The Complete Riichi Yaku List: Every Scoring Pattern, Explained

In riichi mahjong you cannot win on shape alone. You can draw a perfect hand of four sets and a pair, tiles all in order, and still be unable to declare a win, because the rules ask one more thing of you: at least one yaku.

A yaku is a named scoring pattern. Riichi is a yaku. All Simples is a yaku. A triplet of dragons is a yaku. Your hand needs to contain at least one of them, and each yaku is worth a number of han (doubles) that feeds into the final score. No yaku, no win, no matter how complete the tiles look. This is the single rule that trips up almost every beginner arriving from Mahjong Soul, where the win button simply refuses to light up and nothing on screen explains why. If you are still learning the flow of a hand, start with the beginner’s guide to riichi mahjong and come back here to look things up.

This page is that lookup. Every scoring pattern you are likely to meet, grouped by value, in tables you can scan or search. Bookmark it, then use it the way I do: not to memorize, but to check.

One thing that is not a yaku: dora

Before the tables, clear up the most common scoring confusion in the game. Dora are not yaku. They are bonus tiles that add han to a hand that already has a yaku, and they cannot get you a win by themselves. A hand made entirely of dora with no actual yaku is not a legal win.

Dora come in three forms:

Type	Romaji	When it counts
Regular dora	dora	A flipped indicator tile in the dead wall marks the dora; every copy in your hand is worth 1 han.
Ura dora	ura dora	A second, hidden indicator, revealed only if you won with a declared riichi. Called hands never get ura dora.
Red fives	aka dora	Special red 5 tiles worth 1 han just by being held. An optional rule, on by default in most online clients.

Dora inflate scores dramatically, which is why a plain riichi can suddenly pay big. But the han they add sit on top of a yaku; they never replace one. Keep that distinction and half the “why didn’t this win?” moments disappear.

How to read these tables

A few conventions run through everything below.

• Closed / Open columns give the han value with a concealed hand versus a hand that has claimed a tile (pon, chii, or an open kan). A dash (—) in the Open column means the yaku disappears if you open your hand; it is closed-only.
• Kuisagari (食い下がり) is the term for a yaku that survives being opened but drops one han. You will see it as, say, 2 closed and 1 open. Where both columns match, opening costs you nothing.
• Notation in the worked examples uses number + suit (p circles, s bamboo, m characters) and letters for honors: E S W N for the East/South/West/North winds and Wh G R for the White, Green, and Red dragons. So 234p is 2-3-4 of circles and RRR is three Red dragons.
• Total count. Rulesets tally the yaku differently, mostly over how they count the value-tile yaku and a few rare shapes, so you will see totals quoted anywhere from the mid-twenties to forty-plus. The patterns themselves, below, are stable across standard rules; the headcount is just bookkeeping.

1 han yaku

The bread and butter. Most of your wins will be built from these, often stacked two or three deep.

Yaku	Romaji	Kanji	Closed	Open	What it is
Ready hand	riichi	立直	1	—	Declared when your closed hand is one tile from complete; costs a 1,000-point bet.
Self-draw	menzen tsumo	門前清自摸和	1	—	Winning on your own drawn tile with a fully closed hand.
One-shot	ippatsu	一発	1	—	Winning within one go-around after declaring riichi, before your next discard.
Under the sea	haitei raoyue	海底撈月	1	1	Winning on the very last drawable tile of the wall.
Under the river	houtei raoyui	河底撈魚	1	1	Winning on the very last discard of the hand.
After a kan	rinshan kaihou	嶺上開花	1	1	Winning on the replacement tile drawn after declaring a kan.
Robbing a kan	chankan	搶槓	1	1	Winning on a tile an opponent adds to an existing pon to form a kan.
No-points hand	pinfu	平和	1	—	All runs, a valueless pair, and a two-sided final wait. The “no extra fu” hand.
Pure double sequence	iipeikou	一盃口	1	—	Two identical runs, same suit and same numbers.
All simples	tanyao	断么九	1	1	No terminals (1s and 9s) and no honor tiles; every tile is a 2 through 8.
Value tiles	yakuhai	役牌	1	1	A triplet of dragons, your seat wind, or the round wind. One han per such triplet.

A word on the last two, since they do the heavy lifting. Yakuhai stacks: a hand with a Red dragon triplet and a triplet of the round wind is 2 han, one for each. It also does not care whether you open your hand, which makes it the most reliable path to a fast, legal, called-hand win. All simples is the other workhorse; some older or in-person rulesets require it to be closed (a rule called kuitan nashi), but under the default online rules an open all-simples hand scores its 1 han fine.

2 han yaku

Bigger shapes, and the first place kuisagari appears.

Yaku	Romaji	Kanji	Closed	Open	What it is
Seven pairs	chiitoitsu	七対子	2	—	Seven distinct pairs instead of the usual four-sets-and-a-pair shape. Closed only.
All triplets	toitoi	対々和	2	2	Four triplets (or kans) and a pair; no runs at all.
Three concealed triplets	sanankou	三暗刻	2	2	Three triplets formed without claiming a tile for them.
Three-color triplets	sanshoku doukou	三色同刻	2	2	The same numbered triplet in all three suits, e.g. 5-5-5 of each.
Three kans	sankantsu	三槓子	2	2	Three quads (kans) in one hand.
Three-color straight	sanshoku doujun	三色同順	2	1	The same run in all three suits, e.g. 3-4-5 of each. Kuisagari.
Pure straight	ittsuu	一気通貫	2	1	The 1-2-3, 4-5-6, and 7-8-9 runs in a single suit. Kuisagari.
Terminal/honor in each set	chanta	混全帯么九	2	1	Every set and the pair contains a terminal or an honor tile. Kuisagari.
All terminals and honors	honroutou	混老頭	2	2	Only 1s, 9s, and honor tiles; always combines with all triplets or seven pairs.
Little three dragons	shousangen	小三元	2	2	Two dragon triplets plus a pair of the third dragon.

