About this guide
The ALBAN Riichi Guide is a free learning resource for riichi mahjong, published by ALBAN — a Tokyo mahjong-table company founded in 1990. We design and sell automatic tables; we made this guide because the game deserves a better front door in English.
The promises
- No ads. No login. No paywalls. Ever.
- Your data stays yours. The calculator stores its settings in your browser and sends nothing anywhere. We use no tracking cookies.
- Every hand is shown as tiles. If a rule can be drawn, we draw it.
Which rules we teach
Baseline: the World Riichi Championship rules (2025). Where the EMA ruleset or common Japanese casual rules differ in ways a learner will actually meet — kiriage mangan, multiple ron, double yakuman, red fives — the page says so at the point of difference. We do not silently mix rulesets, and every yaku page notes its variations.
Editorial policy
- Rules content is written against the primary rulebooks (WRC, EMA), not other websites, and each page shows its last-updated date in the site history.
- Scoring pages and the calculator are generated from one tested implementation of the scoring formula — the tables cannot drift from the tool.
- Corrections are welcome and acted on: tell us via the contact form. If we got a rule wrong, we fix the page and say so.
- This guide links to ALBAN's products where genuinely relevant (scoring, equipment) and nowhere else. Learning content is never gated on commercial interest.
Who is behind it
ALBAN was founded in Tokyo in 1990 and designs the Slim Voice series of automatic riichi tables, assembled and inspected at our own factory, with a showroom in Toshima-ku, Tokyo. The guide is written and maintained by the ALBAN team with review against the primary rulebooks. Company details are on alban-global.com/about.
Credits
Tile artwork is derived from the FluffyStuff riichi tile set (public domain, CC0) — released by its author for exactly this kind of use, and credited here with thanks. Hand diagrams are generated by our own open tooling.