Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Babcock rules › Twenty Point Mah Jong
Twenty Point Mah Jong
R.F. Foster, 1924
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
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
- documented a published ruleset or rule description exists and is cited
- 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 (the standard 136 plus 8 flowers) | 13, out on 14 | used in the hand to form sets | all sets earn points; the hand cannot go out until points reach at least 20; points can be doubled | all players earn points |
- [1] designed in 1924 by R.F. Foster to solve the Chinese Classical problem of high-scoring hands thwarted by cheap wins and frequent wall-building
Reading it
1924, R.F. Foster, and the 20-point minimum that gives the game its name all confirm the chart. Sloperama adds the motive and the verdict: Foster's attempt satisfied nobody but paved the way for American mah-jongg in the 1930s, which supports the chart's placement of it beside the American line rather than in it.
In the tree
Descends from Babcock rules, as the source chart draws it.