How to Play American Mahjong with 2 or 3 Players

By Lara Orndorff, Mahjong Instructor and founder of Lara's Mahjong Edit. Member of the Mahj Life Instructor Guild.

Can You Actually Play American Mahjong with Only 2 or 3 People?

Yes. This isn't something you have to improvise. The National Mah Jongg League publishes official modifications for both two-player and three-player games right in Mah Jongg Made Easy. Missing players get skipped, not simulated, and the walls still get built the normal way. The one big shift in both formats is the same: no Charleston. More on why below.

The point of these rules isn't to make a short-handed game feel identical to a full table. It's to give you a fair, playable game when your third or fourth player cancels, without anyone at the table guessing at the rules on the fly.

What Changes in a Real 3-Player Game?

Per the League's official rule (Mah Jongg Made Easy, 2024, page 26): four walls still get built as usual. The three real players draw from their own walls, four tiles at a time, until each of you has twelve. The wall that belongs to the empty seat simply doesn't draw. From there, each player picks one more tile in turn to reach thirteen, and East picks a fourteenth to open the hand. The Charleston is skipped entirely, and East discards first to start play.

What Changes in a Real 2-Player Game?

Two players sit directly across from each other. Between the two of you, you build your own wall plus the wall to your right, since there's no one else at the table to do it. The two empty seats' walls just sit there and don't draw. Roll the dice to set the first East, skip the Charleston, and East discards to start. East alternates each new game, so you take turns opening.

You'll sometimes hear about Siamese Mah Jongg, a separate branded ruleset Gladys Grad developed for two-plus players and multiple hands. That's its own system with its own rulebook and its own card, not the NMJL's official two-player modification, and it skips the Charleston entirely too, but for different reasons. Worth knowing it exists, but don't mix the two up at the table. You can find the official rules at mahjongg.org if you want to look into it.

Why Does the Charleston Get Skipped in Short-Handed Games?

This is the League's official rule, not a group's personal preference: with fewer than four players, the Charleston is omitted. The reason is fairness. Simulating a missing player's passes creates two problems at once. Whoever passes tiles "to" the empty seat can throw away strong tiles with zero risk, since there's no real player who might use them against you. And whoever "receives" from that empty seat has no way to know if what comes back is a genuine, considered pass or just whatever ended up there. Both distort the normal give-and-take that makes the Charleston fair in a full game.

Some groups love the Charleston enough to invent their own way of working it into a 3-player game anyway. That's a house rule, not an official one. If your group wants to try it, agree on the mechanics before you deal: who simulates the missing seat's passes and how, and when the walls get pushed out. Ask about a group's house rules before you join a game for the first time, short-handed or not.

Can You Practice the Full Charleston Without a Full Table?

Yes, but this is a different thing entirely from the real short-handed games above. It's a solo practice format, not a sanctioned NMJL game, and the tool that makes it work is a simple swap pile (my name for it, not an official rules term).

A swap pile is a small pile of six tiles, face down, that stands in for the players you don't have. Every pass, three tiles go into the pile and three random tiles come back out, so it always resets to six. If a joker comes back out, you put it back and pull again, since jokers can't legally be passed during a real Charleston.

In two-handed solitaire, you deal two racks to yourself and use the swap pile to stand in for the two players you're missing, running the full directional Charleston the way you would at a real four-player table. In three-handed solitaire, you deal three racks, and the swap pile only needs to stand in for the one missing seat.

Worth saying plainly: the NMJL doesn't officially endorse solo practice formats like this, and it doesn't penalize them either. Treat a solo mah jongg as a practice rep, not a card-eligible win.

Is Playing Short-Handed Actually Good Practice?

Yes, in its own way. With fewer players sharing the wall, you draw more often and get more decisions per session than you would at a full table. It's a genuinely useful option on a night when you can't get all four seats filled but still want real reps with the tiles, and those reps add up the same way any repetition does.

See you at the table.

Lara