Wait Types

A wait is the set of tiles that complete the hand. At shanten 0 that set is the same object as ukeire: the kinds that move the hand from tenpai to a win, and the copies still left of those kinds. This site counts the hand alone. Four minus the copies already held. Discards, calls, and indicators stay out of the subtraction. The analyzer prints shanten and that list. It does not print a shape name, a fu total, a han total, or a legal-win flag. The names on this page are labels you put on the list.

The seven classroom shapes are ryanmen, kanchan, penchan, tanki, shanpon, nobetan, and sanmenchan. On a hand that has not already spent the wait tiles, the quiet widths look like this.

None of those rows is a constant to memorize. A kind that completes two readings is still one line. Each caption below uses the printout for that string. Counting kinds times four invents tiles the hand is already holding.

Five-block theory marks melds, taatsu, and one pair before tenpai. A ryanmen taatsu, a kanchan, and a penchan are blocks on that page. Once the other four groups are finished, those same two tiles are the wait. This page starts when shanten is already 0, or when a 14-tile cut is choosing which tenpai to keep.

The sort is the last step of tile efficiency: lower shanten, then more remaining copies, then more kinds. On a tie the whole group stays. A 立直 pinfu reading, a 国标 fan, or a 川麻 missing suit can prefer a different member of that group. Those readings are labeled. They do not rewrite the printed list. How the hand arrived at this distance is one-shanten.

At shanten 0 the analyzer prints the wait and does not print an improvement list. An improvement would be a draw that keeps shanten and raises the kind count. Changing a kanchan into a ryanmen means drawing a non-winning tile and discarding. That is a new 14-tile cut, not a second number on the 13.

Shanten 0 is the wait

The boundary is the distance, not the size of the list. A tenpai hand can show fewer copies than a hand that is still one step away.

9m is a terminal, and it is one of the two kinds. The taatsu is 78, so both outer neighbors finish a sequence. A penchan is a taatsu of 12 or of 89. 78 waiting on 6 and 9 is a ryanmen whose one side happens to be a terminal.

9s is in the hand and is absent from the list. The four kinds would become waits after one of them is drawn. They are not waits on this 13. Sixteen is larger than eight, and the hand is one step farther from a win. Lower shanten wins that comparison. The wider number belongs to the hand that has not arrived.

Ryanmen, kanchan, and penchan

A ryanmen is two adjacent tiles, and both outer neighbors finish a sequence. 45 waits on 3 and 6. 23 waits on 1 and 4. The 立直 pinfu sentence for that shape waits until the pinfu section. The count here is shared.

The triplet does not shrink the wait. Eight copies is eight copies. It does change a 立直 pinfu reading: the condition "four sequences" fails. The copy count does not show that failure. The pinfu section reads the same 13 again.

Kanchan

A kanchan is the gap. 46 waits on 5. 13 waits on 2, and that gap is the same shape. The fu table in Fu Calculation Basics puts the closed wait on the +2 row. That row is 立直. The copies are shared.

Both are half of the ryanmen's 8, on this full hand-only count. Penchan is the next shape, and it lands on the same 4.

Penchan

A penchan is only 12 waiting on 3, or 89 waiting on 7. The European Mahjong Association's riichi rules call this an edge wait. 国标 边张 is this win, with an exception for a longer run that the 国标 section measures.

Four equals the kanchan's four. A page that stops at "penchan is worse than kanchan" is teaching the upgrade, the way a later draw can rebuild the block. Five-block theory carries that 立直 and 川麻 preference as pedagogy about the shape before it is locked. The list on these 13s does not contain the upgrade. The next hand is the tie.

Eight against four

The five 13s share the same melds and the same pair. Ryanmen is wider on both keys the sort can see. Kanchan and penchan match each other.

Nothing in the four single-kind rows tells the sort to prefer 5m over 3m or 7m. Equal copies are a tie. The shape name is not a key.

The sort keeps both tenpai cuts. A labeled aside may still prefer the kanchan if the hand stays open and a later draw can rebuild it. The European Mahjong Association's rule is that a declared riichi hand cannot be changed, so that upgrade never arrives after the declaration. A closed tenpai that has not declared riichi can still care. The aside is not in the table. The table is the tie, and the choice that remains is discard strategy.

