Home / Mahjong solitaire / Strategy

Mahjong solitaire strategy

Take the pair that frees the most tiles, not the first pair you see. When all four tiles of a kind are free, take both pairs. When three are free and the fourth is stuck, use the one that's sitting on or beside the fourth. Those three habits took a simple test player from clearing 399 of 1,000 turtle boards to 593.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. Every number on this page comes from our own test: 1,000 deals of each layout in our mahjong solitaire game, played by four simple computer players. New to the game? Start with how to play mahjong solitaire.

What we tested

We gave four playing styles the same 1,000 deals of each layout. None of them looks under tiles or plans ahead more than one move, which is how a quick, casual game often goes. No shuffles in the main columns.

Style: always take...QuiltBarnHilltopTurtle
Any matching pair, picked at random693451345399
The pair highest up the pile715523466246
The pair that frees the most tiles743641528529
Frees the most tiles, plus the two rules about fours845709643593

Boards cleared out of 1,000 per layout, without shuffles. October 2026.

Every one of these boards could be cleared; we build them that way. So the gaps in the table are all down to choices. Even the best style lost 407 of 1,000 turtles. These players never look more than one move ahead, so treat the rules below as a base to build on.

1. Free tiles, not just pairs

Before you take a pair, look at what comes free when it's gone. A tile at the end of a long row frees its neighbor. A tile on top of a stack frees whatever is under it, and on the turtle that can be up to four tiles. A pair that frees nothing is a pair you could have taken later.

This one habit did the most. On the turtle, the "frees the most" player cleared 529 boards against 399 for random picks. The long rows are where it shows. The turtle's bottom level has rows of 12 that only open from the two ends, so a tile in the middle of one waits until every tile on one side of it is gone.

2. Clearing the top first isn't enough

A common tip is to work on the tallest stacks first. The PySolFC rules page puts it as "remove tiles from the deepest stacks first." There's sense in it, since a tile buried four levels down needs four removals above it. But taken alone, on the turtle it did badly in our test: a player that always took the highest pair it could cleared only 246 turtles, fewer than random picks (399). When it got stuck, it had 46.1 tiles left on average, against 35.5 for random play. On our three smaller layouts it did a little better than random, so it's not useless, just not enough.

Our best guess at why: going for height alone leaves the long bottom rows closed until late, and by then there are too many blocked tiles waiting on too few free ones. Use height to break a tie between pairs that free the same number of tiles, not as the rule.

3. The three-of-four rule, worked through

Most tiles come in fours. Here are all four 5 of dots, partway through a game. Tile A is lying on top of the fourth one, D, so you can't see D in the picture. B and C are free somewhere else on the board.

5D5D5D5DBCA
A sits on D. B and C are free.

You have three free 5s, so there are three pairs you could take: A with B, A with C, or B with C.

The rule: when three of a kind are free and the fourth isn't, one of your pair should be the tile that's in the fourth one's way, by lying on it or by touching its side. Our hint button checks the whole board before it suggests a pair, so it steers you past this one.

4. When all four are free, take both pairs

If all four tiles of a kind are free, taking them can never hurt you. Removing tiles only ever frees more tiles, and nothing else is waiting on them. Take both pairs right away and you've cleaned up the board for free. The same goes for the last two of a kind when both are free.

Adding rules 3 and 4 to rule 1 took the turtle from 529 to 593 boards. On Quilt it went from 743 to 845.

5. Save your shuffles for real dead ends

Our game gives you 3 shuffles. A shuffle mixes up the tiles that are left into a board that can still be cleared, so it's a true rescue. With up to 3 shuffles, our best player cleared 982 of 1,000 turtles and 981 of 1,000 Quilts.

Before you shuffle, try undo. Going back three or four matches and choosing a different pair often gets you through without spending one. And if a hint says the board can no longer be cleared, undo is the way back to a spot where it could.

6. Pick the layout that fits your mood

LayoutTilesFree tiles at the start, on averageMatches you can make at the startCleared by our best style, no shuffles
Quilt722010.9845 of 1,000
Barn942614.2709 of 1,000
Hilltop9282.5643 of 1,000
Turtle1443518.2593 of 1,000

Quilt is the gentle one: lots of open ends and only two levels. Hilltop is a different kind of puzzle. Only about 8 tiles are free at the start, so the first moves are tight, and rule 3 comes up a lot.

Practice with hints

Play a board with the hint button and compare its pair with the one you'd have taken. You get 6 hints a game in our online mahjong solitaire, and each one comes from a solver that plays the board through to the end before it answers. The daily mahjong board is a good place to try a layout you don't usually play.

How we measured

1,000 deals per layout from our own deal builder, October 2026. Each style played every deal from the start to a win or until no pair was free. Ties between equal pairs were broken at random. The shuffle columns allow up to 3 shuffles when stuck. These are computer players following fixed rules, so read the numbers as a comparison between habits, not a forecast of your own results. The script is in our code as scripts/mahjong-sim.test.ts.

Sources

Keep playing