Mahjong or mah-jongg is a tile-based game that originated in China in the 19th century and has since spread throughout the world. It is played by four players, although some three-player variations are found in parts of China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. The game is played with a set of 144 tiles based on Chinese symbols and characters, which are arranged in specific combinations to form a winning hand. Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and luck, similar to the Western card game rummy.

The game has regional variations and is widely played throughout East and Southeast Asia, as well as in Western countries. Some of the popular variations include:

• Competition Mahjong: An international standard founded by All-China Sports Federation in July 1998 that some mahjong societies have adopted for competition play and in some cases for all play. It includes a large variety of different scoring rules in a way that emphasizes strategy and calculation ability.
• Fujian Mahjong: Thirteen tile hands. Certain tiles can be wild. No dragons. Winds are treated as bonuses.
• American Mahjong: A form of mahjong standardized by the National Mah Jongg League and the American Mah-Jongg Association. It uses joker tiles, the Charleston, plus melds of five or more tiles, treats bonus tiles as honors, and eschews the chow and the notion of a standard hand. Legal hands are changed annually.

Mahjong has become a popular online entertainment, and there are many resources available to learn how to play the game. The game is played with a set of 144 tiles, and the basic rules of play involve shuffling the tiles, rolling the dice to determine the dealer, and arranging the tiles into two sets of 18 resembling a wall. The walls are then pushed forward, leaving space in the middle of the table for discarded tiles. The objective of the game is to form a winning hand by drawing and discarding tiles until a player has a complete hand.

In conclusion, Mahjong is a tile-based game that originated in China in the 19th century and has since spread throughout the world. It is played by four players and involves arranging tiles into specific combinations to form a winning hand. The game has regional variations and is widely played throughout East and Southeast Asia, as well as in Western countries.