Tanki and shanpon

A tanki is the missing tile of the pair. One held copy leaves three. Seven pairs, on a ruleset that scores that pattern, is a tanki too: the seventh pair is the wait.

立直. The fu row for a pair-wait is +2. The pair is a dragon, so pinfu fails on the pair as well as on the wait. 国标. The pattern matches 单钓将. 平和 fails because the pair is not a number. A dragon is not a 川麻 tile. This 13 does not go in that sidebar as a legal hu.

立直 scores seven pairs. 国标 scores it as a special pattern. The wait is still a tanki: one kind, three copies. The honor keeps this string out of a 川麻 hand. Chiitoitsu is the 立直 yaku page.

A 定缺 of man or of sou is already clear on this 13. 川麻 can use the shape only on a table that scores seven pairs. 立直 and 国标 score the pattern. The wait is the same one kind either way. The seven-pairs section uses a 14-tile cousin of this tanki, where breaking a pair is the wider cut.

Shanpon

A shanpon is two pairs. Either one becomes the triplet and the other stays the pair. Two held copies of each kind leave two plus two.

Each pair already holds two, so each kind contributes 2. There is a triplet, so a 立直 pinfu reading fails before the wait is named. Where a pung is legal, it can still happen before this tenpai. The tenpai count itself stays 4. The pung is not added back onto the list. This 13 holds man, pin, and sou, so it is not itself a legal 川麻 hu. The two-suit shanpon is in the 川麻 section.

The dragon does not change the arithmetic. The same 4. If 5m is the triplet and White stays the pair, the pair is yakuhai under 立直. The triplet's own fu belongs on the fu page. Shanpon is not the +2 wait row that covers tanki, kanchan, and penchan. This hand has an honor, so it is not a 川麻 hu.

Three copies against four

On a full hand-only count, the shanpon is one copy wider and has a second kind. That is the whole comparison the sort can see. The Canada MCR association's 2020-07-16 glossary files 对倒 under 愚型, next to the single-kind bad shapes, because 4 is the same width as a kanchan. 立直 fu keeps the tanki on the +2 row and leaves the shanpon off that row.

The pond can reverse 4 against 3. Four copies of a tile can already be visible, and the hand-only count still prints them. This page does not invent discards to force that reversal. Furiten, in 立直, deletes ron on a kind the list still prints. Neither deletion is a smaller integer here.

Nobetan

Nobetan (延べ単) is four in a row and no separate pair. 2345 waits on 2 and 5. Each win makes the pair from that end and the sequence from the other three. Both wins complete the pair.

Drawing 6m makes pair 66m and sequence 789m. Drawing 9m makes sequence 678m and pair 99m. Each end is already held once, so the 8-copy ryanmen arithmetic does not apply. Six is 3 plus 3.

The same shape, and both fills are simples. Still two pair-waits. A reader who sees two neighboring kinds and writes "ryanmen, 8" has invented two tiles and the wrong 立直 fu row. Pinfu fails on both hands, because each winning tile finishes a pair. 国标 can still call a four-in-a-row pair-wait a 双听 candidate, the glossary's 3456 两面钓将, and only if both sides are ron-legal at 8 fan. These two hands were not scored. The caption says two kinds and six copies.

Sanmenchan and the edge run

Sanmenchan is three kinds. The usual five-run, with a pair already chosen, splits into one sequence plus one ryanmen taatsu. Both markings are legal.

• 345 plus 67. The taatsu 67 is ryanmen, waiting on 5 and 8.
• 34 plus 567. The taatsu 34 is ryanmen, waiting on 2 and 5.

The three kinds are exactly those ryanmen fills. The middle kind is in both ryanmen. It is one row in the printout.

5m completes 34's ryanmen and it completes 67's ryanmen. The printout lists 5m once, at ×3, because one copy is already in the run. Adding the two parses, or writing 4 plus 4 plus 4, produces 12 and invents the 5m the hand is holding. The measured total is 11.

A 立直 ryanmen reading exists for each of the three tiles. The European Mahjong Association's scoring rule, when a tile admits more than one parse, is that the highest-scoring possibility decides. This page does not run a score. It does not print a han. It does say the two-sided reading is available on 2m, on 5m, and on 8m.

