Zung Jung Mahjong Scoring System (v3.0)

中庸麻雀計分法 (v3.0)

(English version)

Alan Kwan

Teaching Children to Play Zung Jung

In Chinese soceity, mahjong is often considered be a family game, and many people would teach the game to children. I myself learned the game as a child, from my family. After all, it's just the "Chinese rummy game".

A full-fledged scoring system is often too complicated for small children. Fortunately, thanks to the category system, Zung Jung can be taught in a step-by-step process.

First, familiarize the child with the basic rules of mahjong: the regular hand, the draw-and-discard mechanism, and the claiming of discards. One method is to start playing with a smaller tile set, and/or with a smaller hand: you can start with only one suit, and then add a second and a third, and finally the honors; and you can start with a 7-tile or even a 4-tile hand, and then progress to the 10-tile hand and eventually to the full 13-tile game. Introduction of a scoring system can wait until one is fully comfortable with the basic rules of play.

The patterns in Zung Jung can be introduced category by category, while offering a consistent and coherent game at each stage. You can add one or two categories in each step, depending on the child's ability. I recommend introducing the categories in a certain order, based on the historical and symbolic significance of the categories. The order is:

category 3 : Honor Tiles
category 2 : One-Suit
category 4 : Triplets and Kong. (One suggestion is to postpone the introduction of the rules for Kong until this stage.)
category 8 : Terminals
category 1 : Trivial patterns
category 5 : Identical Sets
category 6 : Similar Sets
category 7 : Consecutive Sets
category 9 : Incidental bonuses
category 10 : Irregular Hands

Until the introduction of category 1, there may be a large number of "chicken hands", so you may add the "basic points" of 5 points to all winning hands.

The Uniform Payoff Scheme is recommended until the child has become familiar with all the categories. In fact, in a family playing environment, there is no need to deduct points at all; one just gains points when he wins a hand, and the player with the highest total at the end of the session is the winner.

The above method can also be used to teach the system to adults; bigger steps of three or more categories can be used, and the recommended order can be altered if, for example, the learner has prior experience with certain patterns, such as those in categories 9 and 10.

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