I have Jokers. Which hand should I go for?
Choose the line with the fewest groups a Joker cannot fill. A Joker sits only in a pung, kong, quint or sextet, so every single, every pair, and every place in NEWS, a year or a run of different numbers must be found as the real tile. In a hand built of pungs and kongs, every Joker you hold or trade for closes a gap. In a hand full of pairs, they have nowhere to go.
Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-11-03.
Count the groups a Joker cannot enter
A Joker may stand in a group of three or more identical tiles and nowhere else. It never fills a single, never makes half of a pair, and never takes a place in NEWS, a year or a run of different numbers. So before you choose between two lines, count those groups in each. That number is how many tiles you must find as themselves, however many Jokers come your way.
A line with none of them is the most forgiving hand on the card. Every gap can be closed by a draw, a call or a Joker, and the Jokers already on your rack count as tiles found. A line with a single pair is nearly as kind: find that pair for real and the rest is open territory. At the far end sits the Singles and Pairs section, which takes no Joker anywhere.
Why the pair hand looks closer than it is
The trap is counting tiles. A pair sits complete on the rack and feels finished, so a line with several pairs can look like the nearest hand. Count again with your Jokers in mind. Suppose you hold three of them. In a line of pungs and kongs, those are three tiles you no longer need to find. In a line made mostly of pairs, they count for very little, and the tiles you still need must each arrive as the real thing.
Done honestly, the count often reverses itself. The hand that looked two tiles further away is the one you are truly closest to.
A pung forgives a missed tile, a pair does not
Big groups also forgive bad timing. If the tile you wanted for a pung goes past before you were ready to call it, a Joker drawn later, or traded out of an exposure, can still take its place. Miss the second tile of a pair and only that exact tile will ever do. You may not even call a discard for it unless it is the tile that wins the hand.
So a pung has three ways in: the wall, a call and a Joker. A pair, short of your winning tile, has one: the wall. More ways in means more of the game working for you, and fewer turns spent hoping.
When to let the count lose
Jokers are a reason, not an order. If your rack already holds most of a pair heavy line and only a Joker or two, keep building it. A hand that allows Jokers and wins with none is jokerless and its value doubles, except in Singles and Pairs, whose printed values already include it.
And if the Charleston leaves you with no Jokers at all, the count matters less now and more later. Jokers keep arriving from the wall and through exchanges. Every time one comes to you, look at your lines again and ask which of them it can actually finish.
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