Faan

Faan is the scoring unit of Hong Kong (Cantonese) mahjong, the fast, widely played style across southern China and the diaspora. A winning hand is assigned a faan count based on the patterns it contains, and crucially the payout grows exponentially with faan rather than linearly, so each additional faan roughly doubles the points at stake until a table cap is reached.

Patterns and their faan values are agreed at the table but follow common conventions. A basic win such as all sequences with a flush element might be 1 to 3 faan, a half flush (one suit plus honors) is typically 3 faan, a full flush is 5 to 7 faan, and the all-honors or great patterns reach the table limit. Many house rules also set a minimum faan to win, commonly 3 faan, meaning a structurally complete but pattern-poor hand cannot be declared.

The exponential payout, often described as a 2^faan curve, gives Hong Kong scoring its swingy character. A jump from 4 to 5 faan can sharply increase the loss for the discarder or the whole table on a self-draw. To keep this in check, tables set a limit (such as 10 or 13 faan) beyond which extra patterns no longer raise the payout, capping the worst-case loss on any single hand.

Faan differs from MCR fan, which uses large fixed values and a 8-point minimum, and from Riichi han, which pairs with fu. For example, a hand that is a clean one-suit hand of characters with a dragon triplet might be counted as full flush plus dragon for several faan, landing near or at the table limit and producing one of the larger payouts of a session under the doubling scale.