Chinese Official Mahjong · 6 pt

All Types in Chinese Official Mahjong (MCR): Points, Reaching 8 and Odds

In Chinese Official Mahjong, All Types (五门齐) is worth 6 points: your winning hand contains all five types — characters, dots, bamboo, winds and dragons. Miss any one and it doesn't count.

The rules for All Types

• Characters, dots and bamboo all appear
• At least one wind (East, South, West, North) and at least one dragon (Red, Green, White)
• The site's engine looks at which tiles the whole hand uses: pungs, chows and the pair all count, including exposed sets
• Claiming is allowed; the hand doesn't need to be concealed

A standard hand is four sets plus a pair — exactly five units — so All Types means one unit per type: honors can't form chows, so the wind and the dragon are each a pung or the pair, and the remaining three units go one each to characters, dots and bamboo. Seven Pairs can be All Types too, see below.

How to get All Types to 8 points

All Types always holds honors, so the smoothest top-up is an honor pung:

Two 1-pointers also work: a pung of an off wind (not prevalent or seat) is a Pung of Terminals or Honors, plus one of Edge Wait, Closed Wait, Single Wait, Self-Drawn or Mixed Double Chow.

Which fan absorb All Types

All Types itself excludes nothing, but these bigger fan always contain all five types, so with them All Types is not counted:

• Thirteen Orphans (88 points)
• Greater Honors and Knitted Tiles (24 points)
• Lesser Honors and Knitted Tiles (12 points)

Knitted Straight is different: a knitted straight plus a wind pung and a dragon pair (or the reverse) still scores All Types. Seven Pairs works too: seven pairs covering all five types score both.

Scoring examples

These hands are scored live by the site's scoring engine — exactly as in the game.

How it relates to other fan

• Mixed Straight, Mixed Shifted Chows: one chow in each suit is exactly the suited part All Types needs, so they often come together.
• Dragon Pung, Seat Wind, Prevalent Wind: make one of the two honor units a pung and you get 2 points on the way.
• Knitted Straight: already covers all three suits; add a wind unit and a dragon unit and you have All Types.
• Half Flush, One Voided Suit: the opposite direction — they need missing suits.

All Types odds

How far the opening hand is from All Types

The five types usually all show up early: in about 54% of 13-tile opening hands all five are present. But All Types needs one complete unit per type, and by that measure only 3.3% of openings are 4 tiles or fewer away.

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

Playing normally vs forcing All Types

In 4,000 hands of the site's AI playing normally, All Types appears in 1.6% of wins, and those wins average 23.2 points.

A second experiment: each hand, the player whose opening is closest to All Types must go for it — discards and claims only look at "how many tiles the five types still need", waits are chosen to reach 8 points, and the player never wins without All Types — while the other three play normally.

Source: computer play on this site. Forcing: 2,000 hands where the seat with the best start forced All Types 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: from 4 or fewer tiles away, forcing All Types roughly breaks even with normal play (on a small sample); from 5 or more away it doesn't pay.

• Forcing from openings 5 or fewer tiles away succeeds about 25% of the time, average result −2.1; the AI playing the same openings its own way averages +1.3, and finishes All Types only 0.90% of the time.
• Openings 4 or fewer tiles away are rarer still: forcing succeeds about 35%, average +4.2 (normal play +4.0).
• Forced All Types hands that succeed average 11.6 points and are won on draw 11.3 on average.
• Rows highlighted in green are the openings where forcing beat normal play.

When to play for All Types

All Types is rarely the main plan; it's more of a top-up you pick up on the way:

• You already have the start of a Mixed Straight or Mixed Shifted Chows, plus a wind and a dragon pair — All Types is right there.
• The honor pair is your seat wind, the prevalent wind or a dragon: punging it gives All Types and 2 points at once.
• One unit per type is enough: a second pair of partial sets in the same suit is wasted, so discard from the crowded suit first.
• Don't throw away every lone honor early: you need one wind and one dragon, and once they're gone they don't come back.

When to give up: when the winds or the dragons are nearly all gone (three of each seen, or punged by others), that type can't be completed — switch to Mixed Straight, All Chows and similar routes. To practise, play MCR online against the AI — scores are worked out for you.

FAQ

How many points is All Types?

All Types is worth 6 points in Chinese Official Mahjong. With the 8-point minimum it can't win alone; you need at least 2 more, most often a dragon or wind pung.

Can you claim tiles for All Types?

Yes. All Types only checks that all five types appear, exposed sets included; staying concealed adds Concealed Hand, 2 points.

Do Thirteen Orphans or knitted hands also score All Types?

No. Thirteen Orphans, Greater and Lesser Honors and Knitted Tiles always contain all five types, so All Types is not counted again; Knitted Straight and Seven Pairs, on the other hand, can score it on top.

Related fan

Lesser Honors and Knitted Tiles 12 pt Fourteen unconnected tiles for 12 points: the knitted tiles plus honors, how it waits, how it stacks with Knitted Straight, how often it shows up. Dragon Pung 2 pt Each pung of Red, Green or White is 2 points (no extra terminal-pung point); two become Two Dragon Pungs, three Big Three Dragons. Mixed Straight 8 pt 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9 across three suits — exactly 8 points. The most common route to a legal win: how to build it and what it stacks with.