Mahjong for the Elderly: 6 simple steps to play it

4. Take your tiles
After you sum up both results, you count stack by stack, following clockwise starting from the rightmost pile of the second dice roller row wall. Then, you will begin to take two stacks, meaning you will have four tiles each time you take them. Take the stacks after the summation of points of both throws. For example, if the first person throws five, the second person throws nine, and the summation would be fourteen. Then the first player starts taking fifteen and sixteen stacks. The second player will take the seventeen and eighteen stacks, followed by the third. After each player takes the stacks three times, the first player will need to skip one stack to get the next tile. This means that in the fourth time of taking the tiles, draw one tile from the first stack, then skip the second stack to get one tile from the third stack. The second player takes the bottom tile from the first stack, while the third player takes the top tile from the second stack. Each person will have 13 tiles in this case, except the first player will have 14 tiles. 
Tip: If you are the first player, the person sitting on your right-hand side is the second player, called soul.  

5. Reveal all your bonus tiles
Before starting the game, every player needs to reveal all their bonus tiles in front of them and take the replacement tiles from the backend (opposite the front end of where you initially take your tiles from) of the row wall. The tile with four identical tiles also needs to be revealed, and take one replacement tile after the bonus tile. The game will start with the first player discarding the tile he does not need.
Tip: Regardless of the bonus tile or four identical tiles, always draw the replacement tile from the backend of the row wall.

6. Take your turn to draw or discard a tile to win 
While playing the game, each of the players can take turns drawing and discarding tiles. Drawing the tile starts from the front end of the row wall and is drawn following a clockwise direction. To win, you must form four suits and a pair containing two identical tiles. You can also find suits through a combination called “chi” which refers to the suit of consecutive tiles like two, three, and four dots tiles are considered a suit. You can also “pong” when other players discard the same tile that you happened to have one pair. For instance, if you have one pair of five dots tile, and another player discards the five dots tile, you can shout “pong” to take the tile.  Then you can form a case with three identical tiles. You can also shout “gong” if you already have three tiles with the same pattern and another player discard the fourth identical tile. Remember to take a replacement tile from the back end after that. 

To sum up, in order to create a suit, you can take the tile that is discarded by the previous player or drawn from the row wall.
You are allowed to “pong” and “gong” to take the tile discarded from another two players, but you are only allowed to form “chi” from the tile discarded from your previous player and not the one before your previous player. Both statements are based on the assumption that you are not drawing the identical tile yourself and you want to take the tile from others. 

Sometimes, not every player gets the turn to play in each round. You might be skipped because the player after you “pong” or “gong” to get the discarded tile from the previous player. Thus, you may need to pass the turn to that player.
If you are already familiar with the mahjong game, you may add the “fan” (points) rule, which will be stated at the end of this article. The number of “fans” consists of each type of suit and is displayed as a table easy for your reference.