American Mah Jongg · built for the 2026–2027 NMJL card
American Mah Jongg · built for the 2026–2027 NMJL card.
A filing system for the card, built by a librarian.
4.6/5 from the testing group — we publish the lukewarm ones tooEvery spring I dread the new card. This year I sat down with it on a Saturday morning and had the categories sorted by lunch. That has never happened.
By your next game night, you're choosing — not searching.
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Instant download. Nothing ships.
30 days — and you keep the files.
Built for the 2026–2027 NMJL card.
No jargon, no hype, no overnight promises.
Whatever looks promising turns out to be six tiles away. Nobody times it, and everybody knows.
Three passes, and everyone else has decided. You're still holding tiles you're unsure about.
2026. 13579. Consecutive Run. You know the rules — and every April the card arrives and you're overwhelmed again.
One Joker in the wrong spot and the hand is dead — with three women watching you find out.
You tap through practice hands just fine. At a real table, nothing transfers.
This is the one nobody says out loud. You'd rather make a mistake fast than be the reason the game is slow.
The League prints the card. Nobody prints the finding aid that goes with it.
So capable women get a dense sheet of shorthand, no order to read it in, and a table that starts without them.
Then they measure themselves against how long it takes.
You didn't lose a step. You were never given the step.
And you've been paying for that every Tuesday at one o'clock, in front of the three people whose afternoon you most want to be good.
I spent thirty-one years cataloging — making unsorted collections findable. So when the card beat me, I sorted it.
The card is printed by shape. Sensible to print. Not the way you play. It's mine now: 5 shelves.
A cheat sheet tells you what the hands are. It never tells you how to find them — which is why the card still reads as confusing after you've printed one.
The five shelves: All Blocks · Blocks and a Pair · The Ladder · The Fives · All Singles
Two lines printed four inches apart can want the exact same tiles. Sorting by what a hand asks you to collect is the sort nobody prints.
At the table it's one motion: you look at your thirteen tiles, you see which shelf they lean toward, you know what to keep.
One look, not a search.
Hands on the same shelf feed off the same tiles. Commit early, pick the exact hand late.
Some structures are gone by the third pass. The card doesn't warn you. The shelves do.
Every shelf has a hand that survives a bad start. Knowing yours turns dead hands into slow wins.
This is a way of reading the card the League prints — not a copy of it. You'll want the official card on the table beside it.
The situation. A pair of 6s on your rack, and two Jokers. Every instinct says a Joker belongs in that pair. On a whole class of lines it doesn't — the tile doesn't bounce, and the hand is dead where it sits, with three women watching you find out.
Read as a shelf, it isn't a memory test. The Joker Map marks the shelf, not the line: on this shelf a Joker goes anywhere, on this one nowhere, on this one it depends on one thing you check with the card in front of you.
That's the whole difference. One rule per shelf, not a list of exceptions.
Swipe through the real pages
Before
After
Before: You search the card on your turn
After: You check it to confirm
Before: You chase whatever looks closest
After: You commit to a shelf
Before: You pass tiles and hope
After: You pass on a rule
Before: You apologize for the pace
After: You keep the pace
Before: You watch somebody else call Mah Jongg
After: You call it — and the woman who's run the game for twenty years asks what you've been doing
I'd rather show you the arithmetic than tell you it's a great deal.
The Shelf Sheet — the 5 shelvesThe whole card on 5 shelves, printed for the table
The video lessons — 5, over the tilesChoosing a shelf, the Charleston, discards, Jokers
Book One — Learning the TableThe tiles, the wall, the words people say out loud
Book Two — Reading the TableThe Charleston pass by pass, and what discards tell you
Book Three — Playing to WinDefense, Joker strategy, and the end of the wall
That's what each piece would cost if I sold them separately — which I could and don't. It's also the only number on this page you can check line by line.
