All Triplets (Dui Dui Hu): Hong Kong Mahjong's Reliable 3-Faan Hand
Of all the scoring hands in Hong Kong Mahjong, All Triplets (對對和, also known as 碰碰和 / Pung Pung Wu in Cantonese) has one of the best risk-to-reward ratios. At 3 faan, it clears the minimum threshold comfortably, stacks beautifully with other bonuses, and you can build it by claiming tiles aggressively from your opponents. It is not flashy like Thirteen Orphans or rare like a limit hand, but it is the kind of hand that wins consistently over a long session.
What Is All Triplets?
All Triplets means your four sets are all pungs (三個一組, three of a kind) rather than chows (sequences). Your hand structure looks like this:
Pung + Pung + Pung + Pung + Pair
That is it. No sequences allowed. The pair can be any tile, and the pungs can be any combination of suit tiles or honor tiles.
An example winning hand:
| Set | Tiles |
|---|---|
| Pung | 3-Bamboo, 3-Bamboo, 3-Bamboo |
| Pung | 7-Dot, 7-Dot, 7-Dot |
| Pung | Red Dragon, Red Dragon, Red Dragon |
| Pung | West Wind, West Wind, West Wind |
| Pair | 9-Character, 9-Character |
This hand scores 3 faan for All Triplets, plus 1 faan for the Red Dragon pung. If West is your seat wind or round wind, add another faan. That is 5 faan before any other bonuses.
Faan Value and What It Stacks With
All Triplets is worth a base 3 faan. But the real power is in what you can add on top.
| Bonus | Faan Added |
|---|---|
| All Triplets base | 3 |
| Each dragon pung | +1 per dragon |
| Seat wind pung | +1 |
| Round wind pung | +1 |
| Self-drawn win (自摸) | +1 |
| Mixed One Suit (混一色) | +3 |
| All One Suit (清一色) | +7 |
A realistic 5-faan hand: All Triplets (3) plus one dragon pung (1) plus self-drawn (1). That is common and achievable within a normal game.
For hands deep in scoring territory, All Triplets plus a Full Flush (清一色) gives you 10 faan before anything else. Check how those two hands interact in the complete faan guide.
Kongs Count Too
A kong (槓, four of a kind) satisfies the pung requirement for All Triplets. If you draw or claim a fourth copy of a tile you already have a pung of, you can declare a kong, take an extra tile from the back of the wall, and still be building toward All Triplets.
Kongs give you an extra draw, which is a meaningful advantage when building toward a specific hand. A hand with one or two kongs and two pungs still qualifies for All Triplets and earns the same 3-faan base.
How to Build It: Strategy
Start with Two Pairs or More
All Triplets hands usually reveal themselves early. If your starting hand contains three or four pairs, the path is clear: convert each pair into a pung by claiming discards or drawing the third copy.
If you have only one or two pairs and many isolated tiles, the hand is harder to force. You need to draw into it, which is slower.
Claim Discards Aggressively
This is the key difference between All Triplets and concealment-based hands. You do not need to hide your sets. Claim any discard that completes a pung. Your opponents will see your revealed sets and know what you are building, but that is acceptable. The hand is straightforward enough that the reveal trade-off is worth it.
Prioritize Honor Tile Pungs
Dragon tiles and wind tiles are worth extra faan as pungs, and they are often discarded early in a round when opponents are streamlining toward sequences. Picking up a discarded Red Dragon to complete a pung is gaining 1 guaranteed faan for a single tile claim.
Watch especially for:
- Dragon tiles discarded in the first few turns
- Wind tiles that do not match anyone’s seat or round wind
- Duplicate tiles opponents discard quickly (suggests they are chasing a different hand)
Abandon Chow Draws Quickly
When pursuing All Triplets, every tile you pick up that could only form a chow is essentially dead weight. Discard it. Do not get tempted into a partial chow just because the tiles fit nicely. If it is not a pair or a set you are growing into a pung, it should leave your hand.
When to Switch Away
Not every hand with multiple pairs is destined for All Triplets. If your pungs are a mix of low-value suit tiles with no honor pungs, and completing the hand would yield only 3 faan, ask yourself whether a different hand might be closer.
A strong alternative signal: if you can see a Mixed One Suit or Full Flush emerging from your tiles, those hands may offer similar or higher faan with a cleaner path. Sometimes the same pairs that start an All Triplets hand are better used in a one-suit approach.
The key question is always: which hand am I closer to finishing, and which scores more?
Defending Against an All Triplets Player
All Triplets hands are relatively easy to read. Once an opponent reveals two pungs, consider them a threat. By three revealed pungs, they are almost certainly at All Triplets and waiting on a pair or one more pung.
Signs to watch for:
- Opponent claims pungs from discards early and often
- All their revealed sets are pungs with no chows
- They are discarding tiles that do not match suit with their revealed sets
When you identify an All Triplets threat, switch to defensive play and pay close attention to tiles you are about to discard. Avoid discarding tiles the opponent is likely missing. If they have three revealed pungs and no pair visible, anything from your hand could complete their pair.
