Free Mah Jong Games

If you are looking for the single-player version of Mah Jong (most often called "Mahjong Solitaire"), you should check out our article on where to Play Mah Jong Solitaire Online.

Traditional Mah Jong Online

Traditional Mah Jong is played with four players, each competing to complete a particular winning combination of tiles. There are a few different (usually regional) variations on the game, but most websites that offer the game online adhere to the Hong Kong version. Finding places online to play Taiwanese Mah Jong, for example, is more difficult, especially if you are restricting yourself to English-language websites. Here are two of the most prominent online communities where you can play Mah Jong against people all around the world, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

Yahoo! Games

• Play Traditional Mahjong at Yahoo! Games

Yahoo! is home to one of the largest online collection of casual games, so finding a variety of Mah Jong games there should be of little surprise. In addition to several variations of Mah Jong Solitaire, Yahoo! Games also has the traditional four-player format, complete with your choice of several player icons. These icons are all quite cartoony, and while you could choose more "normal" folk like a Caucasian girl with blonde hair or an older black fellow with a beard, there's also a couple of more "out there" characters for you to choose from as well, such as the dog, dragon, and alien. Of course, your character selection has no bearing on your success in the game.

Yahoo! Games provides for a very friendly Mahjong playing environment, making it a welcome experience for first time online Mah Jong players. As you'd suspect, there is a huge user base from all over the globe at Yahoo!, so there are always several games that you can hop into. The tables are arranged in "lounges" for beginners, intermediate, and advanced Mahjong players, so you can usually find a game with players with the same skill level as you.

The tiles are automatically distributed and arranged. You can choose whether or not to have small numbers in the corners to help you better identify the tiles (this is particularly helpful for those of you who cannot read Chinese, as the "character" set may be difficult to distinguish if you cannot read the Chinese characters for numbers 1 to 9). When a player discards a tile, you can see right away whether you can meld a "pong", "kong", or "chow". This eschews any second guessing as the game automatically highlights all your possible moves. If you cannot make a triplet of tiles, after a while, the game will automatically "pass" on your behalf. There is also chat support and a ranking system.

Mahjong Time

• Play Traditional Mah Jong at MahjongTime

Mahjong Time calls itself the "first online mahjong club where the worldwide community of mahjong players can play mahjong anytime, anywhere without downloading any software." There is free online play available, but if you'd like to compete against some of the best online players out there, they also host tournaments with cash prizes (there is typically a nominal entry fee, of course). You start with a limited number of game credits, but you can earn bonus credits by either supplying your personal information (name, address, phone number, etc.) or participating in certain promotions. This takes a little away from this website.

Compared to Yahoo! Games, Mahjong Time appears to be home to more experienced players, and many of the games have a minimum point value before you can declare "Mahjong" and win a round. Underneath each player's name is a bar that indicates their experience and/or rating, based on prior play. You start out with a blank white bar, and it changes color accordingly. There is support for online chat while you are playing, but I found the chat window to be quite small.

The tiles do not automatically arrange themselves: you must click on the "arrange" button before it does this, and you have to do this each time you receive a new tile in order to "fit it" into your existing set. When a tile is discarded by a player, you are presented with all the possible choices -- pass, chow, pung, kung, and mahjong -- but the game is not set up to remove the moves that you cannot do. For example, if you are only holding onto one "red dragon" tile and someone discards an identical tile, you cannot "pung", because you would not be making a set of three by taking that second "red dragon" tile. This can be a little difficult for first time players, but is perfectly suited to simulate real world play.

One big plus to Mahjong Time is that you can have customized profiles, complete with user-supplied pictures. A little more of your personality can come through in this way, rather than simply expressing yourself with a username.

I found the community to be smaller here, and it was more difficult to get an impromptu game going. There is also no explicit differentiation between beginner and advanced players, so it is not uncommon to head to a table filled with sharks, while you are still a relative guppy in the tank of Mahjong players.