Riichi リーチ

The declaration the whole game is named after. Riichi announces three things at once: my hand is closed, it is one tile from winning, and I'm betting 1,000 points on it. In exchange, your hand locks — and gets noticeably more valuable. This lesson covers when you may declare, the exact procedure, what you give up, and when staying quiet is the sharper play.

When you may declare

All four conditions must hold at the same time:

Your hand is closed. No chii, pon, or open kan anywhere in it. A closed kan is fine — it keeps the hand closed.
You are tenpai テンパイ — exactly one tile from a complete hand.
You have at least 1,000 points. The declaration costs a 1,000-point stick, and most Japanese rules won't let you bet points you don't have (WRC tournament rules, which play on with negative scores, allow declaring even when short).
At least four tiles remain in the live wall — so that, barring calls, at least one more draw comes back to you.

Mahjong hand: 2 of characters, 3 of characters, 4 of characters — 5 of characters, 6 of characters, 7 of characters — 4 of circles, 5 of circles, 6 of circles — 9 of circles, 9 of circles — 6 of bamboo, 7 of bamboo — Ready for riichi: a closed hand, one tile from done. The 6-7 of bamboo waits on either 5s or 8s.

One habit worth building before every declaration: check your own discard row against your wait. If any tile you're waiting on is already sitting there, you are furiten フリテン, and riichi would lock you into a hand that can never ron. More on that below.

The procedure

On your turn, three actions in order: say “riichi”, place your discard turned sideways in your discard row, and put a 1,000-point stick out toward the center of the table. The sideways tile marks the moment of declaration for everyone at the table.

If an opponent calls ron on that very tile, the riichi never completes and your stick stays yours. Otherwise the 1,000 points sit on the table as a bounty: whoever wins the hand collects every riichi stick out there. If the hand ends in a draw, the sticks carry over to the next hand's winner.

What locks after you declare

From this point your turns run on rails. Draw a tile; if it completes your hand, take the win by tsumo; otherwise discard that same tile. You cannot swap it for something in your hand, and you cannot change your wait. You keep drawing and discarding like this until you win or the hand ends.

One exception: if you draw the fourth copy of a tile you already hold as a closed triplet, you may declare a closed kan — but only with the tile you just drew, only if the kan leaves your wait unchanged, and only if those three tiles form a fixed triplet in every reading of your hand. When you're not sure all three hold, skip the kan.

What the 1,000 points buy

One han. Riichi is itself a yaku, which means any closed tenpai hand becomes legal to win the moment you declare.
Ura dora 裏ドラ rights. Win after declaring and you flip the tiles underneath the dora indicators — bonus han only riichi winners can receive.
The ippatsu 一発 chance. Win before your next discard, with no calls in between, and you score one extra han.
Pressure. The whole table now knows you are one tile from winning. Opponents start folding — which slows them down, though it also dries up the discards you could ron.

Riichi furiten — the standing trap

Because a riichi hand can never change its wait, the furiten rule bites hardest here: pass up any ron after declaring — even one you simply failed to notice — and you are furiten for the rest of the hand. Tsumo only. The full rule lives in the furiten lesson; the short version is to stay awake once your stick is on the table.

Damaten — winning without declaring

Damaten ダマテン (“silent tenpai”) is the deliberate choice not to declare. It only works when your hand already contains a yaku of its own — tanyao, pinfu, a yakuhai triplet — because without riichi, a hand with no yaku cannot ron at all. Stay quiet and you give up the riichi han, the ura dora, and the ippatsu chance, but you keep everything riichi takes away: you can reshape your wait, fold if the table turns dangerous, and nobody knows you are tenpai.

Choosing between the two is a judgment call with its own rule of thumb in the FAQ. While you're learning, the answer is usually to declare: riichi turns any closed tenpai hand into a legal, larger win, and the exceptions can wait until the basics are automatic.

Prev: Lesson 4 — turns and calls · Next: Lesson 6 — winning a hand, where the locked hand pays off.