Best Mahjong Scoring Apps & Rating Systems in 2026

If you play American Mahjong regularly, you have probably wondered the same thing a lot of players wonder: am I actually getting better? Paper score sheets disappear. Spreadsheets get abandoned. And even when someone does keep records, those numbers only mean something inside your own club.

There has never been a standardized, portable rating system for American Mahjong. Chess players have had ELO ratings for decades. Poker players have lifetime earnings and tournament rankings. American Mahjong players have... a vague sense of how they did last Tuesday.

That is changing. Here is how modern mahjong scoring apps work, and how the Mahjic ecosystem brings scoring, ratings, table reservations, and ID verification together in one place.

The Problem with Mahjong Scoring Today

Most American Mahjong clubs track scores the same way they have for years: pen and paper at the table, maybe a spreadsheet that one dedicated person maintains. It works — until it does not.

Paper gets lost. Spreadsheets get messy. Nobody wants to be the person who has to add up four tables of scores at the end of the night while everyone is putting on their coats.

But the bigger problem is not logistics — it is meaning. Even if you track every score perfectly, those numbers only tell you how you did against the same group of people at the same venue. There is no way to compare yourself against players at other clubs. There is no objective measure of improvement over time. There is no answer to the question every competitive player eventually asks: where do I actually rank?

And then there is the seating problem. You show up to your Monday game and there are five people for four seats, or three people and an empty chair. Nobody knew who was coming. Nobody reserved anything. The whole system runs on group texts and good luck.

How American Mahjong Scoring Works

Before we talk about apps, a quick primer on scoring for anyone who is newer to the game.

American Mahjong uses the NMJL (National Mah Jongg League) card, published annually. The card defines the legal hands for the year — the specific tile combinations that count as a win. When a player completes a hand (gets "Mahjong"), that hand has a point value printed on the card.

Scoring in American Mahjong is additive, not zero-sum. The winner earns points based on the hand they made. Other players at the table do not lose points from a shared pool — they simply do not score for that round. Over the course of an evening (typically 4-8 rounds), players accumulate points. The player with the highest total at the end wins.

Why does tracking this matter? Three reasons.

Improvement. You cannot improve what you do not measure. Knowing that your average score has gone up over six months tells you something real about your development as a player.

Fair matchmaking. When a club knows its players' relative skill levels, it can seat tables more thoughtfully — putting similarly skilled players together so games are competitive and fun for everyone.

Bragging rights. Let's be honest. It is nice to see your name near the top of a leaderboard.

The shift from paper to digital scoring is not about replacing the social experience of mahjong. It is about making the administrative side effortless so everyone can focus on the part that matters: playing the game.

Start a Table: Book Your Seat in Seconds

One of the most common pain points for American Mahjong clubs is simply knowing who is coming to play. The "are you in for Monday?" text thread is a staple of club life, and it is chaos.

Bam Good Time's Table Reservation system — called "Start a Table" — replaces that chaos with a real booking system. Think of it like making a restaurant reservation, but for your weekly mahjong game.

How It Works

Club admins set up a weekly schedule through a guided wizard. Define your tables (how many seats, booking mode), set your recurring times (Monday at 1 PM, Wednesday at 6 PM), configure pricing, and go live. The system automatically generates bookable time slots up to two weeks in advance.

Players visit the Tables page on the web, the Mac app, or the iPhone app. They pick a date, browse available slots, and reserve a seat. Confirmation email goes out immediately, plus a push notification and an optional text message. A reminder follows about two hours before the session starts.

Smart Matchmaking

This is where it gets interesting. When a player goes to book, the system does not just hand them a random open seat. It recommends the best table based on three factors:

• Skill match (50%) — Seat players at similar levels so games are competitive
• Fill priority (30%) — Favor tables that are closer to full, so the club does not end up with four half-empty tables
• Relationship bonus (20%) — If a friend or preferred partner is already seated at a table, that table gets a boost. Tables with a flagged conflict are excluded entirely.

