Mahjong Compendium

Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Babcock rules › Western / British Empire style

Western / British Empire style

Sources

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.

  1. 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

  2. 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, Filipino style and 7 more · bibliography #54

  3. British Mahjong scoring, as tabulated on the wiki's own Western Mah Jong page. supporting

    http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:western-mah-jong-scoring

    chart’s note The wiki attributes All Green, Seven Pairs and the Jewel Dragons to this tradition flowing back into Chinese rulesets. No book is named. The page has since been removed from the live wiki and the Wayback Machine holds no capture of it, so this citation can no longer be checked at source.

    Only cited here · bibliography #32

AI-generated

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
partial sources agree on some points but disagree or say nothing on others

Cross-comparison

What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.

SourceTilesHandFlowersScoringPayout
[1]144 or more (jokers optional and variable in number)13, out on 14melded instantly when received20 for Out, then points for pongs/kongs/pairs, then doubleall players earn points
  • [1] 70-80 special hands varying book to book; optional Charleston or Razzle exchange, and a Goulash after a drawn game. Sloperama calls this 'Vanilla Western' and suggests 'British Empire style' as the better name; played in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India and Italy
  • [2] PARENTAGE TENSION: calls Western classical a descendant of the version Babcock introduced, which matches the chart, but then says the term today largely refers to the Wright-Patterson rules used in the US military. The chart makes Wright-Patterson a child of this node rather than a synonym for it

Reading it

The rules are well attested by Sloperama and the descent from Babcock is independently confirmed. The relationship to Wright-Patterson is not: Wikipedia treats Western classical as largely meaning the Wright-Patterson rules today, while the chart makes Wright-Patterson one child among five. Sloperama's own naming discussion, preferring British Empire style precisely to separate it from American variants, supports the chart keeping them apart, but the sources do differ.

In the tree

Descends from Babcock rules, as the source chart draws it.

Caveat from the source chart

All Pairs and All Green flowed backwards out of this branch into most other modern rulesets, meaning the Western / American branch fed the Chinese branch, which no tree layout shows.

Descends into

← back to the tree