Chinese Official Mahjong · 6 pt

All Pungs in Chinese Official Mahjong (MCR): Points, Examples and Odds

In Chinese Official Mahjong, All Pungs (碰碰和) is worth 6 points: when you win, all four sets are pungs (three identical tiles, or a kong), plus one pair. A single chow — claimed or built in your hand — breaks it.

The rules for All Pungs

• All four sets are pungs or kongs: claimed, self-drawn, exposed or concealed kongs all count
• No chows at all, so you cannot chow
• The pair can be any tile
• Any suits: characters, dots, bamboo and honors can be mixed

How to get All Pungs to 8 points

All Pungs (6) plus any one of these is enough (flowers don't count toward the minimum):

Two 1-point fan also work: Pung of Terminals or Honors, One Voided Suit, No Honors, Single Wait, Self-Drawn, Melded Kong — any two.

How All Pungs waits

A ready All Pungs hand has only two shapes.

Two pairs: waiting on either one

You hold two pairs; drawing or claiming either tile turns it into a pung and wins. Two tiles to wait on, so it wins more often than a single wait.

Single wait: four pungs done, waiting for the pair

All four pungs are complete and one lone tile waits for its match. Only one tile wins, so it also scores Single Wait for 1 point.

How All Pungs is scored

The points below are computed live by the same scoring code the game uses — including the fan that are not counted under the non-repeat rules.

Common combinations:

How it relates to other fan

• Four Concealed Pungs: when all four pungs are self-drawn it's Four Concealed Pungs (64 points), which no longer counts All Pungs, Concealed Hand or Three Concealed Pungs.
• Full Flush: four pungs all in one suit score both, 30 points in total.
• Half Flush: one suit plus honors, stacks with All Pungs. Honors can only be punged, never chowed, so Half Flush often ends up as All Pungs too.
• All Honors, Big Four Winds, All Terminals, All Terminals and Honors, All Even Pungs: these are always all pungs, and the fan table says All Pungs is not counted with them.
• Melded Hand: all four sets claimed and a single wait won on a discard adds 6 points (Single Wait is not counted).

All Pungs odds

How many pairs in the opening hand

All Pungs needs four pungs and a pair, so the more pairs you start with, the better. A 13-tile opening hand has 3 or more pairs about 15% of the time, and 4 or more only 2.2%.

Source: 1,000,000 random 13-tile deals (flowers already replaced).

Normal play vs forcing All Pungs

The computers on this site plan their way to 8 points, and All Pungs is one of the routes they consider. In 4,000 hands of normal computer play, All Pungs appeared in 0.26% of wins, which averaged 21.3 points.

We also ran an experiment: in every hand, the player with the most opening pairs had to go for All Pungs — pung only, never chow, never win with anything else — while the other three played normally. Then we compared it with the same opening hands where the computer decided for itself.

Source: computer play on this site. Forcing: 2,000 hands where the seat with the best start forced All Pungs while the other three played normally; normal play: 4,000 hands of four normal-level computers. Points use MCR scoring (self-draw: each pays fan + 8; discard: the discarder pays fan + 8, the others 8 each).

MCR games are slow (everyone needs 8 points), so forcing All Pungs is viable when you start with lots of pairs — with few pairs, don't push it.

• With 4 or more pairs, forcing it works about 33% of the time, for an average result of +7.4 — about the same as the +6.0 the computer gets from those starts on its own.
• With 3 or more pairs, success drops to 22% and the average result to −0.9 (the computer's own judgement: +0.8); with fewer pairs forcing it loses.
• Finished hands averaged 15.4 points after 13.4 draws: to reach 8 points, All Pungs usually comes with dragon pungs, concealed pungs or Half Flush, so it scores well.
• Playing normally, the computers rarely go for All Pungs: of the players who started with 4+ pairs, only 0.21% ended with All Pungs — they lean towards Seven Pairs (also built from pairs, and worth 24 points by itself).

Which hands suit All Pungs

• Four or more pairs in the opening hand, or pungs already: you are only a few tiles away.
• Honor pairs: honors can't be chowed, only punged — and Dragon, Prevalent Wind and Seat Wind pungs are worth 2 points each, exactly what All Pungs needs.
• Pairs whose tiles haven't been discarded: once two of a tile are out, that pair can no longer be punged.
• Plan the extra 2 points first: All Pungs alone isn't enough, so make sure there's a dragon pung, wind pung, concealed pungs or All Simples in reach, or a finished hand still can't win.

When to give up: less than half the wall is left and you still need two or more sets, or the tiles that would get you to 8 points are already in the discards. To practise the call, open a table of Chinese Official Mahjong online — the computers play with you and the scoring, non-repeat rules included, is done for you.

All Pungs in other mahjong styles

"All pungs" exists in every style, but scores differently:

• Taiwanese mahjong: "Peng Peng Hu", 4 tai (Taiwanese mahjong All Pungs)
• Japanese mahjong: "Toitoi", 2 han (Japanese mahjong Toitoi)
• Hong Kong mahjong: "All Pungs", 3 fan (Hong Kong mahjong All Pungs)
• Sichuan mahjong: "All Pungs", 1 fan (Sichuan mahjong All Pungs)

FAQ

How many points is All Pungs?

In Chinese Official Mahjong All Pungs is worth 6 points. With the 8-point minimum, All Pungs alone can't win — you need at least 2 more points.

Can you chow in All Pungs?

No. A chow is always a run, and All Pungs needs all four sets to be pungs — one run and it no longer counts.

What do you add to All Pungs to reach 8 points?

The easiest is a Dragon Pung (2) or a Prevalent/Seat Wind pung (2), for 8 points; Two Concealed Pungs, All Simples, Double Pung or a Concealed Kong also add 2. Two 1-point fan (say, Pung of Terminals or Honors plus One Voided Suit) work too.

Does Four Concealed Pungs still count All Pungs?

No. Four Concealed Pungs (64 points) already includes it, so under the non-repeat rule All Pungs is not counted.

Do kongs count for All Pungs?

Yes. A kong is four identical tiles and scores as a pung; melded and concealed kongs score their own points on top.

Related fan

Full Flush 24 pt Every tile from a single suit for 24 points. Examples, the non-repeat rules, Half Flush vs Full Flush, and how many suited tiles you need. Half Flush 6 pt One suit plus honors for 6 points — short of the 8-point minimum. How to top it up with dragon and wind pungs, and when to go for it. Three Concealed Pungs 16 pt Three self-built pungs for 16 points: what counts as concealed, why winning on a discard can cost you one, and how self-drawing upgrades it.