Your questions about Tai scoring, animal tiles, and everything else SG Mahjong
Singapore Mahjong is the local variant of Mahjong played in Singapore and parts of Malaysia. It uses a 148-tile set (including 8 animal tiles unique to this version), the Tai scoring system, and specific rules about minimum Tai requirements to win.
Most Singaporean families learn this version during Chinese New Year. If your ah ma plays Mahjong, this is almost certainly the version she knows. The clacking of tiles on a foldable table in the living room at 2am during CNY — that’s the sound of Singapore Mahjong.
Several key differences:
For a deeper comparison, see our Hong Kong Mahjong FAQ.
Tai (台) is the unit of scoring in Singapore Mahjong. Each winning hand is worth a certain number of Tai based on the pattern, bonus tiles, and how you won. Common hands like All Sequences might be worth 1 Tai, while rare limit hands can hit the maximum.
Payment scales exponentially — each additional Tai roughly doubles the payout. So a 4 Tai hand pays significantly more than a 2 Tai hand. This is why chasing just one more Tai is so tempting, and why it burns you when you get greedy and someone else wins first.
Most Singapore house rules require a minimum of 1 Tai. Some stricter groups play with a 3 Tai minimum. A Chicken Hand (basic winning hand with no special patterns) is worth 0 Tai and typically can’t win unless your group plays with a 0 Tai minimum.
Always — always — confirm the minimum before you sit down. Nothing starts a family argument faster than someone declaring “hu!” with 0 Tai when everyone else assumed it was minimum 1.
Bao (包) means “guarantee” or “responsible for.” If you discard a tile that gives another player a very high-value win, you might have to pay for all three losers — not just your own share. The exact threshold varies (some groups apply Bao only for limit hands), but the principle is simple: throw a dangerous tile, pay the price.
Bao teaches you to read the table carefully. That tile your opponent probably needs? Maybe hold on to it even if it messes up your own hand. The penalty for feeding someone a limit hand is not worth the risk.
Singapore Mahjong uses 8 animal tiles: Cat, Mouse, Rooster, and Centipede (sometimes called “Worm”). They’re bonus tiles — when you draw one, place it face-up and draw a replacement. They contribute bonus Tai to your score.
Special pairings give extra bonuses: Cat-Mouse and Rooster-Centipede are the classic pairs. Collect all 4 animals and you get a significant bonus. It’s purely luck-based, but there’s nothing quite like the dopamine hit of drawing your third animal tile in one hand.
148 tiles. That’s 136 standard tiles (3 suits of 36 each, plus 16 Wind tiles and 12 Dragon tiles), 4 Flowers, 4 Seasons, and 8 Animals. If you buy a set and it only has 144 tiles, you’re missing the 4 extra animal tiles — you probably got a Hong Kong set by accident.
Tsumo (自摸, also “zi mo”) means you completed your winning hand by drawing the tile yourself. Ron (also called “eating” or “hu”) means you won using a tile someone else discarded.
Tsumo pays more because all three opponents pay you. With Ron, payment rules vary — some groups have only the discarder pay, others split the cost among all three losers at a reduced rate. Self-drawn wins are always sweeter.
Flowers (梅兰菊竹 — Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo) and Seasons (春夏秋冬 — Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) are bonus tiles. Draw one, put it face-up, draw a replacement. Each adds Tai to your hand.
Collect all 4 Flowers or all 4 Seasons for a big bonus. Some groups give extra Tai if your Flower or Season matches your seat wind position (e.g., Seat 1 drawing the “Spring” Season tile). It’s a nice little bonus that adds up over a long session.
In rough order of how often you’ll see them:
Limit hands like Thirteen Orphans, Nine Gates, or All Kongs are exciting but rare. You might play 200 hands before seeing one. Don’t chase them every round — a steady stream of 2-3 Tai wins beats one spectacular hand followed by 10 losses.
A full game (4 rounds, one per wind) runs about 2 to 3 hours. Individual hands take 5 to 15 minutes depending on pace. During Chinese New Year, games stretch well past midnight — not because the rounds are slow, but because someone always says “one more round lah” and nobody wants to be the killjoy.
Budget 3 hours if you’re playing with family. Half of that is actual Mahjong. The other half is eating pineapple tarts, gossiping about relatives, and arguing about whether that last discard was a legitimate Bao situation.