Snap your tiles
Still learning to read a rack? Take a picture of your tiles and see which hands on your card you're closest to.
The American Mahjong training app
It's mahjong
night.
A training table for the days between. A guiding hand while you learn the game. And a community of players to grow with, one hand at a time.
The beta is open now. App Store launch September 1. How the beta works
Mahjong night
Tuesday at 8.
The one on the calendar in pen.
(or the recurring slot on the Skylight.)
The training table
Get good between games.
Deal yourself a hand. Walk a full Charleston. Get tips and tricks. Play it out to the end. Practice the cards until they read fast at the real table.
- Deal Me In. Solo hands with feedback on what to keep.
- Charleston tour. Walk pass-and-keep, round by round, with the why.
- Tips and tricks. Small reads at the moments you'd otherwise miss them.
- Play it out. Take the hand to the end against simulated opponents.
What you practice here shows up at the table. The more you play, the faster you read your hand and the more confidence you bring to game night.
At the Table
For the friend who wants to play but isn't sure they're ready.
Most groups have one: the friend who almost said no because she didn't think she knew enough. At the Table is for her first game or two. It walks her through what to expect in a live game, then holds her hand through one: what to keep, what to pass, what just happened. Once she's found her feet, the phone goes back in the bag and the tiles take over.
Charleston advice
Pass-and-keep for each round, with one sentence on why. For your first Charlestons, while the rhythm is still new.
Hand match
Your top hands ranked by how close you are, with the tiles you'd still need. Honest about the long shots.
Crak the Hand
A puzzle a day.
Crack the hidden hand.
Each day, a new puzzle. The tiles the winning player threw away on the journey to mahjong show up one batch at a time. You pick the tiles you think made it to the final hand. Reveal one match per guess. No peeking at the card. That's the game.
- Learn the card without studying. Every puzzle pulls from the year's real hands. Crack a month of them and the patterns start to feel familiar.
- Tile memory and pattern recognition, both. You bring what you remember; the puzzle tells you what you missed. Day after day, your card eye sharpens.
- Five minutes, then it's done. Solve it with your coffee, save it for the pickup line, build the streak.
Crak Dragon
A fast-paced mahj sprint.
Build two hands.
A 5-minute double mahj sprint. The timer counts down, the tiles come and go, you race to build up to two mahjong hands. Harder hands and earlier calls score more. The leader holds The Crak Dragon title, until a new champion arrives.
- Press play, five minutes. One match, start to finish. A fresh tile appears and an old one disappears from the six-tile wall every second. You have six seconds to grab one before it falls off the edge.
- Two racks. Fourteen slots each. Test your mahjong training against the clock: pattern recognition, hand-shaping, tile memory.
- Friends, teams, seasons. Climb your friend leaderboard or take on the global field. Quarterly seasons with weekly featured challenges. Teams of two to four for the people who always have your back.
- Tournaments Coming soon. Bracket play where every team gets the same tiles, so it comes down to skill. Win your bracket and your crew takes the crown.
The beta
You have a seat
at the table.
Crak Dot Bam is free until the App Store launch on September 1. Until then it’s a beta, the early version, polished with your help. Tap the button below and we’ll walk you through joining, one step at a time.
- What you’ll need. An iPhone or iPad, and about two minutes. The beta arrives through TestFlight, a free app from Apple; you don’t need it beforehand.
- What happens when you tap. One button, straight to the beta. If you don’t have TestFlight yet, Apple hands it to you on the way and brings you back.
- New versions arrive through TestFlight. Check it for updates.
Friends. Laughs. Mahjongs called.
Your propagation bench
A bench full of plants.
Each one grows as you play.
The app keeps quiet track of how you play. A plant grows on your bench for each thing you do: your daily streak, your accuracy, the hours you've put in, the hands you've finished, the friends you've brought along.
✿
Succulent · daily streak
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Orchid · accuracy
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Bonsai · hours played
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Zinnia · hands finished
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Hydrangea · friends shared with
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Dandelion · shares sent
Meet the friendship hydrangea.
Some plants grow from your own hours at the table. The hydrangea grows from your people. Bring a friend to the game and a new bud appears. When she stays and makes it her night too, the bud opens into full bloom. It's the plant that remembers mahjong was always meant for playing with friends.
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Share a link or invite a friend.
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She signs up. A bud appears.
✿
She stays. The bud blooms.
Your tablescape
Make it your own.
Live in it.
