Odds are good that at some point you’ve played a game of Mahjong Solitaire, the game where you remove accessible pairs of matching tiles until (hopefully) none are left. It’s played with a standard set of Mahjong tiles, but beyond that, has absolutely nothing to do with Mahjong.

How to Play:

As far as gameplay is concerned, this game is far more similar to Gin Rummy. Your objective is to build melds out of your 13-tile hand—either runs of adjacent ranks in one suit or multiples of a single card. Unlike Gin, if you win the hand, your final hand includes the card you drew, so it contains 14 tiles. Runs, called “chii”, must be 3 tiles long, but sets can have 2, 3, or 4 tiles. A 2-tile set is a special non-meld called the “toitsu” or “eyes”, and you need exactly one to win the hand. A 3-tile set is called a “pon”. A 4-tile selt is called a “kan”, and you draw an extra tile as soon as you form one. This means that the four melds you make could potentially contain 16 tiles, for a final hand size of 18.