Not every club uses skill-based matchmaking — some prefer first-come, first-served — but for clubs that want balanced tables without the headache of manual seating, it is a game changer.

Waitlist with Auto-Promotion

If every seat is taken, players can join a waitlist. When someone cancels, the first waitlisted player is automatically promoted and notified. They get a confirmation window that scales with urgency:

• More than 24 hours before the session: 2-hour window to confirm
• 4 to 24 hours before: 1-hour window
• Less than 4 hours: 30-minute window

If they do not confirm in time, the next person on the waitlist gets promoted. No admin intervention needed.

Flexible Payment Models

Clubs can choose the payment model that fits their culture:

| Model | How It Works | |-------|-------------| | Free | No payment required — just show up | | Honor system | Pay cash or Venmo at the table | | Pay on booking | Stripe checkout when you reserve | | Hold and charge | Card saved on booking, charged at session start |

Walk-ins are supported too. Admins can add players to any table with open seats right from the control panel.

Where It Works

Table reservations work on all three platforms — web at bamgoodtime.com, the Mahjic Desktop app for Mac, and the Mahjic Mobile app for iPhone. Admin setup and management is web-only, but players can browse, book, cancel, and check in from wherever they are. The feature is available on Pro plans and above (up to 20 tables on Pro, unlimited on Enterprise).

Mahjic.org: The First Open Rating System for American Mahjong

Tracking scores within a single club is useful. But what if your scores could mean something beyond your Tuesday night game?

Mahjic.org is a free, open rating system built specifically for American Mahjong. It takes the ELO concept from chess and adapts it for four-player mahjong. Your rating follows you everywhere — across every club, every event, every platform in the Mahjic ecosystem.

How ELO Works for Four-Player Mahjong

The classic ELO system was designed for head-to-head games like chess. Adapting it for a four-player table requires a different approach: pairwise comparison.

After each game, the system compares your result against each of the other three players at your table individually. Did you win while they did not? Were they rated higher or lower than you? Each of those three matchups generates a small rating adjustment. The adjustments are combined into one net change for the game.

This means beating a table of 1700-rated players moves your rating significantly more than beating a table of 1300-rated players — just like in chess. The system rewards performance against strong opponents and penalizes losses to weaker ones.

K-Factor: How Fast Your Rating Moves

The system uses an adaptive K-factor to control the size of rating swings:

• Under 30 games played (K=32): Large swings. The system is finding your true level quickly. This is intentional — a new player should not have to grind through 100 games before their rating means anything.
• 30 to 100 games (K=24): Settling in. Your rating is getting more stable but still adjusting meaningfully.
• Over 100 games (K=16): Stable. Small, incremental changes that reflect genuine shifts in your play.

This means new players can find their level in roughly 20-30 games, while experienced players see the gradual, meaningful progression that makes a rating system worth following.

Starting Rating and Rating Scale

Everyone starts at 1500, which sits in the Intermediate range. Here is what the numbers mean:

| Rating | Level | |--------|-------| | Under 1300 | Beginner — still learning the ropes | | 1300-1450 | Novice — knows the basics, building experience | | 1450-1550 | Intermediate — solid player, comfortable with the game | | 1550-1700 | Advanced — consistently performs well, deep strategic understanding | | 1700+ | Expert — top-level play |

Do not worry if your rating drops below 1500 when you first start playing. That is the system doing its job — finding where you belong so that future changes are meaningful.

Two Ratings, One Player

Every player on Mahjic.org actually has two ratings:

• Mahjic Rating — Reflects all scored games from every source. This is your overall measure.
• Verified Rating — Only counts games where all opponents were also ID-verified players. This is the higher-integrity competitive rating.

Your Mahjic Rating is the everyday number. Your Verified Rating is what appears on the public leaderboard and what matters if you care about competitive ranking.

One Rating Across Every Club

This is the part that changes things. Your rating is not tied to a single club. Play at Club A on Tuesday and Club B on Thursday — both sessions feed into the same Mahjic Rating. Join a new club across town and your rating comes with you. No starting over.

