both the four plant flowers and the four season tiles, and describes a separate flower wall used for replacements
- [3] states the game uses no jokers, which contradicts Sloperama's note that certain tiles may be designated as jokers under a rule it could not describe
Reading it
Three sources agree on the 144-tile set and the 16-tile hand winning on 17. Wikipedia also confirms the flower handling, which is how the chart tells Filipino from Taiwanese: dragons and winds are grouped with the flowers. The one disagreement is jokers, which Sloperama hedges and Wikipedia denies; prefer Wikipedia, since Sloperama admits it cannot state the rule.
In the tree
Descends from Nanyang variants, as the source chart draws it.
Caveat from the source chart
Sits under Nanyang despite a 16-tile hand resembling Taiwanese. The distinguishing test is that Filipino play treats winds and dragons as flowers.
Descends into
- Bashi-Bashi — 3-player, Philippine casinos