Glimpsing the phoenix

08 Aug, 2026

The riichi mahjong equivalent to a hole in one is the elusive beast known as the tenhou, usually translated as "blessing from heaven". It is usually written 天和 but sometimes 天鳳, "heavenly phoenix"¹. It occurs when you are randomly dealt a winning hand if you are the dealer for that round. There is no need for any play to occur, as you can declare a win immediately.

Comparing it to a hole in one undersells how vanishingly unlikely this is to happen. An oft-cited number for the chance of making a hole in one is one in 12,500 for an average golfer, or one in 2,500 for a professional. Getting a valid mahjong hand on the first deal only happens around once in every 300,000 hands, and only one of four players is the dealer at any time. A professional player could spend their entire career never seeing one.

If you are one of the three players who are not the dealer, it counts as a chihou, or earthly blessing.

There are ways of getting higher scores, but these are the hands that you remember on your deathbed, if you ever see one.

I've only ever once come close to getting a chihou. I was playing sanma online, or three-player mahjong. No sane person should ever do this, but the flesh was weak.

I don't know what the odds are exactly, but because of the way the rules differ from the normal version, outlandish hands and combinations are much more common.

I was the third player in the order, and I immediately spotted that I already had a double riichi -- a hand that is one tile away from completion after discarding the first tile.

This is pretty rare in itself, and a very strong opening especially in sanma, so I was feeling good about my chances, but my pulse quickened when I drew the first tile and actually found myself looking at a complete hand.

Except.

One of riichi's many rules is that after someone has made a call on someone else's discarded tile a new turn starts, and certain things therefore no longer apply, e.g. you can no longer abort the hand if you have too many undesirable tiles, you don't get ippatsu, and crucially, tenhou and chihou no longer count at all.

No one had called any tiles yet, but... sanma has a little extra gameplay mechanism involving the North wind. The North seat remains unoccupied, which frees up the North wind tiles to be used as extra dora bonus tiles. To claim this bonus, you put the tile aside and draw another one.

This counts as a call. And the player to my left had just done this.

My hand had literally nothing else going for it, so instead of being handed a magnificent victory, only tsumo applied, and I scored a comically insulting 800 points, which may well be my lowest score ever.

Don't play sanma, kids. It's not worth it.