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Where do my exposed tiles go, and do they have to be in card order?

An exposure goes face up on top of your rack, and it stays there for the rest of the hand. It does not have to follow the order of the line on the card. Lay your sets in any order you like, with a little space between them as a courtesy.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-10-18.

On top of the rack, face up

When you call a discard, the called tile never goes into your hand. It goes on top of the rack, and the tiles from your hand that complete the set go up beside it. The finished pung, kong, quint or sextet sits there face up where every player can see it, and there it stays until the hand is over.

You do not announce what you made. Nobody says pung or kong. The tiles on the rack say it for you, which is the whole reason they are face up.

No card order required

The card prints each line in a set order, but the rules do not ask your exposures to follow it. If your line runs from Flowers to Dragons and your first call is for the Dragons, the Dragons go up first. Your next exposure may sit to the left or the right of them. Nothing is out of place.

This cuts both ways. Do not read another player's hand from the order of their exposures, because they owe you no order at all. And feel free to place your own as it suits you. A table that tries to read your rack from left to right deserves to guess wrong.

A little space, and Jokers that are easy to see

Leave a small gap between one exposure and the next. It is not a rule, it is a courtesy, and it lets the table see at a glance where one set ends and another begins.

Keep any Joker in an exposure plain to see as well. A Joker on your rack can be redeemed by any player holding the natural tile it stands for, on their own turn. That player hands you the natural and you make the swap yourself. Nobody reaches across to your rack, and nobody should have to squint to know what your Joker is standing in for.

Your hidden tiles are the opposite

The space belongs to your exposures only. The tiles still in your hand, on the ledge of the rack, should sit shoulder to shoulder with no gaps. A gap there shows the table how your hand is grouped, and that is information nobody else is owed. Spaced on top, together below.

When you declare Mahjong

At Mahjong the whole hand goes up on top of the rack and every player checks it against the card. Arranging it in the order of the line is the kind thing to do, since it makes the check quick and leaves nothing to argue over. Until that moment, your exposures may sit in whatever order the hand happened to build them.

New to the words? Expose · Rack · Exposed · Joker exchange