Big Four Winds and Small Four Winds

by Alan KWAN Shiu Ho
6 Nov 2001


In most modern versions of mahjong, "Big Four Winds" is defined
as a hand containing four wind pung, while "Small Four Winds" is
defined as a hand containing three wind pung and one wind pair.
But according to (deceased) Mr. Gaan Ji-Cing, a hand with three
wind pung and one wind pair in which the pung contain both the
seat wind and the prevailing wind should also be considered a
"Big Four Winds" hand.  This article takes a look at the
historical background behind this issue.

According to Mr. Asami's webpage, which has in turn quoted from
an official mahjong body paper, in the earliest, original Chinese
Classical rules, there were no seperate definitions of "Big" and
"Small" versions for the Winds and Dragons patterns.  For the
dragons, only Big Three Dragons (three dragon pung, same as
today) was recognized; Small Three Dragons was not recognized.
About the winds, one fact which many players today are not aware
of is that, the prevailing wind (round wind) was not recognized
in the original, earliest conception of mahjong; it was a much
later addition.  The original definition of the "Four Winds" hand
required that the hand contains either four wind pung or three
wind pung plus a wind pair, and in the latter case, the player's
seat wind must be a pung.

In the earliest versions of mahjong, very few patterns were
recognized: you didn't get a faan for a totally concealed hand or
an all simples hand, and not even for a no-point hand.  About the
only important patterns, besides the faan-honors, were Mixed
One-Suit and Pure One-Suit, which were worth one faan and three
faan respectively.  In that conception, the faan-honors were
considered special and valuable tiles for their basic faan-value
itself, which was a big thing when there were few other patterns
of comparable value.  The dragons were the most precious and
valuable tiles in the set, and any player was awarded a faan for
collecting a pung of one.  (Remember that in that conception, one
faan was a very valuable thing, and one rarely saw hands of 5 or
more faan as we do today.)  Thus collecting all three dragon pung
was thought of as the highest achievement, and the hand was
awarded the limit value.  In the same way, a player's seat wind
was considered special and valuable to him (remember that there
was no prevailing wind to divert the attention), so a "four
winds" hand must contain the seat wind pung, or the hand would be
seen as flawed and thus not deserving of special recognition.

While this definition of "Four Winds" was natural and consistent
in the early conception, I do not think that it is necessarily
desirable to adhere strictly to the same definition for "Big Four
Winds" in contemporary versions, where most of the concepts and
emphases in the original conception have been obscured or
abandoned, including the very emphasis on faan-honors on which
that definition was based.  In the modern games, when we have
"Big" and "Small" definitions for Three Dragons as well as Four
Winds, when Mixed One-Suit is worth three faan while a seat wind
pung is worth only one faan, when we could get the same one faan
with a no-point hand or even merely by self-drawing, and so on,
the common modern definition would seem more in place and more
consistent with the rest of the system.

Also, I feel an urge to question the involvement of the
prevailing wind in Mr. Gaan's definition.  I may well be biased,
being an opponent of the prevailing wind: while its adoption
could have been justifiable in the Classical game, where there
was felt to be a shortage of patterns, there is no such shortage
in the modern games, and the prevailing wind seems very much a
superfluous inclusion.  In any case, that definition is clearly
an unfair one, since it favors one player (the one with the
double wind) over the others.  I think if one really wants to
stick to the original definition (for some reason, despite having
trashed most or all of the concepts and emphases in the original
game ...), it would be better to adopt the first original one,
which requires a pung of the seat wind but not the prevailing
wind.

In my set of "Zung Jung" rules, the common modern definition is
adopted.  This is because Zung Jung is designed to be a
pattern-centered system which rewards primarily the patterns of
consistency in one's hand.  The faan-honors retain their
significance in the form of the appreciable value awarded for the
faan-honor pung themselves, but as the "Three/Four Wind" patterns
are based on the multitude of wind sets in the hand, the seat
wind (or the prevailing wind) does not enter into the definitions
of those patterns.


Reference:
Mr. Asami's webpage
http://www.kctv.ne.jp/~asamiryo/tre2.html