Nine Gates

Nine Gates (Chuuren Poutou in Japanese Riichi, the 'Nine Gates' or 'Nine Lanterns') is widely regarded as the most beautiful hand in mahjong. In its pure form it is a concealed hand in a single suit holding the exact shape 1-1-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-9-9, plus any one additional tile of that same suit to complete the win. The triple terminals at each end with a full 2-through-8 run in the middle gives the hand its lantern-like symmetry.

It is a yakuman in Riichi and a limit hand in Hong Kong and Chinese rules. The defining property of the pure nine-gates waiting shape (the 1112345678999 thirteen-tile hand, fully concealed) is that it is a nine-sided wait: any tile of that suit, 1 through 9, completes a valid winning hand. When a player holds this exact concealed shape and wins, many rulesets score it as 'pure' nine gates and treat it as a double yakuman, distinguishing it from the impure version where the hand reaches the same final tiles but was not in the perfect 1112345678999 wait.

A concrete pure example in dots: 1p1p1p 2p3p4p5p6p7p8p 9p9p9p waiting, then winning on, say, 5p. The hand must be entirely concealed — calling any meld destroys it — and it can only exist in one suit with no honors, so it is automatically a full flush as well, though the yakuman value supersedes lesser scoring. A common confusion is thinking any single-suit hand qualifies; nine gates demands the specific terminal-heavy 111...999 framework, not merely a flush. Because it requires drawing nearly a complete suit while staying closed, it is one of the rarest hands actually achieved in play.