Tenhou (天和)
Blessing of Heaven — the dealer's initial fourteen tiles form a winning hand before any discard.
How Tenhou (天和) works
Tenhou (blessing of heaven) is a yakuman: the dealer's initial fourteen-tile deal is already a complete winning hand.
Only the dealer can score it, because only the dealer starts with fourteen tiles. If the dealt hand is a valid winning shape, the dealer declares tsumo before discarding anything and the hand scores as a yakuman regardless of its actual contents — even a bare minimum shape counts, since the win itself is the yaku. Nothing can interrupt it; the round simply begins and ends on the deal. It's often cited as the rarest standard yakuman, on the order of one in several hundred thousand deals.
- •Dealer only — declared on the initial deal, before any discard.
- •The hand shape doesn't matter; any complete hand on the deal is a yakuman.
- •This calculator scores tenhou hands by their patterns — count the yakuman manually if the table rules it.
Tenhou (天和) — FAQ
What if the dealt hand also contains another yakuman?
Rules vary. Many tables score only tenhou; others stack it with pattern yakuman like suuankou or daisangen for a double yakuman. Agree before you play — you may never need the ruling.
How rare is tenhou?
Roughly one in 300,000 or so dealer hands, depending on how you count. Most players go a lifetime without seeing one at their own table.