Greetings and salutations from your favorite sexagenarian, Bubbe Fischer, giving you my overview of the 2026 NMJL card. Yes, I know it's not even March 20th yet, but the Mah Jongg Groundhog got her act together this year and you ought to receive your card any day now!!
I'll start out with today's overview and then follow up with additional posts, almost daily. My next three articles are devoted to the three panels of the card, with lots of specific detail. After that I'll be talking about ambiguous exposures, illegal exposures, and underlying things to watch out for on the new card.
Bubbe's overall philosophy is “luck favors the prepared
mind.” Mah jongg is 70% luck. We can't control the 3/4 of the tiles that
we don't pick from the wall, nor can we control the timing of when tiles come
out: while we may want to call for an exposure, we might not be ready.
My goal is to help you learn (NOT memorize!) the new card. I
want you to be as prepared as possible, to maximize the 30% under your control,
by thinking analytically about hands. If and when a lucky opportunity arises,
you'll know what to do with it!
Let's get started. It's 2026, so of course “6” is even more
valuable. THREE sections of the card rely heavily on it: 2026 (hereafter
referred to as “Year”), 2468 (aka “Evens”), and 369. Of course you might see
them in any other section (except 13579 or “Odds”), but they're essential to
the three sections mentioned above.
Another observation: the card designers continue to think
outside the box, not relying on the same predictable hand patterns we saw in older
cards. The first hands in the Consecutive Runs section (“CR1”--a and b versions
for the lower and upper ends of the number line) used to be either a bell curve
AA BBB
CCCC DDD EE
or a stair ascending from lowest to highest:
AA BB
CCC DDD EEEE
This year, it's a stutter step: pair pung pair pung
kong.
AA BBB
CC DDD EEEE
The pattern also occurs in Odds and 369.
Pung and kong hands are some of my favorite go-tos because
they don't require any pairs, meaning you can use Jokers and/or call for
exposures in every meld. Unfortunately there is no set pattern this year; they
appear in different forms: pung pung kong kong, pung kong pung kong, or even kong
pung kong pung. I'm going to suss out whether there's any easy way to remember
which hands go which way, but it’s still good to keep your card in front of you
to double check the correct components.
Other things to note:
*three hands use at least two pungs of dragons; several hands
use a single dragon in multiple suits
*You may remember how the Winds mysteriously appeared in the
Odd section last year. This year they've busted out of Winds and Dragons (“WD”)
again: we see them in Evens, Odds, and 369, as usual as well as their usual
cameos in Year and Singles and Pairs (“SP”).
*Like-numbered kongs in two different suits appear in eight different hands on the card. They are represented in all three LN hands, but also Evens, Odds, WD, and 369.
*Following last year's surprise, there is again a hand
featuring a chow, and we’ll also see some “pseudo chows”!! As a reminder, a
chow in Chinese mahjong is three consecutive single numbers in the same suit.
NMJL used them in last year’s card, and the chow is back again in its pure form
in one CR hand.
As for the pseudo chows, there are “Even” pseudo chows (single tiles within that family, skipping the odd numbers, so a 246 or a 2468). Of course, you can expect to see some pseudo chows in the Odd, 369 and SP section as well. There's even a “si lian shun” (four consecutive numbers in one suit, or what I'd call a "super chow") in WD.
*We see a variation on another interesting hand from last year, the “floating pair,” now in the Odd section. Remember, that's the hand where you have kongs of the same number in two suits–then a matching pair in the third suit, surrounded by four single consecutive tiles in that suit. Since it's an Odd hand, a single of each of the other four odd numbers completes the meld in the pair’s suit. Don't worry, I'll go over it again when we do the middle panel.
*I kept hoping for the “kongs of 1-9-D and 2-8-D” from many
years back. I am happy to see the return of kongs of 2 and 8 in two different
suits, this time with pungs of matching dragons.
*There is one very special knit hand this year.
This means the melds alternate between two different suits. It's unique on the
card, one of only two hands that use a pung of a number and then a kong of a
dragon in a different suit. I’ll be discussing it further in the “middle panel”
article.
VERY IMPORTANT: Possibly the most confusing feature of this
card involves Flowers. Some hands use pairs or pungs, and there are two hands
where you will need two pungs of Flowers…. but there are another two hands that
require an actual *sextet* of Flowers. Please note that “two pungs” is
quite different from a sextet. To make either of the sextet hands, you will
need to keep ALL SIX Flowers together, as opposed to being able to
expose/complete them as two separate pungs. As I'll mention again in the
Illegal Exposures article, there won't be any kongs of Flowers this year.
One final takeaway: because 6’s are very useful and pungs are easier to make, I strongly recommend NOT passing 6’s or Flowers if you have other options. Even if you don’t need them, I recommend holding onto a Flower until you have two, in the hope of using the first as “Joker bait,” luring out someone who will call for it and, in so doing, expose a joker: then you exchange for that joker with your second Flower. With 6’s I would keep them in the Charleston but then throw them out early in the game. In general, with so many pungs of dragons and Flowers, I would keep my eyes wide open for exposures and opportunities to exchange. Jokers will be flying all over the place with this card!! THIS is exactly the kind of preparation ("pay attention to exposed jokers") that is going to bring you more luck.
I can't wait to do that deep dive with you over the next few days. Obviously, there's a lot to cover. I don't expect you to absorb it all right away. Just familiarize yourself with the patterns and especially recognize that tiles can appear in more than one section. I want you to be fearless: play the hand that's right for your tiles, regardless of its section.
Feel free to contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com with any
questions or comments you might have.
Talk to you very soon!
Bubbe
