Quick Start

Making the Learning Easy

If you have not played Mah Jong previously, you can use the following options of Four Winds to facilitate the learning:

For easier recognition of tiles, you may want to use a custom tile set (e.g. Four Winds – Large). Note that if you downloaded the game from the Internet, the alternative tile sets are not necessarily included in the setup package, but they can be downloaded separately from the Four Winds web site.
You can use the Show Tiles command on the Options menu to display the tiles of your opponents. Seeing your opponents moves helps you to understand how the tile sets (Chows, Pungs and Kongs) are completed to compose a winning hand.
By default the Allow hints option is checked in the Preferences dialog box. This allows you to see the playable tiles in the Available Tiles window and use the Hint command on the Game menu (shortcut is CTRL+H) to have a suggestion on the tile to be discarded.
The default setting is that Four Winds does not assist you in claiming another players' discards. To force the program to automatically pass the discard, when you cannot claim it, and wait for user input (for the time specified by the Discard delay setting, default being 5 seconds) only when you have a possibility to make a legal claim, you may want to check the Auto accelerate option in the Preferences dialog box. This may be useful when you learn the game, but you may later want to turn off this option, since real Mah Jong is normally a very fast paced game and you must learn to make quick decisions yourself.
You can disable the timer for discards by setting the value of the Discard delay setting to zero. This allows you unlimited time for making a decision whether to claim a tile discarded by another player or not. (Otherwise a discarded tile is shown in the discard slot for the specified time, default being 5 seconds). Note that when the timer for discards is disabled, you must indicate passing of the tile by clicking the game board.
In the default rule preset (European Classical) the penalties are on. To turn off the penalties, you can either customize the rules or temporarily override the current rules to disable the penalties. Alternatively, you can choose Novice as the rule preset when you start a new game. These rules represent a simplified version of the classical rules and do not apply penalties for mistakes.