Welcome to the wonderful world of Mahjong. Mahjong is an ancient Chinese game that is still played today. The game is over 2,000 years old and was supposedly started in the ancient royal court of a King Wu. Mahjong was a royals-only game until 500 AD, and after this anyone who wanted to could play.
After it became available to commoners in China, the game spread around the world, first to England and Australia, then to the US in 1920. It was introduced to the United States by an American, Joseph Babcock, living in Shanghai, and he brought the game home with him. It is said that Mr. Babcock actually invented the term mahjong (or mah-jongg) and made the rules easier for Westerners.
Mahjong is similar to the card game gin rummy, but played grouping tiles by suits or sequences. In “real-life” mahjong is played with 4 players, and the goal is to get rid of and collect tiles to complete a desired pattern. A set of tiles is called a hand just like in cards, and each player takes turns organizing their tiles to try and construct a winning hand.
The popularity of Mahjong has risen and fallen with the fads of the time, but remains a classic game of concentration and skill to this day.
There are many places to play Mahjong online, and most sites are free and offer a variety of games. Other interesting articles on free Mahjong games provide a background on the game and websites to play Mahjong online.
I hope you have fun learning the game of Mahjong and take the time to visit some sites and play Mahjong online.
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