Mah jongg has been played by different people throughout time. There have been different variations of mah jongg. But only four varieties are more accepted:

The oldest variety of mah jongg would be the classical Chinese Mah jongg. This was the variety that was brought to America. From this basic variety many more varieties have been created.

Another variety would be the Cantonese Mah jongg. Another name for this variety would be Hong Kong Mah jongg. It is actually one of the more common ways to play Mah jongg.

The most common form of mah jong is Japanese mah jong. This variety of mah jong is the one that is being played in video games. The main parts of the game would be the riichi and dora.

Another variety would be western classical mah jongg. This is a slightly tweaked version derived from the Chinese classical one. This was brought to America afterwards. Around 1920, bobcock changed this Western Classical mah jongg. In fact Bobcock’s version was the one that was used by other players.

Other varieties of mah jongg would be the Taiwanese mah jongg, Filipino mah jongg, Fujian mah jongg and Vietnamese mah jongg.

There have been so many varieties of this game, so they had to come out with standard rules to be used in international rules. These games were patterned after the Chinese variety and the classical variety.

But despite the many varieties, they still follow some of the basic rules of the Japanese mah jongg game. These rules would include the minimum score of 8 the player needs to have. Another one would be that you would get added scores from the tiles with flowers. Each tile with a flower is equivalent to a point. The player needs to scare 8 point to be able to get his tile with a flower to be credited.

The standard rules came out in 2002 when the first World Mah jongg championship was put together. These rules were put together by the Mah jongg museum, council of the city of Ningbo, China and the Japanese organizing committee of mah jongg. During this championship, players from china, Europe, Japan and America participated. The winner was Mai hatsune. The championships were held in Hainan, Hong kong and Beijing.

But the west also came up with their own tournament in Netherlands last 2005. About over 100 players participated in the Open European Mah jongg championship. The winner was Masato Chiba of Japan.

The new revisions were not widely accepted though as many people have been accustomed to a certain way of playing and they did not like the new rules that came along. They felt it complicated the game. But many new players like the clear cut rules as they said you can better understand the game with the rules given.

With all the new rules, many people are getting to learn to play mah jongg as they now understand it better. The mah jongg in the past had rather vague rules that new players did not seem to appreciate.