1m completes 23. The taatsu 23 is ryanmen: its neighbors are 1 and 4. Penchan is a taatsu of 12 or of 89. The 1 on this run is the open side of 23.

The edge run is a different list. Park the five tiles on 56789 and the side above 9 does not exist.

56 is a ryanmen, waiting on 4 and 7. 89 is a penchan that also wants 7. The printout has two kinds. 7m is ×3 because one copy is held, so the total is 7. The highest-scoring 立直 reading of 7m can take the ryanmen. The 国标 exception in the next ruleset section says a 56789 winning on 7 is not 边张. That is the same double reading, used by the other rulebook. The list is 7 copies and 2 kinds.

Multi-waits

A multi-wait is a tenpai whose list has two or more kinds, or a two-kind shape that is not a plain ryanmen or a plain shanpon. Nobetan is the two-kind case that looks like a ryanmen. The blocks below go past three kinds. 国标 五门齐 is a different sentence, and it lives in the 国标 section. A five-sided wait and a five-group fan share a numeral.

Seventeen is the sum of those five rows. Three of the kinds are held once, so they contribute 3. The two ends contribute 4. Five times four would be 20. The hand is one suit of waits, with no wind and no dragon. That is a five-sided wait. It is not 五门齐.

The step under the five-sided wait. Three kinds are held once. 6m is a full side. Thirteen is the sum.

Each of 2m, 5m, and 8m completes a pair, with two sequences taken from the run. The classroom name is 三面ノベタン. Nine, because each end and the center are already held once. The sanmenchan above is the wider three-kind shape: its pair already exists, and its two ends are not held, so those ends stay at ×4 and the total is 11. A 立直 pinfu reading fails on all three tiles here, because each win is a pair-wait, and it also fails because of the triplet 999s.

3m and 6m finish 45 beside the pair 55. 4m finishes the pair beside the triplet 555. Eleven copies, three kinds, and the tiles do not share one fu row. 立直 can put 3m and 6m on the ryanmen row and 4m on the pair-wait row. The caption records the mix. It does not score it.

立直: pinfu on the same count

立直. The European Mahjong Association's Riichi Competition Rules, 2025 edition, describe pinfu as a concealed hand with four sequences and a valueless pair, where the winning tile finishes a sequence with a two-sided wait. The same rules put 2 minipoints on an edge wait, a closed wait, or a pair wait, and they allow that 2 even when the hand is also waiting for other tiles. Ryanmen is absent from that row, which is why the fu table treats it as +0. When a tile admits more than one parse, the highest-scoring possibility decides. A worked case in those rules is a tile that can be read as an edge or as a two-sided sequence: the two-sided reading is the one that scores pinfu.

The shape is what this page can say. A han total is not. A higher-scoring non-pinfu parse can beat pinfu on the same tile. That choice is the highest-score rule. These hands were not searched for that parse.

The clean ryanmen from the second section, m45p234678s12399, waits on 3m×4 and 6m×4. Closed, all sequences, pair 99s, both tiles two-sided. That is the shape pinfu asks for. Tanyao fails: the hand holds 1s and 9s. Tanyao wants every tile in the finished hand, including the winning tile, inside 2–8.

23m is ryanmen. 1m is the open side of 23. Pinfu can apply on both tiles. Tanyao can apply on 4m only. The 1m win puts a terminal in the hand. Eight copies either way. The yaku split is invisible to the copy count.

Same width as the pinfu-shaped ryanmen. The pair is a dragon, so pinfu fails. The eight copies do not show the failure.

The triplet ryanmen from the second section, m34p234567s88899, is also eight copies. Pinfu fails because the hand is not four sequences. The two nobetan hands are six copies, and pinfu fails because both ends are pair-waits. The shape is what a reader mistakes for the clean ryanmen.

Furiten is the other 立直 overlay, and the analyzer does not see the pond. If the player has discarded any tile that completes the hand, ron is forbidden and tsumo remains. On a three-sided wait, discarding any one of the three kinds furitens the hand. Passing a winning discard is temporary furiten and lasts until the next own draw. Riichi may be declared while furiten. The hand then still cannot ron. Suji is a defense reading of a ryanmen. It is not a count. Riichi Mahjong is the rules page.

A tie pinfu cares about

The sort and the pinfu reading part when the copies match. This 14 has three best cuts.

