Learn riichi mahjong to a winning record in six months
Six months of play — about four hours a week of online games plus one free strategy book — takes a beginner from not knowing the tiles to holding a positive record in ranked online play. Roughly 100 hours. This path teaches riichi, the Japanese variant, because it has the best free tools and the deepest strategy. You will not be a pro. You will understand why you won or lost each hand.
6 months · ~100 hours · reach the Silver room on Mahjong Soul or play confidently at a club
1.Mahjong Soul
A free online client with an English interface, a tutorial that teaches the rules, and automatic scoring — which removes the most intimidating part of the game for beginners. Do the tutorial, then play bot matches until you can build a hand of four sets and a pair without thinking. Keep a yaku list open beside you: in riichi, you can't win without at least one scoring pattern, and forgetting that is the first wall every beginner hits. Then move to the Bronze ranked room, where losses cost you nothing.
Free (cosmetic purchases optional)
Mahjong Soul →2.Riichi Book 1 — Daina Chiba
The most-recommended English strategy book, written by a long-time competitive player for European club players and released free under a Creative Commons license. It covers tile efficiency (which tile to discard to win fastest), when to call riichi, when to push and when to fold, and defense against an opponent's riichi. Read one chapter a week and apply exactly one idea in your next ten games. Defense alone will lift your results more than anything else.
Free PDF
Riichi Books →3.Ranked games + a local club
Play ranked on Mahjong Soul, and after each session review your worst hand: the moment you dealt into someone's win is almost always the moment you should have folded. Then find a riichi club — many cities now have one, often meeting at board-game cafés — and play on physical tiles, where you'll have to count your own score. Playing with experienced people at a table teaches etiquette, scoring and reading discards faster than any client.
Free online; club nights typically ~$0–10
Riichi rules reference →If this doesn't fit you
If your friends play American mah jongg — the version with jokers, the Charleston and a printed card — learn that instead; the games share tiles but not much else. Buy the current year's card from the National Mah Jongg League ($14, revised every spring), take a beginner class at a local library, community center or mahjong club, and play weekly with the same table. Expect the first few sessions to be slow; the card takes about a month to read fluently.
Why this path
Most people learn mahjong from a relative and never learn strategy — they play the hand they're dealt and blame luck. Riichi rewards study more than any other variant, and it's the only one with a free online client, a free strategy book and a large English-speaking community. Learning online first removes the scoring burden; the book turns habit into reasoning; the club makes it social. Expect to lose a lot early. Luck dominates any single game, and only after a few hundred hands does skill show.