Casino Mahjong - A twist on a great game
Mahjong is a time-honored Chinese game, played with decorated tiles. There are a variety of versions of mahjong today: the Chinese, the Japanese, the American – plus you can play free mahjong games online.
The tiles have beautiful designs on them including dragons, bamboo, circles and character, each representing something different. The flower or season tiles are like joker or wild cards in card games.
How to Win at Asian Casino Games like Mahjong 
Mahjong is a very easy game to learn to play but hard to master. A mahjong set of 144 tiles is used to play the most common version of the game. Four players sit in the East, West, North and South positions, and they are each given thirteen tiles.
Each player then takes turns drawing from what is left over from the 144 tiles. A winning hand is made up of four melds (three tiles in a sequence of the same suit, or three of a kind in the same suit) and a pair of tiles for “eyes.”
Just as there are several versions of mahjong available, there are many differences between the physical board game and the casino version. The board version is an intense game of strategy. Casino Mahjong is simpler – you just try to match tiles together to remove them from the mahjong pile.
Some of the sites where you can play free mahjong games online also offer PC versions of the game. The main goal of casino mahjong, like any other version of the game, is to find matching tile suits and complete the 13 to 16 tile set.
Compared to other online casino games, mahjong gives the house a low statistical advantage. Casinos are constantly adjusting the rules of play to counter various tile-counting schemes.
In 1979 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offered a mini-course called How to Gamble if You Must, and since then, a number of students who learned mahjong tile-counting strategies there have been putting their knowledge to the test at casinos nationwide and winning.
World Series of Mahjong
Asian casino games like mahjong now have World Series, just like poker and baseball. The WSOM hosts a circuit event just like the WSOP, offering cash prizes to the top place finishers. The first World Series was held in 2007, and in 2008 over 300 players from 15 different countries took part in the event. Alex Ho, who outlasted the field for three days, claimed the top prize of US$500,000.
But you don’t have to enter a tournament to enjoy mahjong: there is now a slot machine version of the game. “Mah Jong Madness” is a five-reel, 21 pay-line slot machine that gives you the chance to win multiple times on one spin.
The slot machine’s symbols consist of different mahjong tiles, including a green and a red dragon, five circles, four bamboos, a Chinese character three, orchids and spring.