The two man cuts leave a ryanmen whose pair is 99s and whose other groups are sequences: the pinfu shape, with one side already short. Six copies, where a fresh ryanmen would show eight. The 9s cut leaves a nobetan, so pinfu fails. 立直 takes 4m or 7m when the goal is pinfu. The table keeps 9s as well. Three cuts, one copy count, one kind count. Discard strategy is where a tie on all three keys is decided. Dropping 9s out of the best-cut sentence would be this page inventing a fourth key.

国标: the wait fan, and 五门齐

国标. The World Mahjong Organization's competition rules, in the text the Canada association hosts, score 平和 at 2 points: four sequences and a number pair. The same line says that an edge, a closed wait, and a pair-wait do not remove 平和, and that 无字 is not counted on top of 平和. 边张, 坎张, and 单钓将 are 1 point each. The 1998 competition-rules wording, which the fan list follows for the worked exceptions, refuses some of those 1-point names when the run is longer:

• 边张 is winning the 3 of 123, or the 7 of 789. Also 1233 winning on 3, and 7789 winning on 7. The wording refuses 边张 when the hand is 12345 and the win is 3, and when the hand is 56789 and the win is 7.
• 坎张 is winning the tile between two tiles. 4556 winning on 5 is 坎张. 45567 winning on 6 is not.
• 单钓将 is winning the tile that completes the pair. 全求人 does not also score 单钓. Every hand on this page is closed, so that exclusion is only the sentence.

This is the opposite direction from 立直 pinfu. A penchan, a kanchan, or a number-pair tanki can still be 平和, and can also match the 1-point wait fan, subject to those exceptions. A dragon pair cannot be the 平和 pair. A triplet anywhere in the hand cannot be 平和. Fan totals below are not summed. 2 plus 1 is not a result this page prints. Chinese Official Mahjong is the rules page. The structural list is what the analyzer prints.

The Canada glossary calls the ryanmen 好型. 愚型 groups 边张, 坎张, 单钓, and 对倒. 双听, in that glossary, is a good-shape tenpai, or a 3456 pair-wait, and both sides must still be ron-legal at 8 fan. A structural ryanmen is not automatically 双听. 单听 is one kind. 1.5听 is one side ron-legal and the other tsumo-only. The analyzer cannot see ron-legality. 型听 is structural tenpai under the minimum fan. These hands are not stamped with that name, and they are not given a fan total.

The 12m penchan from the penchan section, winning on 3m, is a hand the wording calls 边张: the run is 12, not 12345. Four sequences, number pair 99s. 立直 pinfu fails, penchan, +2. 国标 平和 is available on that edge, and the win matches 边张. 无字 is not added on top.

Winning on 3m is the case the 1998 wording says is not 边张. A ryanmen reading also exists: 45 waits on 3 and 6. 立直 can take the two-sided yaku on 3m under the highest-score rule. 国标 refuses the edge-wait fan on that same tile. The two rulebooks use the double reading differently. 6m×4 is the other kind, a ryanmen fill, held by nobody in this hand. 3m is ×3 because one copy sits in the run.

The wording says 4556 winning on 5 is 坎张. Two of the four 5m are already in the hand, so the copy count is 2. The triplet 999s means a 平和 reading fails. 立直 pinfu fails for the same triplet and for the closed wait. The later held-copies section points back at this 2.

The wording says 45567 winning on 6 is not 坎张. 45 is a ryanmen that also waits on 3m, which is why 3m is in the list at ×4. 6m is ×3 because one copy is held. Seven copies, two kinds.

The eight-copy ryanmen from the second section has two kinds. It was not checked against 8 fan. Write "two kinds." The glossary's 双听 is a ron-legality test this page did not run.

五门齐 is the groups, not the wait

国标. 五门齐 is 6 points. The finished hand contains man, pin, sou, a wind, and a dragon. The World Mahjong Organization line is about composition. A hand can contain all five groups and still wait on one kind. A five-sided wait in one suit contains none of the other four groups.

The 13 already contains man, pin, sou, a wind, and a dragon. The winning White makes the dragon pair. The rule text's 五门齐 is about that composition. The wait has one kind. 平和 does not apply: there is a triplet, and the pair is a dragon. The tanki matches the 单钓将 pattern. Adding 6 and 1 into a total is a sum this page does not print.