All Triplets vs Similar Hands
| Hand | Faan | Key Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| All Triplets (對對和) | 3 | All four sets are pungs |
| Common Hand / All Chows (平和) | 1 | All four sets are chows |
| Mixed One Suit with All Triplets | 6 | All pungs, one suit plus honors |
| Full Flush with All Triplets | 10 | All pungs, single suit only |
The All Chows hand sits at the opposite extreme: 1 faan and entirely sequences. All Triplets at 3 faan requires more coordination but delivers a much stronger payout. Over a session where both hands occur, the All Triplets player takes home significantly more.
Common Mistakes
Holding too many partial chows. If you start pursuing All Triplets and then pick up two tiles of a sequence, it is tempting to hold both. Do not. Break the habit. Partial chows are a trap when your goal is pungs.
Ignoring the pair. All Triplets players sometimes get so focused on completing pungs that they forget they also need a pair. Keep a tile aside early that you plan to use as your pair. Do not leave yourself in a situation where you have four pungs but have discarded all copies of potential pair tiles.
Overvaluing low-faan pungs. Three pungs of mid-range suit tiles (say, 4-Dot, 6-Bamboo, 2-Character) with no dragon or wind pungs gives you only 3 faan. That is the minimum. It wins, but just barely. Try to ensure at least one honor tile pung is in the mix for a safer faan count.
All Triplets is one of the most satisfying hands to build because you can feel it coming together set by set. Next time you open with three or four pairs, commit to it, claim those discards boldly, and let TileBuddy handle the score. Download TileBuddy free on the App Store and get accurate faan calculations the moment your last pung clicks into place. title: “All Triplets (Dui Dui Hu): How to Score This 3-Faan Hand” description: “Learn how to build and score the All Triplets hand (Dui Dui Hu / 對對和) in Hong Kong Mahjong, a reliable 3-faan hand built entirely from pungs and kongs.” date: 2026-04-10 author: “Wesley Ng” tags: [rules, scoring, faan, hands, guide] faqs:
- question: “How many faan is All Triplets in Hong Kong Mahjong?” answer: “All Triplets (Dui Dui Hu / 對對和) is worth 3 faan in Hong Kong Mahjong.”
- question: “Can you use kongs in an All Triplets hand?” answer: “Yes. Kongs count as pungs for the purpose of Dui Dui Hu, so a hand with one or more kongs and the rest pungs still qualifies.”
- question: “Does All Triplets stack with other faan?” answer: “Yes. Dui Dui Hu often stacks with other bonuses such as self-draw, seat wind or round wind pungs, dragon pungs, and flower or season tiles.”
- question: “Can All Triplets combine with Full Flush?” answer: “Yes. A hand that is both All Triplets and Full Flush (清一色) in a single suit is a very powerful combination worth 10 or more faan.”
- question: “Is Dui Dui Hu a common hand in practice?” answer: “It is moderately common. Because it requires no sequences, experienced players often pivot to Dui Dui Hu mid-hand when they are already holding several pairs.”
Of all the scoring hands in Hong Kong Mahjong, All Triplets (對對和, pronounced dui dui wu in Cantonese) stands out as one of the most satisfying to pull off at the table. There is something deeply pleasing about a hand that contains nothing but pungs: four groups of three identical tiles, plus a pair to seal the win.
At 3 faan on its own, Dui Dui Hu is not the flashiest hand in the rulebook, but it stacks beautifully with other bonuses and comes up often enough to be a genuine part of any serious player’s toolkit. Here is everything you need to know about building, scoring, and defending against it.
What Exactly Is All Triplets?
A winning hand in Hong Kong Mahjong is made up of four sets (melds) and one pair. In most hands, some of those sets are sequences (三張連續數字牌, three consecutive numbered tiles, also called chows). All Triplets flips that entirely: every set must be a pung (碰, three identical tiles) or a kong (槓, four identical tiles). The pair can be any tile.
A basic example of a qualifying hand:
- Pung of 1-bamboo
- Pung of 5-circles
- Pung of West Wind (西)
- Pung of Red Dragon (中)
- Pair of 9-characters
That hand has no sequences at all, nothing but pungs, and it qualifies for Dui Dui Hu.
Kongs count as pungs for this purpose. If you declare one or more kongs and build the rest of your hand from pungs, you still qualify for All Triplets. In fact, the Four Kongs hand (四槓, eighteen arhats) is a limit-hand version of this principle taken to its extreme.
How Much Is It Worth?
All Triplets is worth 3 faan. That puts it squarely in the middle tier of Hong Kong Mahjong hands. It scores more than a Common Hand (平和, 1 faan) or Concealed Hand (門前清, 1 faan), but well below the limit hands that cap out at 13 faan.
Where Dui Dui Hu really shines is in combination with other bonuses. Because the hand tends to include honor tiles (winds and dragons), pungs of those tiles add faan directly on top of the base:
| Bonus component | Faan added |
|---|---|
| Dui Dui Hu base | 3 |
| Pung of seat wind | 1 |
| Pung of round wind | 1 |
| Pung of any dragon | 1 each |
| Self-draw win | 1 |
| Each flower or season tile | 1 each |
A common real-world scenario: 3 faan for Dui Dui Hu, plus 1 for a Red Dragon pung, plus 1 for your seat wind pung, equals 5 faan before counting any flowers. That is already a solid payout, and easy to reach.
