Bloomsbury Mah-Jong

Not sure why so many people give this a five star rating. As an introduction for beginners it has major shortcomings. It is quite short - only 64 small pages and many pages are given over to things that are pretty much irrelevant to learning the game. Two pages are nothing more than a two times table written out in full. Some pages are devoted to topics like antique sets, collecting sets, playing on line, and other variants of the game (though not explained in full) but the coverage of these topics is superficial. The core of the book is therefore only about 40 pages. While that bit (as far as I know) is fully accurate - the approach is detailed / technical and conveys only a limited impression of strategy. Not an exact analogy but consider that you would never know what the game of football looks like by reading the FA official rules of the game. The book seems to have been written by someone who knows the game of mah jong extremely well but is unable to think from the perspective of a beginner. The illustrations are very good, large, well coloured and clear, but take up a considerable amount of space on the page, often resulting in only a few dozen written words on a page. Overall not an easy book from which to learn the game if you are an absolute beginner - possible but fairly hard work.

This is a very attractive, semi hard back book that is well presented and illustrated and easy to follow. It is called 'Know the Game' so designed for the new or casual player rather than existing experts who would, I imagine, prefer more in depth strategy, although some basic strategic advice is given. I liked it because there are a lot of different books on Mah-Jong rules and they all have different variations, especially depending on which country you live in. As I am in the UK this tries to standardise the rules for UK players and is published by the British Mah-Jong association.

I play Mah-Jong but am still in the learning stages. This book is important for anyone wanting to join a good set of Mah-Jong players as it is the ultimate Rule Book. If you play by pieces of paper that someone has written up you will not be playing the real game. A must have.

This is an excellent little booklet, giving clear and concise instructions for playing the complex game of Mah Jong. I learnt to play, with neighbours, some years ago now, but we used this booklet constantly to refer to the scoring pages, and to refresh memories, or to check on a rule. As we are about to start a village group, I decided to buy more of the same booklets rather than the newer fancier books on Mah Jong, as I knew the clear and simple instructions would be very helpful to all learning the game.

Its a guide to how to play Maj Jong and beats the explanation you so often find accompany a Mah Jong set which is in poor English and difficult to follow. Very grateful to have found this. It arrived on time and was well packaged.