Same five groups, ryanmen in place of the tanki. 平和 still fails, for the triplet and for the dragon pair. The fan idea does not pick the wait. The copy count does, and it picks this 8 over the tanki's 3 when the only question is the structural list. The five-sided 17-copy hand in the multi-wait section has the wide list and none of the five groups. The numeral is the only thing the two sentences share.

当量, the teaching weight that multiplies a pair by four and a sequence by two, stays on the ukeire page. This page does not multiply a wait by 2.

川麻: legal waits, and 查叫

川麻. House rules differ. The claims here follow 血战到底-style play: 108 tiles, no honors, no chi, 定缺, and 查叫 by the tenpai hand's maximum fan. Sichuan Mahjong is the rules page. A z tile in a drill is not a 川麻 tile. The honor tanki and the thirteen-orphans hand stay out of this sidebar.

No chi means you cannot take a discarded 3m to lock 123 and keep playing. A sequence is completed by the draw, or it is the tile you win on. 点和 is a different action: winning on another player's discard. A ryanmen, a kanchan, and a penchan can be that discard. The copy count is not doubled.

Under 定缺 of man, the man tiles have to go before any other tile, and the wait is man, so the printed tenpai is not a legal hu. At an exhaustive draw with all three suits still held, the hand is 花猪, a penalty, a worse settlement than noten. The 8-copy list repairs neither sentence. The analyzer does not apply 定缺. A man tile in the wait list of a three-suit hand is still printed.

定缺 of man is already clear. The wait is not the missing suit. A discarded 5p or 8p can be 点和. It cannot be chi'd into a sequence you keep playing. The 8 stays 8.

Also a legal tenpai after 定缺 of man. Narrower than the ryanmen. A pung of either pair was available earlier. The tenpai arithmetic does not add that pung back. Four copies, two kinds.

The one-suit tanki from the tanki section, p1122334455668, waits on 8p×3. Legal after 定缺 of man, on a table that scores seven pairs. On a table without that pattern, do not publish this 3 as if the pattern had been turned off. This page did not recompute the distance with seven pairs removed.

查叫 treats the ryanmen, the shanpon, and the tanki as the same status: tenpai. Noten pays the tenpai hand's maximum fan. It does not pay 8 minus 3. During the hand, the sort still prefers the 8-copy ryanmen to the 4-copy shanpon to the 3-copy tanki, because all three are shanten 0 and the next key is copies. 查叫 is the exhaustive-draw settlement. It does not reorder that list. On a continuing 血战到底 deal, a narrow legal tenpai can remain the goal after someone else has won. That is table economics. The 13-tile formula stays four minus held.

A pair can be punged before tenpai. A sequence cannot be chi'd. That is why an opening rank in 川麻 teaching puts the pair ahead of the ryanmen. At the tenpai moment the analyzer still prints the hand-only copies. A shanpon is 4, not 4 plus a pung bonus.

Held copies

The usual arithmetic error is kinds times four. The subtraction is four minus the copies of that kind already in the hand. A kind that completes two readings is one line.

4m is a full side. Drawing it finishes 234m beside the pair 11m, the two-sided completion. 1m has two copies already held, so it contributes 2. Drawing it finishes the pair beside sequence 123m, a pair-wait: one of the 1s joins 2 and 3, and the drawn 1 pairs with the other. 立直 can put 4m on the ryanmen row and 1m on the pair-wait row. The printout is one list of 6. Calling the hand an 8-copy ryanmen invents two tiles.

The shared middle of the sanmenchan m34567p789s12399 is the same rule. 5m×3 once. Two parses, one line. The kanchan m4556p123456s999 is the rule on a single kind: 5m×2, because the pair 55m already holds two of the fill.

The two ends are ×1 because three of each are held. Nine times four is 36 and invents 13 tiles. This is a 立直 nine-gates shape, and a one-suit shape a 国标 nine-gates rule cares about. It is not a ryanmen. 川麻 has no honors, and this hand also has no second suit. Whether a house scores the pattern was not checked. The caption prints 23. It does not print a fan.

Thirteen times four is 52 and invents a copy of each tile the hand is holding. 立直 thirteen orphans. 国标 十三幺 is the special-pattern fan, not one of the seven waits. 川麻 has no honors. This string is not a 川麻 hu.

