Bloody Battle

Bloody Battle (xue zhan dao di, 'fight to the bitter end') is the signature continuation rule of Sichuan mahjong. In most mahjong variants a hand ends the moment one player declares a win. Under bloody-battle rules the hand does not stop there: the winner collects their score and steps out, while the remaining three players keep playing for the next win, then the last two continue until three of the four players have won or the wall is exhausted. Only one player — the loser — is left without a win.

This structure changes scoring and strategy dramatically. Because multiple players can win from the same wall, each win is scored separately as it happens, and the player who deals into a win generally pays the winner. The pressure to avoid being the final non-winner is intense, so defensive discarding late in the hand becomes critical; a player who has already won can sometimes discard more freely since they are out of danger. Bloody-battle is almost always paired with the missing-suit (ding que) declaration and the absence of honor tiles, which together speed the game up.

Scoring multipliers such as gang (kong) bonuses, self-draw, and full-flush stack across the several wins in a single hand, so a single deal can swing a large number of points. For example, if one player wins early with a modest hand and a later player self-draws a full flush, both are paid out within the same hand. A common misunderstanding is thinking the round ends at the first win as in Hong Kong or Riichi play; in Sichuan bloody-battle, the first win is merely the opening of a longer contest that runs until almost everyone has scored.