The Wall and the Deal
Where tiles come from, and what happens when they run out
Every tile you draw comes from the WALL.
At the start of a hand all 144 tiles are shuffled and stacked. Each player is dealt 13. What's left is the wall, and it is drawn from, one tile at a time, for the rest of the hand.
THE WALL IS FINITE
This is the part new players miss. The wall is not endless. Every draw spends it, and a hand has a hard time limit measured in tiles.
You are not just racing the other players. You are racing the wall.
THE DEAD WALL
A portion at the end is set aside and never drawn in the normal way.
It exists to pay out replacements — when you declare a kong, or reveal a flower or season, you take a replacement tile from there instead.
That is why a kong doesn't cost you a turn. However the fourth tile arrived — drawn, claimed from a discard, or added to a pung you already had — committing it to a kong earns you a replacement draw from the dead wall, so you still get to discard.
WHEN THE WALL RUNS OUT
If the last live tile is drawn and nobody has won, the hand is a DRAW.
Nobody wins it.
But a draw is not nothing. In this game there is a penalty at the end:
Every player NOT in tenpai pays 1500, split among the players
who are.
Tenpai means you are one tile away from winning. Noten means you are not.
If everyone is tenpai, or nobody is, nothing changes hands.
The practical lesson: as the wall gets low, a hand that cannot win is worth steering toward tenpai anyway. Being one tile short pays. Being three tiles short costs.