The app you open every day deserves to feel like a place. Custom backgrounds and themes today, with tile backs and rack designs on the way. Set the table the way you'd set it for guests, make it your own, and live in it.
The charity vote
Five percent of proceeds donated, voted by the players.
Every quarter, the players decide where the donation goes. We pick the shortlist, you pick the cause, and the check comes from us.
Pricing
One plan. The whole app.
One subscription, the whole app. Pricing starts at launch on September 1, and every plan begins with a 7-day free trial. Until then, the whole app is free in the open beta.
Yearly
$42 /year
Save 30% vs monthly
The full app, all year.
- Crak Dragon: 5-minute mahjong matches, anytime
- Crak the Hand: a daily puzzle that teaches the card
- The training table: every hand on every card
- At the Table: first-game help and hand match
- Friends, teams, leaderboards, and seasons
- Custom backgrounds and themes
- The propagation bench, growing as you play
- 7-day free trial
Monthly
$5 /month
Cancel anytime
Pay as you go.
- Everything in Yearly
- Charged monthly
- Cancel any month
- Switch to yearly anytime
- 7-day free trial
Cards
Built for the card you play.
Tell us which card you're playing, the National Mah Jongg League card or the American Mahjong Society card, and every hand match, Charleston tip, and practice game lines up with it. You play with your own official card; the app doesn't include it.
Need a card?
The cards belong to their publishers, the National Mah Jongg League and the American Mahjong Society. They publish and sell their cards each year, so the cards aren't part of the app and you'll need your own to play. We're an independent training companion, not affiliated with or endorsed by either.
A history of the game
Mahjong began in 19th-century China, traced most often to the Qing Dynasty. Played with carved tiles in three suits (cracks, dots, and bams), it spread through trading ports and arrived in American homes by the 1920s. American players adapted the rules, added the joker and the Charleston, and made the game something of its own.
Jewish-American women were central to what came next. They formed clubs, standardized the play, and in 1937 founded the National Mah Jongg League, which has published the annual card every year since. That tradition has survived wars, depressions, and a long quiet stretch before the game's current revival, and we honor it every time the game gets played.
We built Crak Dot Bam to bring more friends to the table, and give confidence to every player who takes a seat.
FAQ
A few answers.
I've never played American Mahjong. Will this actually teach me?
Yes. That's the whole point. Learn-to-play lessons cover the rules, the training table gives you reps without an audience, and At the Table walks you through your first real game. You don't need to know a single rule to start.
Will it help me read this year's NMJL card faster?
The training table lets you drill against the current card until the patterns come fast. Crak the Hand, the daily puzzle, pulls from this year's real hands, so the card starts to feel familiar without ever sitting down to study. And Crak Dragon puts you under a clock, where reading fast becomes reflex. Use all three and you'll miss fewer hands at the real table.
I already know NMJL well. What's in this for me?
Reps and games, mostly. The training table for the year's card, Crak the Hand to keep your card eye sharp, and Crak Dragon when you want to play under a clock, the kind of pressure that makes a hand at the real table feel calm and slow afterward. And At the Table, for the friend you're bringing in. Use what helps. Skip the rest.
What's the beta, and how do I get in?
The beta is open now, and anyone can join. Until launch on September 1, the app lives in TestFlight, Apple's free app for trying new apps before they hit the store. Tap any join button on this page and follow it the whole way through — Apple hands you TestFlight along the way if you need it, then brings you back. You'll be playing in about two minutes. The beta is free, and new versions arrive on their own while it runs.
Can I try it before paying?
Yes, two ways. The beta is open now: join and play free until launch. After September 1, every subscription starts with a 7-day free trial: the whole app, no card up front. After that it's $5/month or $42/year.
Do you offer discounts?
Sometimes. We're a small team getting this off the ground, so we keep it simple: no deep discounts, but we look after the people who show up early. Beta players and hosts get offer codes to share now and then, redeemed right at checkout.
What's the propagation bench?
A small collection of plants that live in the app, each quietly tracking a different part of how you play: your streak, your accuracy, your hours, your wins, the friends you bring along. You tend them with your daily practice, and they grow as you do, a little garden that fills in over the season.
Can I cancel?
Cancel whenever you like. It stops the next renewal, and you keep the full app until the time you've paid for runs out, the rest of the month on monthly, the rest of the year on yearly. We don't do mid-term refunds, so if you know you're done, cancel before it renews.
Are there ads?
No.