Seven pairs is the odd one out structurally, and worth a mental note: it is fixed at 25 fu and, being closed-only, pairs naturally with riichi. Little three dragons looks like only 2 han on paper, but it always drags two yakuhai dragon triplets along with it, so the real hand is usually 4 han or more before dora.

3 han and 6 han yaku

The high end of the han ladder, before you reach yakuman territory. Two of these are the “flush” hands that decide a lot of big pots.

Yaku	Romaji	Kanji	Closed	Open	What it is
Half flush	honitsu	混一色	3	2	One suit plus honor tiles, nothing from the other two suits. Kuisagari.
Twice pure double sequence	ryanpeikou	二盃口	3	—	Two separate pairs of identical runs. Closed only.
Fully outside hand	junchan	純全帯么九	3	2	Like chanta, but every set and the pair contains a terminal (no honors). Kuisagari.
Full flush	chinitsu	清一色	6	5	A single suit and nothing else: no honors, no other suits. Kuisagari.

Full flush is the big one here. At 6 han closed it is already worth a haneman-level payout before any dora, and a closed chinitsu that also rides a riichi and a couple of ura dora is where casual games turn into blowouts.

Yakuman: the limit hands

Yakuman sit outside the han ladder entirely. Instead of adding doubles, each one pays a fixed limit score (in standard scoring, 32,000 for a non-dealer win, 48,000 for the dealer). Some are closed-only, some can be made with called tiles; the table notes which.

Yakuman	Romaji	Kanji	Closed only?	What it is
Thirteen orphans	kokushi musou	国士無双	Yes	One of every terminal and honor tile, plus a second copy of any one of them.
Four concealed triplets	suuankou	四暗刻	Yes	Four triplets, none of them claimed from a discard.
Big three dragons	daisangen	大三元	No	Triplets of all three dragons.
Little four winds	shousuushii	小四喜	No	Triplets of three winds plus a pair of the fourth.
Big four winds	daisuushii	大四喜	No	Triplets of all four winds. Often scored as a double yakuman.
All honors	tsuuiisou	字一色	No	A hand made entirely of honor tiles.
All terminals	chinroutou	清老頭	No	A hand of nothing but 1s and 9s.
All green	ryuuiisou	緑一色	No	Only the “green” tiles: 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 of bamboo and the Green dragon.
Nine gates	chuuren poutou	九蓮宝燈	Yes	A specific full-flush shape (1112345678999 + one extra) in one suit.
Four kans	suukantsu	四槓子	No	Four quads declared in one hand.
Blessing of heaven	tenhou	天和	Yes	The dealer completing a winning hand on the opening draw.
Blessing of earth	chiihou	地和	Yes	A non-dealer winning on their first draw, before any call interrupts.

Two honest caveats here, because rulesets genuinely disagree.

Double yakuman. Several hands are commonly upgraded to double value in their most extreme form: thirteen orphans on a thirteen-tile wait, four concealed triplets completed on a single (pair) wait, nine gates on the pure nine-sided wait, and big four winds. Whether any given table honors those doublings depends on the ruleset; some clients pay them, some flatten everything to a single yakuman. Check the rules of the platform you are on rather than assuming.

Blessing of man (renhou, 人和), a non-dealer winning on the first go-around off a discard, is a local yaku whose value swings from a full yakuman down to a mere mangan depending on where you play, and plenty of standard rulesets omit it entirely. There is also nagashi mangan, an oddity where a player whose every discard is a terminal or honor and untouched by any call scores a mangan at the exhaustive draw. Both are edge cases; treat their presence and value as table-dependent.

Worked examples

Tables tell you the rule; a picture tells you what it looks like at the table. Here are the ones worth seeing.

Riichi is not a shape you build so much as a declaration you make. Any closed hand that reaches tenpai (one tile from a win) can declare it:

All simples (tanyao) is the pattern you will complete most often. Nothing but 2s through 8s, no terminal or honor tile anywhere:

No-points hand (pinfu) is all four groups as runs, a valueless pair, and a two-sided wait, the “no extra fu” hand:

Value tiles (yakuhai) needs just one triplet of a dragon, your seat wind, or the round wind. Here, a triplet of Red dragons carries the whole hand:

Three-color straight (sanshoku) runs the same sequence through all three suits, an easy pattern to spot once you look for it:

The cheat sheet

If you take one screenshot from this page, take this. The yaku you will actually see, sorted by how often they turn up:

• You will lean on constantly: riichi (1), tanyao (1), yakuhai (1 each), pinfu (1), menzen tsumo (1). Most closed wins are some combination of these plus dora.
• Worth reaching for: sanshoku (2/1), ittsuu (2/1), iipeikou (1), chiitoitsu (2), toitoi (2). Shape goals that add real value without twisting your hand into knots.
• Big-pot territory: honitsu (3/2), chinitsu (6/5), shousangen (2, but drags dragon triplets), junchan (3/2).
• Once in a blue moon: the yakuman table above. Learn to recognize them so you know when to chase.

And the two rules underneath all of it: every win needs at least one yaku, and dora are never that yaku, only a bonus on top.

For the flip side of the scoring picture, how a win is actually paid for and by whom, read tsumo vs ron. And if you are still assembling the basics, the beginner’s guide to riichi mahjong walks through a full hand from the first draw. These patterns stick a lot faster with actual tiles in your hand than they do on a screen, and our roundup of the best riichi mahjong sets covers which ones are worth buying for it.