Combine Dui Dui Hu with Full Flush (清一色, 7 faan), where every tile is in one suit with all pungs, and you are looking at 10 faan, well into high-payout territory. See our Mixed One Suit vs Full Flush guide for more on how those hand types interact with each other.
How to Build an All Triplets Hand
Start With Your Pairs
The simplest path to Dui Dui Hu begins when you notice you are holding three or more pairs early in the round. At that point you face a fork in the road:
- Chase Seven Pairs (七對子), which requires exactly seven distinct pairs and is worth a flat 4 faan in most Hong Kong rulesets.
- Chase Dui Dui Hu, which requires converting most of those pairs into pungs by calling on opponents’ discards.
The key difference is that Seven Pairs must be entirely concealed, meaning you cannot call opponents’ discards to form pairs. Dui Dui Hu has no such restriction. You can call a pung (碰) on any discard to snap up your triplets, making All Triplets much easier to complete quickly and much harder for opponents to deny you once you are on a roll.
Calling Pungs Aggressively
Unlike sequences, which require two tiles you already hold plus one specific tile from an opponent, a pung call only requires that you are already holding a pair. The moment any opponent discards the tile you have a pair of, you call 碰 and lock in a pung. This makes Dui Dui Hu extremely opportunistic.
The downside is that every pung call you make is visible to everyone. Opponents will quickly read your hand and start withholding tiles that would complete your remaining pungs. This is why experienced players sometimes hold off on calling the first couple of pungs, waiting until they can chain two or three calls in quick succession and leave opponents with less time to adapt their discards.
Honor Tiles Are Your Best Building Blocks
Wind and dragon tiles are naturally strong candidates for Dui Dui Hu because they have no sequence potential whatsoever. They can only ever form pungs or pairs. If you are holding a pair of Red Dragon (中) and your seat wind (say, East / 東), you are already sitting on 5 faan worth of future points:
- Dui Dui Hu: 3 faan (once complete)
- Dragon pung: 1 faan
- Seat wind pung: 1 faan
Fill out the remaining two sets with any other pungs and you are in a comfortable position. If one of those sets happens to be the round wind, add another faan on top.
For a deeper look at how dragon tiles interact with scoring across different hands, check out our Dragon Tiles in Mahjong guide.
Defending Against Dui Dui Hu
When an opponent starts calling pungs left and right in the first few rounds, the Dui Dui Hu alarm should fire in your head. Because they are calling on discards, their melds are fully visible on the table, and that visibility actually works in your favor as a defender:
Count what is already locked. If an opponent shows three pungs, they need only one more pung and a pair to win. That is two target tiles, and you can often work out what they are based on what has been discarded already.
Avoid their suit or honor tiles. If the three visible pungs are all bamboo, any bamboo tile becomes dangerous in the late game. Similarly, if the opponent has already claimed the East and South winds as pungs, do not throw the West or North until you are sure they are safe.
Play defensively near the end of the wall. Dui Dui Hu hands come together fastest when the player can snap up discards rapidly in the early and middle game. Once the wall is short, your opponents have fewer tiles to draw, so the window to win narrows, but so does yours to safely discard.
Stacking Dui Dui Hu Toward a Big Round
All Triplets is a genuine base to build on rather than a hand to coast to. Some of the biggest rounds you will ever see involve Dui Dui Hu as the foundation:
- All Triplets + Full Flush: 10 faan. Four pungs all in one suit is extremely difficult to build since you have to be willing to discard any off-suit tiles early and commit fully to one suit.
- All Triplets + Three Dragons: If you pung all three dragon tiles (中發白: Red, Green, White Dragon), that alone adds 3 faan plus the 3 faan for Dui Dui Hu, landing at 6 faan before anything else. Punging both seat wind and round wind on top of that pushes toward 8 faan, which is already approaching limit territory in many house rules.
- All Triplets + All Honors (字一色): A hand made entirely of wind and dragon pungs with no suit tiles at all. In most rulesets this is a limit hand in its own right, separate from Dui Dui Hu.
Our Complete Faan Guide breaks down every combination and what they pay, which is useful reading if you are planning a high-value strategy.
How TileBuddy Handles Dui Dui Hu
When you log a Dui Dui Hu win in TileBuddy, the app automatically identifies the hand from your input and calculates the full faan total, including honor pungs, flower tiles, and win conditions stacked on top. No mental arithmetic at the table, and no arguments about whether the seat wind pung was already counted in the base faan.
If you prefer to learn faan counting manually first, work through the scoring step by step with our how to score Hong Kong Mahjong guide before relying on the app.
Whether you are chasing a clean 3-faan win or stacking Dui Dui Hu into a 10-faan monster, All Triplets rewards decisive pung calls, smart use of honor tiles, and sharp awareness of what opponents are building. Let TileBuddy handle the arithmetic so you can focus on the tiles. Download it free on the App Store.