Fan

Fan is the scoring unit of Chinese Official mahjong, the international competition standard codified as MCR (Mahjong Competition Rules). Unlike Riichi's han-plus-fu system, each MCR fan pattern carries a fixed point value drawn from a published list of 81 patterns, ranging from 1 point for minor patterns up to 88 points for the grandest hands like Big Four Winds or Thirteen Orphans.

A winning MCR hand is scored by adding together the values of every applicable fan pattern it contains, with detailed rules about which patterns can be combined and which are implied by others and therefore not double-counted. There is also a minimum threshold: a hand must total at least 8 points from genuine fan patterns to be a legal win, which forces players to build toward real combinations rather than scrappy quick hands. Flowers and the winning-tile bonuses count toward the total but do not satisfy the 8-point minimum on their own.

The fixed-value approach makes MCR scoring deterministic and pattern-focused. Examples of common fan values include All Chows (Ping He) at 2 points, All Pungs at 6, Half Flush at 6, Full Flush at 24, and Seven Pairs at 24. Because values are flat rather than exponential, the gap between a modest hand and a large one is wide but bounded, rewarding players who can layer several compatible patterns into one hand.

Fan in MCR should not be confused with Hong Kong faan, which uses small numbers and exponential 2^faan payouts, nor with Riichi han. Sichuan-style scoring also uses fan-like multipliers but with its own bloodbattle rules. For instance, an MCR hand that is a full flush of bamboo with all pungs and a concealed structure could stack Full Flush (24), All Pungs (6), and several smaller patterns to comfortably exceed the 8-point minimum and score a large fixed total.