There is a misconception about Mahjong that drives serious players crazy. To the outsider, it looks like a game of pure chance. You sit down, you draw tiles, and if the gambling gods are smiling upon you, you win. Sure, luck is the engine that drives the game. Sometimes you wake up with a hand that is one tile away from victory. Sometimes you draw nothing but winds and dragons for three hours straight.

If luck is the engine, skill is the steering wheel. Over the course of a single night, luck decides the winner. Over the course of a lifetime, skill decides the ranking. This is why the same faces always seem to end up at the final table of a tournament. They aren’t luckier than you; they are just seeing things that you are missing.

Whether you are shuffling physical tiles in a parlor or logging on to play Mahjong against digital opponents to sharpen your reflexes, the difference between a casual player and a shark comes down to five specific, learnable skills.

Here is what you need to master if you want to stop praying for tiles and start controlling the table.

1. The Art of Folding

This is the hardest skill for beginners to learn because it goes against human nature. We want to win. We want to build our hand. Every turn, we want to get closer to that beautiful “Mahjong!” declaration. But sometimes, the most skillful move is to accept that you aren’t going to win.

In Japanese Riichi Mahjong, this is called Betaori. In other variations, it’s simply playing it safe. If an opponent has clearly signaled that they are ready to win (by declaring Riichi, or by having an open hand full of high-value tiles), your goal immediately shifts from winning to not losing.

A novice will keep pushing a dangerous tile because they are “so close” to their own win. A master looks at the table, realizes the risk is too high, and breaks up their own hand to discard a 100% safe tile. They would rather end the hand in a draw than deal into a massive score for the opponent. Learning when to fold—and having the discipline to actually destroy your own potential win to stay safe—is the hallmark of an advanced player.

2. Tile Efficiency

You have a 2 and a 4 of Bamboo. You need a 3 to complete the sequence. You have a 6 and a 7 of Dots. You can use a 5 or an 8 to complete the sequence. Which shape is better? The second one. It has a “double-sided” wait. You have twice as many chances to draw a useful tile.

This is a simplified example, but “tile efficiency” is the mathematical backbone of the game. It is the ability to look at a messy hand of 13 tiles and instantly know which discard will maximize your probability of improving the hand on the next draw.

Beginners often hold onto pairs of honor tiles (Winds or Dragons), hoping for a triplet, while discarding number tiles that could have formed flexible sequences. Masters play the percentages. They know that a sequence like 3-4-5-6-7 is incredibly powerful because it can accept multiple different tiles to form completed sets. They don’t play by “feeling”; they play by the math of acceptance.

3. Discard Awareness

Most beginners play with their heads down. They stare intensely at their own rack, obsessing over their own puzzle. But the real information is in the center of the table. The pool of discarded tiles tells a story if you know how to read it.

If your opponent discards a 5 of Characters early in the game, it is highly unlikely they are building a sequence around that number (like a 4-5-6). If they discard a Red Dragon, and then two turns later discard another Red Dragon, you know they aren’t holding a pair of them.

Advanced players use “Suji” (a theory of safety based on sequences) and discard reading to deduce what their opponents are waiting for. If a player suddenly switches from discarding useless winds to discarding dangerous middle-number tiles, a master knows that the player’s hand has advanced and is now threatening. Stop looking at your own tiles; looking at the discard pile will tell you what not to throw.

4. Hand Flexibility

One of the biggest mistakes intermediate players make is falling in love with a hand too early. You might start the game with three pairs and think, “I’m going for Seven Pairs!” But by turn six, you’ve drawn a bunch of sequences. A stubborn player forces the Seven Pairs and loses. A skilled player recognizes the flow of the tiles and pivots to a standard hand.

This is called flexibility. It is the ability to keep your options open as long as possible. You shouldn’t lock yourself into a specific winning condition (yaku) until the tiles demand it.

This also applies to “opening” your hand. Calling “Pong” or “Chow” to take a discarded tile speeds up your hand, but it limits your defensive options and lowers your score. A master only opens their hand when they have a guaranteed route to victory. They don’t panic-call just because they see a tile they match.

5. Emotional Stability

Mahjong is a game of variance. You can play perfectly and still lose. You can make the mathematically correct discard, and it happens to be the exact tile your opponent needed to win. That is frustrating, and that frustration is dangerous.

In poker, this is called “going on tilt.” When you are angry, you stop calculating probabilities. You start taking unnecessary risks to “win back” your points. You start discarding aggressively because you feel like the universe owes you a win.

The final, and perhaps most important, skill is emotional regulation. You have to be able to shrug off a bad beat. You have to be able to reset your mental state after a disastrous round. The tiles have no memory. They don’t know you lost the last game. If you carry the anger from the last hand into the current one, you are blinding yourself to the information on the table.

Learn to Master Mahjong

Mahjong is easy to learn but impossibly deep to master. It sits right at the intersection of math, psychology, and luck. If you are stuck at a plateau, stop worrying about your luck. Start worrying about your efficiency. Start looking at the discard pile, and most importantly, learn to fold. The flashy wins feel good, but the boring, defensive draws are what keep you in the game long enough to become a master.