Common Hand (平和): Mastering the All-Chows Pattern in Hong Kong Mahjong
Ask any experienced Hong Kong Mahjong player what hand they end up with most often, and the honest answer is usually some variation of the Common Hand (平和, ping wo). It is not glamorous. It will not make the table gasp. But at 1 faan guaranteed, with limitless potential to grow when combined with other patterns, the Common Hand is one of the most practical and strategically important patterns in the game.
What Qualifies as a Common Hand
The requirements are straightforward, which is part of the appeal.
To score the Common Hand, your winning hand must meet two conditions:
- All four sets are chows (序, siu, also called sequences). A chow is three consecutive tiles of the same suit: for example, 2-3-4 of bamboo (竹), or 6-7-8 of dots (餅).
- The pair is a numbered suit tile. Winds (風牌) and dragons (三元牌) disqualify the pair. A pair of 9 characters (萬) is fine. A pair of East Wind tiles is not.
That is the complete checklist. No pung of any kind, no honor tile pair. Four chows, one numbered pair, and the hand qualifies.
A Valid Common Hand
Here is an example that meets both conditions:
- 1-2-3 of dots
- 3-4-5 of bamboo
- 5-6-7 of characters
- 7-8-9 of dots
- Pair: 5-5 of bamboo
All four sets are chows. The pair is numbered. This hand scores 1 faan for the Common Hand pattern before anything else is added.
What Breaks the Common Hand
Two things will cost you the pattern:
A pung instead of a chow. If even one of your four sets is a pung (三塊, three identical tiles) or a kong (槓, four identical tiles), the hand no longer qualifies. The Common Hand demands sequences across the board.
An honor tile pair. This catches people out more often than you might expect. If you hold a pair of West Wind tiles while building four chows, you are one tile away from a valid Common Hand, but if you win with that wind pair, the 1-faan bonus disappears. Swapping to a numbered pair during the endgame is sometimes worth a deliberate tile exchange.
Faan Value and How It Stacks
The Common Hand contributes 1 faan to your total. On its own, that is a very modest win. The real value of the pattern comes from how freely it stacks with other scoring conditions.
| Additional pattern | Extra faan | Typical total |
|---|---|---|
| Self-draw (自摸) | +1 | 2 faan |
| Seat wind pung | +1 | 2 faan |
| Mixed one suit (混一色) | +3 | 4 faan |
| Concealed hand (門前清) | +1 | 2 faan |
| Concealed hand plus self-draw | +2 | 3 faan |
Mixed one suit combined with a Common Hand is a particularly clean target. If you confine your chows to a single suit and add bamboo honour tiles (East, Green Dragon), you reach 4 faan on a discard win and 5 faan self-drawn. That is a respectable payout from a hand that has a realistic path to completion. See the Complete Faan Guide for the full stacking breakdown across all patterns.
Why the Common Hand Is Worth Chasing
Hong Kong Mahjong rewards flexibility. A player who commits too early to a specific pung or a specific honor tile can find themselves holding a blocking tile for the rest of the game. Chow-based hands, by contrast, stay fluid longer. A sequence of 3-4-5 can shift to 2-3-4 or 4-5-6 depending on what comes out of the wall or the discards.
The Common Hand formalises that flexibility as a scoring bonus. You are not sacrificing points to play an adaptable hand. You are earning a faan for it.
This also makes the Common Hand a useful fallback when a bigger hand falls apart. If you were building toward a mixed one-suit hand and someone discards the tile you needed to anchor a pung, you can often pivot to a chow-based completion and still arrive at 1 faan (or more, with mixed one suit still intact).
Common Mistakes
Misidentifying a 0-faan win as a Common Hand. The difference between a Common Hand and a Chicken Hand is the pair. Four chows with a numbered pair is 1 faan. Four chows with a dragon or wind pair is 0 faan, unless that honour tile independently earns faan as a seat or round wind pung (which it does not as a pair). Count carefully before declaring.
Forgetting that a kong is not a chow. If you declared a kong during the game, that set counts against the Common Hand requirement. All four sets must be chows, including any that were revealed through a claim.
Ignoring self-draw bonus stacking. Many players pocket a Common Hand discard win at 1 faan without considering whether waiting one more round for a self-draw might push the hand to 2 faan. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends on wall count and the pace of the game, but it is a calculation worth making.
Reading the Payout
A 1-faan win is the most common outcome at a Hong Kong Mahjong table. If your group plays with a base point system and a multiplier per faan, the Common Hand at the minimum keeps the game moving without large swings. If you are interested in how payouts scale from 1 faan upward, the Self-Drawn Win vs Discard Win breakdown explains exactly who pays what at each level.
The Common Hand is the foundation of consistent, low-variance play. Learn to recognise it quickly, pair it with compatible patterns, and you will find yourself winning more often without needing to chase hands that rarely complete.
TileBuddy automatically detects the Common Hand pattern alongside every other faan combination in your hand, so you never have to second-guess whether your pair qualifies or whether that last set was a chow or a pung. Download TileBuddy on the App Store and let the scoring take care of itself: TileBuddy on the App Store.