Chinese Official Mahjong · 24 pt

Seven Pairs in Chinese Official Mahjong (MCR): Points, Examples and Odds

In Chinese Official Mahjong, Seven Pairs (七对) is worth 24 points: your 14 tiles are exactly seven pairs, with no chow, pung or exposed kong. No sets needed — Seven Pairs alone is 24 points, three times the 8-point minimum, and one of the most common big routes in MCR.

The rules for Seven Pairs

• Exactly seven pairs from any tiles: characters, dots, bamboo and honors all allowed
• Concealed: once you chow, pung or kong you cannot win with Seven Pairs (there are no sets to expose)
• Four identical tiles count as two pairs, and you also score Tile Hog (2 points); you must not declare them as a kong
• It is not a "four sets and a pair" hand, so set-based fan such as All Chows, Pure Double Chow or Pung of Terminals or Honors never appear

What Seven Pairs does not combine with

Under the non-repeat principle, Seven Pairs already includes these, so they are not counted:

• Concealed Hand (2 points): Seven Pairs is always concealed
• Fully Concealed Hand (4 points): a self-drawn Seven Pairs doesn't get it either — but Self-Drawn (1 point) still counts
• Single Wait (1 point): Seven Pairs always waits on a single tile

The other way round, Seven Shifted Pairs (seven consecutive pairs in one suit, 88 points) includes Seven Pairs, so Seven Pairs isn't counted on top.

How Seven Pairs waits

Seven Pairs is always a single wait: six pairs done, one lone tile waiting for its partner. That means you get to choose the wait:

• Pick an honor or terminal: players let them go early, and they get safer to discard as the hand goes on
• Be careful with tiles already in the discards: fewer copies left means a thinner wait
• If you hold three of a kind, the third tile is usually dead weight — Seven Pairs only needs two

Scoring examples

Every hand below is scored live by this site's scoring engine — the same code as the game — including the fan left out by the non-repeat rules.

The most common combinations:

When it isn't scored as Seven Pairs

The scorer tries every way of reading the hand and keeps the highest. The hand below looks like Seven Pairs plus Full Flush, but read as 123, 123, 789, 789 plus a pair of 5 dots it is the much bigger Pure Terminal Chows:

How it relates to other fan

• Seven Shifted Pairs: seven consecutive pairs in one suit (e.g. 1–7 characters), 88 points; it replaces Seven Pairs and Full Flush.
• Full Flush, Half Flush: the seven pairs in one suit stack normally.
• All Terminals and Honors: all pairs terminals and honors, 56 points together.
• All Simples, Tile Hog, All Types: fan that only look at which tiles you used still count with Seven Pairs.
• All Chows, All Pungs, Pure Double Chow, Pung of Terminals or Honors, Dragon Pung: these look at sets, so Seven Pairs never has them.

Seven Pairs odds

How rare it is in theory

Draw 14 random tiles from 136 and the chance they are seven different pairs is only about 1 in 2,800,000. You don't get dealt Seven Pairs — you swap your way there, so the number of pairs you start with decides whether the route is worth it.

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

In a 13-tile opening hand, about 15% have 3 or more pairs and only 2.2% have 4 or more.

How often the AI wins with it

This site's MCR AI builds toward "target hands" to reach 8 points, and Seven Pairs is one of its routes. In 4,000 games of normal play, Seven Pairs appeared in 12% of all wins, averaging 27.0 points, and 27% of those were self-drawn.

Forcing Seven Pairs

We also ran an experiment: in every game, the seat with the most opening pairs must go for Seven Pairs — no chows or pungs, keep pairs, discard the lone tile with the fewest copies left (hardest to pair), and never win with anything else — while the other three play normally. Compared with "same opening hand, AI decides":

Source: computer play on this site. Forcing: 2,000 hands where the seat with the best start forced Seven Pairs 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).

The verdict: with 4 or more opening pairs, forcing Seven Pairs does slightly better than normal play; with 3 or fewer it doesn't pay.

• With 4+ opening pairs, forcing it completes about 25% of the time with an average result of +7.2; the AI playing the same hands its own way averages +6.0, and ends up with Seven Pairs 22% of the time.
• With 3+ opening pairs, forcing it averages −1.0 against +0.8 for normal play.
• When the forced Seven Pairs comes in, it averages 27.3 points, on about draw 14.7.

Highlighted rows in the table are the openings where forcing it beat normal play.

When to go for Seven Pairs

• Many opening pairs: by far the most important factor, see the numbers above.
• Pairs that don't connect: scattered pairs that won't grow into sets are slow for a normal hand and fast for Seven Pairs.
• Don't pung: one pung and the concealed requirement is gone. Let your pair tile go by.
• Keep lone honors and terminals: for the final single wait, an honor is easier to win on and safer to hold.

When to give up: past the middle of the wall with only three pairs, or when your pairs line up into chows and pungs and a normal hand is faster. Try it at a real table — play Chinese Official Mahjong online against the AI, with every point counted for you.

Seven Pairs in other mahjong styles

• Sichuan mahjong: Seven Pairs is 2 fan, and four of a kind makes it "Dragon Seven Pairs" (Sichuan Seven Pairs, Sichuan Dragon Seven Pairs)
• Japanese (riichi) mahjong: chiitoitsu is 2 han, and four of a kind may not count as two pairs (Japanese mahjong yaku list)

FAQ

How many points is Seven Pairs?

In Chinese Official Mahjong, Seven Pairs is 24 points — on its own well past the 8-point minimum. It doesn't combine with Concealed Hand, Fully Concealed Hand or Single Wait.

Can Seven Pairs include four identical tiles?

Yes. Four identical tiles count as two pairs, and you also score Tile Hog for 2 points — just don't declare them as a kong.

Can I pung while going for Seven Pairs?

No. Seven Pairs must be concealed; any chow, pung or exposed kong rules it out.

Does a self-drawn Seven Pairs score Fully Concealed Hand?

No. Seven Pairs already includes it, so it isn't counted again — but Self-Drawn (1 point) still is.

How many points is Seven Pairs with Full Flush?

Seven Pairs 24 plus Full Flush 24 makes 48 points. If the seven pairs are seven consecutive ranks in one suit, it becomes Seven Shifted Pairs for 88 points instead.

Related fan

Seven Shifted Pairs 88 pt Seven consecutive pairs in one suit for 88 points: only nine possible hands, no Seven Pairs or Full Flush on top, and hundreds of thousands of times rarer than Seven Pairs. 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.