Experience This | So, You Want to Play Mah Jongg?

MAH JONGG HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

MY GRANDMOTHER Rae played Mah Jongg.

I watched her play about 20 years ago and was fascinated by it — the smooth shiny tiles,
the long racks, the whole ritual of the game. I didnt know what any of it meant, but I knew I wanted to learn.

Someday.

Apparently, someday took about 20 years.

Because suddenly Mah Jongg is everywhere. Friends are learning. MahJongg nights are popping up.
Colorful tile sets (and cards) are all over social media (and in Golden Hour on Asbury). A game that has been played for generations is having a very big moment with a whole new group of players.

And just like that, I couldn’t handle the FOMO any longer.

So I signed up for a class with Nick Deckard at The Board Room in Downtown Ocean City and finally sat down at a Mah Jongg table myself.

I quickly discovered that MahJongg has its own language.
Bams. Craks. Dots. Dragons. Winds. Flowers. Jokers.

There’s something called a Charleston.

And then there’s the card, filled with combinations of numbers, letters and colors that, at first glance, looks like it might require a decoder ring.

My first thought?

There are a lot of rules.

Fortunately, Nick knows all of them.
He learned Mah Jongg for a very specific reason: so he could teach other people how to play. And it turns out he’s really good at it.

It started because customers at The Board Room kept asking about Mah Jongg. Nick initially tried to find someone else to teach it, but eventually decided to learn himself. He took a beginner lesson to get the foundation down, then furthered his education on his own, playing online, studying the game and practicing until he felt confident enough to teach it.

Then The Board Room put out an interest form.

About 190 people responded. Nick says roughly 85 percent had never played.

“I don’t need to be an expert. I don’t need to have played for 25 years,” he remembers thinking. “I need to be adequate enough to teach it with confidence.” So he buckled down and learned.

Knowing the rules is one thing. Explaining them to a table of beginners staring at unfamiliar tiles is another. Nick did it with patience and humor, walking us through the suits, the wall, the Charleston and the basics of building a hand without making any of us feel completely overwhelmed.

“I think patience and not taking anything too seriously goes a long way,” he said. “Because then nobody feels like there are any dumb questions.”

Before real estate, Nick spent more than a decade in corporate finance and accounting, where training and onboarding were a big part of his work. Now those skills are coming in handy around the Mah Jongg table.

And so is the patience.

Because there is a lot to learn.

So, What Exactly Is Mah Jongg?

MahJongg is a tile-based game that originated in China in the 19th century and came to the United States in the early 20th century. Over time, American Mah Jongg developed its own rules and traditions.

In 1937, the National Mah Jongg League was founded, helping to standardize the American version of the game.

That’s the version we were learning.

Four players sit around a table with racks of tiles. The basic goal is to put together a winning hand using the combinations on that year’s National Mah Jongg League card.

Sounds simple enough.

It’s not.

Youre looking at the tiles on your rack, figuring out which hand you might be able to make, watching what’s discarded and changing your plan as new tiles come your way.

There’s luck involved. But there’s a surprising amount of strategy, too.

And suddenly I had a new appreciation for what my grandmother had been doing at that table all those years ago.

Then there’s the Charleston, a series of tile passes before regular play begins.

Somewhere between building the wall, passing tiles and staring at my rack for what felt like the hundredth time, something happened.

The game started to make sense.

Not completely. Let’s not get carried away.

But I stopped seeing a random collection of symbols and started seeing possibilities.

Nick says that’s how it happens.
“I honestly think anybody can do it,” he says. “Anybody with patience and willingness to learn and willingness to mess up.”

Messing up, it turns out, is pretty much guaranteed.

You draw a tile and have no idea if you need it. You settle on a hand only to realize the tiles arent cooperating. You change direction. Then you change it again.

“You have to exercise patience and you have to exercise flexibility,” Nick says.
“You can’t white knuckle a game of Mah Jongg. It doesn’t work.” Eventually, he says, “something’s going to click.” It did.

Why Is Everyone Playing MahJongg?

Mah Jongg is hardly new. My grandmother playing 20 years ago is proof enough of that. But right now, it certainly feels like it’s everywhere.

In other words, Mah Jongg has entered its pickleball era.

After actually sitting down to learn, I understand why.

You have to pay attention. Youre looking at your tiles, checking the card, watching what’s discarded and figuring out your next move.

It’s absorbing.
It’s also social.

And that’s something Nick has watched happen at The Board Room.

“The people actually getting to meet people they don’t already know and making new connections has been huge,” he says.

Players discover they live near one another, form groups and start playing together outside of class. At one beginner class, two women started talking and discovered they lived in the same Pennsylvania town — and their kids were in the same grade at the same school.

It’s been a really cool way to, I think, help build community, which was kind of the whole point of the store,” Nick says.

That social aspect isn’t new either. Mah Jongg has deep Chinese roots and became particularly important in many Jewish American communities during the 20th century, where games became a social tradition passed through generations.

Which makes its resurgence particularly interesting.

Mah Jongg isn’t something new that suddenly appeared on social media.

It’s something that’s being passed along.

During a beginner play lesson, Nick is on hand to help our group every step of the way. Pictured right: That day, it was Julia who won the game.

One Class Down

By the end of our class at ‘The Board Room, I would not say I had mastered Mah Jongg Not even close.

But I knew my bams from my craks. I understood the Charleston. And I could look at the card without immediately wondering whether Id accidentally signed up for an advanced math class.
Progress.

More importantly, I wanted to play again.

And maybe that’s the part my grandmother Rae would have understood all along.

Twenty years after watching her play, I finally sat down in front of my own rack of tiles. It took Mah Jongg becoming one of the hottest games around—and Nick patiently explaining what on earth I was supposed to do with all those tiles — to finally get me there.

But I get it now.

There’s the strategy and the luck. There’s the satisfaction when the jumble of tiles starts looking like an actual hand. But there’s also the table itself — four people sitting together, talking, thinking, laughing and playing.

Maybe Mah Jongg isn’t suddenly everywhere because people discovered something new.
Maybe were just rediscovering something our grandmothers already knew.

By Stef Godfrey