The Shelf Sheet — the 5 shelves — The whole card grouped by structure instead of by section: what each shelf collects, what it costs you in Jokers and discards, and which one to fall back on when the Charleston goes badly.
The video lessons — 5, over the tiles — Filmed looking down at the tiles. Choosing a shelf, running the Charleston, reading discards, using Jokers. One a week, or all of them on a wet afternoon.
Book One — Learning the Table — The table itself: the tiles, the racks, the order of play, the words people say out loud and what they mean. Written for someone who has been playing a while and was never told the basics properly.
Book Two — Reading the Table — The Charleston pass by pass, what your discards tell the other three, and how to read the racks in front of you. This is the book people come back to.
Book Three — Playing to Win — Defense, Joker strategy, tracking what's gone, and playing when the wall is running out. Keep this one for the months after — it isn't where you start.
The 2027 sheet — rebuilt from the new card — The card changes every spring. When the League ships the 2027 card I take it apart and rebuild the sheet from it, and it lands in the inbox you bought with. Nothing more to pay for it.
PDF pages and video files. Reads on a tablet, prints on a home printer. Nothing to install.
Same table, same card, different Tuesday.
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How it arrives, if you're not especially comfortable with computers
Four steps, and none of them involve installing anything. You pay. An email from me arrives within a minute — check the spam folder if it doesn't. The email has a button for each file: you tap one and it opens on your screen, the way an emailed photo does. To print, tap Print in the corner of the screen; to keep it, do nothing — the email stays in your inbox and the links don't expire. No app, no password, and nothing ships.
Thirty-seven dollars is a hardcover I'd have bought on a Saturday without asking anyone's permission. This one you keep, and the 2027 sheet comes with it.
FROM THE TABLE
7 reviews from the testing group · 4.6 out of 5
Margaret H. Testing group
July 14, 2026
The Sorted Card
Carol B. Testing group
July 16, 2026
The Sorted Card
Jeanine R. Testing group
July 19, 2026
The Sorted Card
Patricia L. Testing group
July 21, 2026
The Sorted Card
Ellen K. Testing group
July 23, 2026
The Sorted Card
Sandra W. Testing group
July 25, 2026
The Sorted Card
Nancy F. Testing group
July 27, 2026
The Sorted Card
Every review here comes from someone who used it. We publish the lukewarm ones too.
Where these come from: seven readers from the testing group, not customers. Two of the seven are lukewarm, and both are printed above, word for word. When customer reviews start coming in they will be marked as customer reviews, and these will stay labelled for what they are.
Thirty-one years a librarian, most of them cataloging — taking material that arrived in no order and making it findable.
I started playing when the calendar got quiet. For a year I was the slowest woman at the Tuesday table, and I stopped enjoying an afternoon I had chosen on purpose.
So I did what I'd have done at work: index cards on the kitchen table, one card per structure instead of one per row. By two in the morning the card had become a map. The woman who's run our game for twenty years asked what I'd been looking at. Then the rest of the table did.
What I'm not: certified by anybody, because nobody certifies this. Connected to the League in any way, because I'm not. A person who quotes percentages at you.
What I am: still at that table, Tuesday afternoons at the community center, in the same chair.
Read it, watch the lessons, take the sheet to a game night. If it doesn't do what I said, write to tuesdaymahj.info@gmail.com within thirty days and I'll refund you — and you keep the files.
You bought it on my word. Thirty days is how you check my word.
— Nell
Instant download · One payment, no subscription
A woman in my club stopped getting invited last spring. Nobody announced anything. The seat went to whoever kept the group's pace. The invitations got vague. By September the Tuesday game was full, and she never found out why.
It was fixable in an afternoon, which is the part that makes me angry. Your Tuesdays are worth more than a season of guessing. So is your patience with yourself.
One payment. The 2027 sheet included. Thirty days to change your mind, and the files stay yours either way. One price, the same for everyone who lands on this page.
One afternoon of sorting, and Tuesday stops being a test.