Choosing among tenpai

On 14 tiles the sort reads each discard, then ranks the 13s. Lower shanten, then more copies, then more kinds. Pinfu does not reorder the table below. The tie it does reorder is the six-copy tie in the 立直 section, and only as a label on rows the sort already kept together.

On the rows that were re-measured, the order is 11, then 8, then 7, then 4. The sanmenchan beats the ryanmen on copies. The ryanmen beats the edge run on copies at the same two kinds, 8 against 7. The kanchan is last among those four. 1p is another tenpai at 8 copies. Its kinds were not expanded, so the second place on copies is shared, and the best cut is still 9m alone.

A reader who takes the ryanmen because it is the good shape throws away the 11. On this hand the ryanmen also has a pinfu reading: closed, sequences, pair 99s, two-sided. The wider cut is the three-sided run, and the sanmenchan split gives each of its three tiles a ryanmen reading too. Pinfu does not rescue the 8. The sort and the two-sided reading agree here. They part on the six-copy tie, where the copies match and the nobetan stays in the best-cut group.

More kinds is not the key by itself. The 11 happens to have more kinds and more copies. The nobetan and the ryanmen in that earlier tie have the same two kinds. Nine gates has 9 kinds and 23 copies. A ryanmen of 8 copies still loses to it on the structural sort, and the yaku is a separate sentence.

Seven pairs and the specials

The library minimum includes seven pairs and thirteen orphans alongside the ordinary 4 melds plus 1 pair. The probe did not turn seven pairs off. Label the pattern by ruleset. 立直 scores seven pairs. 国标 scores it as a special pattern. 川麻 scores it on some 血战到底 tables and omits it on others.

The widest tenpai breaks a pair and waits on four kinds at two copies each. Eight, where four fresh kinds would be sixteen. Keeping every pair and throwing 7m is the pure tanki, and it is the narrowest tenpai on this table. A caption that only counts the pairs misses the 8-copy list. A caption that adds seven pairs on top of the four kinds is wrong about that 13: the wide 13 does not have seven pairs. On a table without seven pairs, the 3-copy row may disappear. This page did not recompute that call.

The pin tanki p1122334455668 is the pure one-kind wait with no second interpretation. Use it when the lesson is that seven pairs waits on one tile. Use this 14 when the lesson is that the wide cut may leave the pair pattern behind.

Nine gates and thirteen orphans, measured in the held-copies section, are the other specials the minimum includes. Twenty-three copies across nine kinds, and thirty-nine copies across thirteen kinds. Both are tenpai lists. Both shrink because the hand already holds one of each accepting kind. Neither is one of the seven classroom waits. A 川麻 caption does not treat the honor string as a tile that table owns.

What to practice

The list at shanten 0 is the wait. The shape name is a label on that list. The sort stops at shanten, then copies, then kinds. A scoring plan, a missing suit, or an exhaustive-draw payment is an overlay you name before you play past the numbers.

1. The distance, including 0 and −1, in How to Count Shanten. Sixteen copies at shanten 1 is a larger number on a hand that has not arrived.
2. Kinds and hand-only copies, in Counting Effective Tiles. One kind once. At shanten 0 the two words are the same set.
3. How the hand arrived. The blocks are in five-block theory. The cut at shanten 1 is in One-Shanten Discard. The ladder those pages share is tile efficiency.
4. A tie on shanten, copies, and kinds, in Discard Strategy. The kanchan against the penchan, and the ryanmen against the nobetan, stop there.
5. The yaku reading of a winning tile. Pinfu wants a two-sided finish, under 立直 only. Fu owns the +2 row. Tanyao cares whether a ryanmen side is a terminal. Chiitoitsu is the pair-wait pattern on tables that score it.
6. The table. Riichi Mahjong, Chinese Official Mahjong, or Sichuan Mahjong. A 立直, 国标, or 川麻 sentence travels only into the ruleset it names.

Enter a 13 or a 14 in the analyzer and read the kinds and the copies. The printout will confirm the list. It will not name ryanmen, and it will not judge pinfu or a fan.

Tenpai training asks you to name the winning tiles of a tenpai hand. That is the set this page prints. The drill does not grade the word "ryanmen," a pinfu judgment, or a fan total.