Small Four Winds (小四喜)

What is Small Four Winds?

Small Four Winds (小四喜), pronounced siu sei hei, is a 6-faan Hong Kong Mahjong winning hand requiring three wind pungs plus a pair of the fourth wind. Like its dragon counterpart Small Three Dragons, it represents the structural “near-miss” on the more ambitious Big Four Winds. It pays 32 base units.

How to score Small Four Winds

The hand uses three of the four melds as wind pungs or kongs, with the pair locked specifically to the fourth wind. The remaining single meld can be any chow, pung, or kong of any suit.

The structural constraint is strict: the pair must be a wind, and specifically the wind tile not used as a pung. Holding a pair of any other tile while only having three wind pungs disqualifies the pattern.

Example hand

Faan value: 6

Small Four Winds is worth 6 faan, paying 32 base units. It absorbs the individual wind-pung scoring (Round Wind, Seat Wind) for the wind types contained within it.

Common combinations

Small Four Winds stacks with structural and win-action patterns:

• Small Four Winds + All Triplets (對對胡) — 6 + 3 = 9 faan, when the fourth (non-wind) meld is also a pung. The wind pair satisfies the pair requirement.
• Small Four Winds + Mixed Flush (混一色) — 6 + 3 = 9 faan, with the non-wind meld and pair from one suit + winds as honors.
• Small Four Winds + Concealed Hand (門前清) — 6 + 1 = 7 faan.
• Small Four Winds + Self-Pick (自摸) — 6 + 1 = 7 faan.

Small Four Winds upgrades to Big Four Winds (limit hand) if the wind pair is converted to a fourth wind pung — the two are mutually exclusive.

Strategic note

Small Four Winds is functionally a fallback or transitional state for hands aiming at Big Four Winds. A player holding three wind pungs and a pair of the fourth wind is one tile away from the limit cap; the gap between 32 base units (Small Four Winds) and 384 base units (Big Four Winds) is the largest single-tile-difference jump in HK Mahjong scoring — making the late-round draw decisions on this hand particularly high-stakes.