Secure Shopify checkout · 30-day money-back guarantee
How it arrives, if you're not especially comfortable with computers
Four steps, and none of them involve installing anything. You pay. An email from me arrives within a minute — check the spam folder if it doesn't. The email has a button for each file: you tap one and it opens on your screen, the way an emailed photo does. To print, tap Print in the corner of the screen; to keep it, do nothing — the email stays in your inbox and the links don't expire. No app, no password, and nothing ships.
No. Four steps, and none of them involve installing anything.
No app, no account, no password. If any of that misbehaves, write to tuesdaymahj.info@gmail.com.
The good free material is genuinely good. If you've been watching Southern Sparrow or Michele Frizzell, you'll move through this faster, not slower — I'd rather you had.
Two things a video can't do. Half of what comes up when you search is a different game, and you have to already know enough to filter it. And a video makes sense while you're watching it; it doesn't hand you something you can hold on to at one o'clock with three women waiting.
That's what The Sorted Card is: the same material, sorted onto 5 shelves, and on the table with you.
Yes. The Shelf Sheet is built to be printed on a home printer, one side, large type, and set next to your rack.
Print as many copies as you want for yourself — that's what it's for. What I'd ask you not to do is run off a stack for the whole club: the point is that each of you reads her own card. If you teach a group, write to me and we'll work something out.
Write to tuesdaymahj.info@gmail.com and I'll send it to you by hand, usually the same day.
What normally happens: the link is on the confirmation page the second you pay, and a copy lands in your email within a minute. If it isn't there, check the spam folder first — that's where it is about nine times out of ten.
It's for you.
Knowing the rules and reading the card are two different skills, and only the first one gets taught. The women at my tables have played three, five, eleven years and never learned to read the card in shelves, because nobody teaches it.
If you already read it in structures and you're calling Mah Jongg regularly, skip this — I've said so on the page above.
No, and it isn't a copy of one. Tuesday Mahj is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Mah Jongg League.
The Sorted Card teaches you how the League's card is built — the 5 shelves the hands sort into, which hands sit on the same shelf, and what each shelf does in the Charleston. You'll want the official card on the table beside it, bought from the League.
Yes, and the rebuilt sheet is included. The shelves are the point, and shelves survive the annual reshuffle. When the League releases the 2027 card, I take it apart and send you the rebuilt sheet — nothing more to pay for it.
One thing I'll say plainly so it isn't a surprise in April: the week the new card lands I also run a live afternoon where I go through it section by section. That's separate and it's optional. Everyone who owns The Sorted Card hears about it first.
No — and the women who get the most out of it are often the ones playing least, because the reason they're playing less is usually the card.
Once a week and you'll notice inside two sessions. Once a month and it takes a few more, which is exactly what the practice pack at checkout is for.
Nobody certifies this. There's no board, no exam, and no organization that grants a credential for teaching American Mah Jongg — so anyone showing you a certified badge made it themselves, and you should notice that.
I'm Eleanor. Thirty-one years a librarian, most of them cataloging. I play Tuesday afternoons at the community center, I was the slowest woman at that table for a year, and I built this by sorting the card into shelves the way I'd have sorted a collection. The method is the credential, not me.
Ask them — but you don't have to wait for an answer.
Buy it, read it this week, and bring the sheet on Tuesday: the table will tell you faster than any answer I could give you here. If the group talks you out of it, the thirty days are still running and you keep the files either way.
Waiting a week costs you a game night and doesn't buy you anything the guarantee doesn't already give you.
That's the whole choice. You can keep doing it the way it's always been done, which is how all of us ended up here. Or you can spend one afternoon with a card somebody finally sorted.
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Tuesday Mahj is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Mah Jongg League. "National Mah Jongg League" and the official card are the property of their owner. The Sorted Card teaches how the card is structured; it does not reproduce the card. You'll need the League's official card to play — buy it from the League. It costs about the same as lunch and it's the one thing here you shouldn't cut corners on.
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