Seat wind

The seat wind is the wind tile that corresponds to a player's position at the table relative to the dealer for the current hand. The dealer is always East; proceeding counter-clockwise the next players are South, West, and North. Your seat wind is therefore personal and rotates each hand as the dealership passes, so a player who was North this hand may be West the next.

In Japanese Riichi the seat wind is one of the yakuhai value tiles: a completed triplet or kong of your own seat wind scores 1 han and gives the hand a valid yaku, even when the meld is called open. A triplet of a wind that is not your seat (and not the round wind) is worthless for yaku, which is why discarding other players' seat winds early is common — they are 'guest winds' to you. In Chinese MCR scoring the seat wind appears as the 'Pung of Seat Wind' pattern worth a small fan value rather than a yaku gate.

The most important interaction is the overlap with the round wind. If your seat wind happens to equal the round wind — the classic case being the East dealer during the East round — a single triplet of that tile counts as both, scoring 2 han in Riichi (a 'double wind'). For example, sitting West during a West round, a pung of 3z (West) would double up. A frequent confusion is mixing seat wind with round wind: the seat wind tracks where you sit, while the round wind tracks which prevailing round the whole table is in, and only your own seat wind earns you the personal value.