>>27952603now what to do with your actual hand:
you start the game with 13 tiles, and on your turn draw a tile and discard a tile. the intent is to form a hand which you can think of as four fingers and a thumb (some special hands like 7 pairs ignore this rule), each finger is a set of three (three in a row, or three of a kind) and the thumb is a pair. once you have a valid hand, you reveal it and collect points (in a real game if you do so but accidentally didnt have a real winning hand because of the dumbs then there is a large penalty, but generally video games dont let you do it so it doesnt matter). note that three in a rows have to be of the same suit unlike poker. there are three suits, and four of each tile (eg 3 of bamboo, red dragon, etc) in the deck.
note that each finger could be upgraded in to a Kan (or Quad) if it is a three of a kind (you cant upgrade three in a rows in to quads). which as mentioned before means you need a replacement tile to maintain hand size (unless you stole it from another player of course). when you do so, you flip over another dora indicator (look at the kiki pic, there are four face down). this indicator means that the tile "1 up" from that are worth more points, so in the kiki pic the 5 of PINS is worth bonus value to all players in scoring if they win, so consider that people will want that tile or the ones around it a little more. forming kans essentially increases the points value because it flips another dora FOR EVERYONE so it may not be a good idea. NOTE as show in the draw image, that if four KANS are made then all four of those bonus tiles will be flipped which is why it forcibly ends the game in a draw unless all four were made by the same player (so if you are losing, and three kans have been formed, you can force a draw by forming a worthless kan, out of spite). This kan just replaces a 3-finger and doesnt essentially change the game otherwise. It will of course need to be "open" as you need to prove to the other players that its real (you lay it flat on the table and pieces in it can no longer be discarded by you).
play proceeds with players drawing and discarding, but of course you have seen people steal tiles. These are CHI (chow), PON (Pow?), and RON (ron) (the game uses chinese names for reasons, but i wont). CHI is for stealing for a 1-2-3 and it can only steal from the player to your LEFT. If another player calls PON on the same tile you try to CHI, that player has preference. PON is for stealing to complete a three of a kind and works from any player. NOTE that this can alter turn order as after PONing you immediate take your turn, so if you PON from the player opposite to you, the player to your left will miss their turn (devilish) as you must immediately discard after stealing their tile. Note that in both cases you must OPEN the tiles you already had to prove that what you are stealing completes one of thes sets. RON is for when you are waiting on one last tile to win, it can be for any tile (even the "thumb" pair which normally cant be stolen for) and even from any player for a 1-2-3 wait unlike CHI.
Note that there are some rules for RON, which is that you cant win, if you are waiting on a tile you previously discarded (so late in the game you can see which tiles are safe to discard agains a player in richii by throwing pieces they already put away).
Note that keeping your whole hand closed (no stealing) can be worth more points, you win by TSUMO if you self draw, and if you are one away from winning in this manner, you can declare RICHII, betting an extra 1000 points on the hand to inflate your winning score if you do win, but this locks you into only drawing and discarding the tile you drew until you win or lose. If you do win in this manner, and only in this manner, then you also get to look at the URADORA, the tiles underneath any revealed DORA to get some extra bonus points if any happen to match tiles in your winning hand.
Note that it is not enough to simply form a valid configutation in japanese mahjong, unlike chinese mahjong, here you MUST get one of the "YAKU" if you will as shown in this image or the hand is worth nothing. Just study the image, or keep it with you when playing. Note that the STARS are max points hands (worth like 32k or 48k as dealer) in one hand so they are fairly rare "royal flush" types. Note that DORA provide bonus yaku of a sort, in that they give you extra YAKU, but if its your only source, then they actually dont.
