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When someone calls a discard, do the players in between lose their turn?

Yes. A call takes the turn. The caller exposes the set, discards, and play goes on from the seat to the caller's right, so anyone sitting between the discarder and the caller is skipped and does not get that turn back.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-11-05.

The call jumps the line

Play in American Mahjong moves to the right, one seat at a time. A call breaks that rhythm on purpose. The moment a player calls the discard for a pung, a kong, a quint or a sextet, or for Mahjong, the turn belongs to them, wherever they happen to sit.

The caller does not draw from the wall. The called tile is their tile for the turn. They place it on top of the rack with the matching tiles from their hand, expose the set, and then discard. Play then continues to the caller's right, exactly as if the caller had drawn in the ordinary way.

Who is skipped depends on where the caller sits

If the player to the discarder's right calls, nobody is skipped at all. That player was next anyway, and the call simply replaces their draw.

If the player across calls, the player to the discarder's right loses the turn. If the player to the discarder's left calls, two players are passed over, and the next turn after the caller's discard falls to the discarder again. That surprises people the first time it happens. It is not a mistake, and nobody has been robbed. The order around the table never changes; the call only moves the starting point.

A lost turn is never made up

There is no catching up. A skipped player does not draw an extra tile later, and the skipped turn is not owed to anyone. Their hand simply waits a little longer, the same thirteen tiles still on the rack.

This is one reason calls matter so much. Every call is a turn the caller gains and a turn someone else gives up. When a table calls freely, the players in the gaps see fewer wall tiles, and their hands move more slowly.

When two players want the same tile

If two players call the same discard, the call for Mahjong beats any call for an exposure. Between two calls of the same kind, the player next in turn after the discarder wins it. Either way the winner of the tile takes the turn, and the skipped seats are counted from the discarder to that player.

A caller is committed once the called tile is racked or tiles have been exposed from the hand. Until then a call can still be withdrawn, the tile goes back to the discards, and the turn returns to the player who would have had it.

New to the words? Call · Discard · Expose · Pung