American MahJong Practice 4+

I’ve been playing this wonderful game daily—- usually 10-12 games during the early quarantine period, spread throughout the day and night. Now I’ve still found it challenging and fun with the 2021 card. I’ve been teaching friends to play and the “pattern” section of the screen really helps all of us zero in in the best hand to aim for! I play two other online Mahjong games and yours is by far the BEST! One little problem: no one seems to be able to download or install it on a computer— only on an iPad. Why is that?

Thank you for the great review!

Download an Android emulator from bluestacks.com to play on PCs :). Android American Mahjong Practice has Bots for joker exchange now.

New Macs with the apple M1 chip will run iOS Apps.

And Chrome books will run Android American Mahjong Practice directly.

(Updated review) From my original review, "When you declare a Mah Jong, you can't really review the other players' hands, you only see what they racked. Also, the purported hands you can go for are not limited by the tiles already discarded. The latter is a nit, as you can see for yourself which tiles were discarded but it is still misleading. "

The developer's response to the former of these last two points were that in real life you wouldn't be able to see the player's tiles and see their strategy. Well, this isn't real life, and the name of this app contains "Practice" which implies to me that you should be able to analyze what real players *might* be thinking, as we do in practice games when players are brand new. If you are truly trying to teach someone you are not worried about "exposing your strategy". If the game didn't want to give this level of help, then it should also not tell players what hands are available to them or give them any help at all. Let them think for themselves! Actually, this would be a great option in any case-- a no-help option that requires them to have their own card and figure things out for themselves as in a real game.

In my initial review I was totally wrong about picking up a pair with a joker-- I am a beginner and was thinking of picking up a pair for Mah Jong with the tile in the pair itself. My rating remains the same.

We’ve been improving our app for 7 years and it’s still not perfect :). Good point about exposing the bot hands as a practice app. Contact me at support@eightbam for detail on why we made this choice.

To hide the matching hands, leave the bots tab open. There are players that prefer to use their card.

And thanks for updating your review on joker usage :)

-Ray

I am new to Mahjong and have found this app to be a very beneficial way to learn the hands and start to see patterns faster. I really like being able to see the potential hands in "real" time and also being able to turn that feature off when I am ready to challenge myself. The controls are hyper sensitive, though, so if I happen to have a finger resting on my iPad in just the wrong spot, tiles will be discarded without me even noticing sometimes. Must. Keep. Fingers. Away. The only real issue I wish would be corrected is that the Concealed Hands in the Tiles list should be hidden once a partial hand is exposed. I have Mahjonged numerous times only to realize later that, as in the real game, it should not have counted. As a newbie, I often miss this and feel I would learn better if this responded appropriately. Additionally, one interface feature that would be helpful is the ability to switch where the discard pile is. It would be more comfortable for many of us to play left-handed, but as it is playing that way means the left arm has to reach over and it covers the board. An otherwise terrific app--thank you!
**Edit: To be clear, if I try to Mahj on a hand that is not on the card, the app shows me that it is not allowed. Similarly, it would be helpful if the app would disallow a Concealed hand with an already partial exposure.

- Disable “Tap Tiles to Discard” and use Drag and Drop to avoid accidentally tapping tiles.

- Concealed hands are now hidden after the first exposure.

- Left Handed play is now available in release 7.11!

Thanks for all of your feedback : )