Course 3 · Winning
Hand structures and waits 聽牌
What a legal winning hand looks like, the shapes that can wait for a tile, and the special hands that break the normal rules entirely.
The standard hand: 4 melds + 1 pair
A winning hand is fourteen tiles: four melds 面子 (min6 zi2) — chows, pungs or kongs — plus one pair 對子/ 眼 (deoi3 zi2 / ngaan5, the "eyes"). A kong counts as one meld: it uses four tiles, so a hand holding one still shows 14 tiles — 13 plus the replacement.
The one exception: thirteen orphans
十三幺 (sap6 saam1 jiu1) — Thirteen Orphans, nicknamed 牌王 ("king of hands") — is the only exception to the 4+1 shape in standard HK play: the 1&9 of each suit, one of each wind and dragon (13 distinct tiles), plus any one of them again as the pair. It alone may rob a concealed kong and cannot be head-bumped.
七對子/嚦咕嚦咕 (cat1 deoi3 zi2) — seven distinct pairs — is played by some tables but is not part of the standard 清章 canon. Whether 4 identical tiles may count as two pairs, and whether kongs are excluded, are both table rules.
Meeting a scoring pattern is not enough: a hand that has the faan but not a legal hand shape is a false win (詐糊) and pays the limit.
How wins happen
- Self-draw 自摸 (zi6 mo2): you draw the completing tile from the wall. Announce 自摸, keep the winning tile separate and horizontal, expose everything.
- Win on a discard 食糊: claim the discard that completes your hand; the discarder is the 出銃 — the "shootist".
- Robbing a kong 搶槓 — a win with its own faan bonus.
Standard HK tables require 3 faan to declare a win (三番起糊). A 0-faan win is a 雞糊 (gai1 wu4, "chicken hand") and is illegal under 3-faan rules. Agree the minimum and the cap before playing — casual tables may allow 1 (or 0), competitive tables sometimes 5.
Waiting shapes 叫糊
A ready hand is one tile from winning — 聽牌 (ting1 paai2). 獨聽 (duk6 teng1) specifically means waiting on a single tile. The standard shapes:
| Shape | Chinese | Example (waiting tile in brackets) |
|---|---|---|
| Single wait (pair wait) | 單吊 (daan1 diu3) | 6-6 + [6] to make a pung-and-pair split |
| Two-sided wait | 兩面 (loeng5 min6) | holding 2萬-3萬, wins on [1] or [4] |
| Closed wait | 卡窿 (kaa1 lung1) | 2-4 in hand wins only on [3] — the middle tile of a chow |
| Edge wait | 邊張 (bin1 zoeng1) | 1-2 needs [3], or 8-9 needs [7] |
| Pair-pair wait | 對對碰 (deoi3 deoi3 pung3) | 5-5-7-7 wins on [5] or [7]; with 坎坎糊 the win must be self-drawn |
The more tiles you can win on, the better: a two-sided wait has twice the outs of a closed wait, and the pair-pair wait matters for 坎坎糊 rules, which force a self-draw.
Special and limit hands
Beyond 十三幺, the limit hands (例牌) — all honours, pure terminals, nine gates, great four winds, four kongs, the heavenly and earthly hands — break or cap the normal scoring. They take no add-on faan, and when several limit conditions coincide only the highest counts. The full list with values lives in Scoring — the faan table.