For the first time, American Mahjong players have a portable, objective measure of skill that works everywhere.

Open Formula

The ELO algorithm is not a black box. The formula is published, the K-factor thresholds are documented, and every rating change can be traced back to the specific game that caused it. Transparency matters when you are asking players to trust a number.

ID Verification: Why It Matters for Mahjong Ratings

A rating system is only as trustworthy as the people in it. If anyone can create unlimited accounts with fake names, the leaderboard becomes meaningless. This is a real problem in online gaming — and it is a problem that competitive American Mahjong needs to solve before it scales.

Mahjic.org solves it with ID verification powered by Stripe Identity.

How Verification Works

Verified membership costs $20 per year. When you sign up, Stripe Identity walks you through a quick photo ID scan — you take a picture of your driver's license or passport, and the system confirms your identity. It takes about two minutes.

Once verified, you get:

• A verified badge on your profile — Everyone can see that you are a confirmed real person.
• Public leaderboard eligibility — Only verified players appear on the Mahjic.org leaderboard.
• Verified Rating — A separate rating that only counts games against other verified opponents. This is the gold standard for competitive integrity.
• Identity integrity — One real person, one account. No duplicates, no fake accounts inflating or deflating the ratings of real players.

Why This Matters for the Community

Think of verification as the foundation for competitive American Mahjong to be taken seriously. Without it, any rating system is vulnerable to gaming — someone creates three accounts, plays themselves, and manipulates ratings. With ID verification, every player on the leaderboard is a real, verified human.

It is similar to a verified checkmark on social media, except instead of verifying that you are famous, it verifies that you are a real mahjong player with real results.

The $20 annual cost covers Stripe's verification processing fees and keeps the system sustainable. The core rating system — submitting games, receiving a Mahjic Rating, tracking your scores — remains completely free. Verification is optional, for players who want the competitive layer.

How It All Connects

The real power of the Mahjic ecosystem is that these pieces work together. Here is the full loop:

1. Reserve a table on Bam Good Time — pick your time, book your seat, get matched with players at your level
2. Play your game — the in-person American Mahjong experience you love
3. Scores are submitted — your club admin enters results, or for online play in Mahjic Play, it happens automatically
4. Ratings update in real time — your Mahjic Rating (and Verified Rating, if applicable) adjusts based on your results
5. Leaderboard reflects your skill — see where you stand against players across every club

Bam Good Time handles the logistics: table reservations, event management, registration, payments, and club administration. Mahjic.org handles competitive integrity: ratings, verification, and leaderboards. They share the same account system and the same database. One login, one profile, one ecosystem.

For club admins, the workflow is simple. Set up your club on Bam Good Time, enable table reservations if you want them, run your events and enter scores. The ratings take care of themselves.

For players, it is even simpler. Show up, play, and watch your rating evolve over time. If you want the competitive edge, verify your identity on Mahjic.org and start climbing the leaderboard.

Other Mahjong Scoring Tools Compared

The Mahjic ecosystem is not the only option for tracking American Mahjong scores. Here is an honest look at the alternatives.

Mahjong Tracker — A straightforward score-tracking app. You enter scores manually after each game and it maintains a history. No rating system, no club management, no table reservations. Good for a player who wants a personal scorecard and nothing more.

Mahjong Scorer — A calculator tool for figuring out hand values. Useful during a game if you are unsure what a hand is worth, but it does not track scores over time. It is a reference tool, not a scoring platform.

Mahjong Helper & Calculator — Similar to Mahjong Scorer. A scoring reference that helps you look up hand values on the NMJL card. No persistent score tracking, no ratings, no club features.

AMR Authority — A more serious scoring and ranking platform. It tracks match results, maintains player rankings, and has a solid iOS app. However, it does not offer table reservations, ID verification, or the multi-platform club management that Bam Good Time provides. If you want rankings without the broader ecosystem, AMR Authority is worth a look.

Bam Good Time + Mahjic.org — The full ecosystem. Table reservations, event management, scoring, ELO ratings, ID verification, leaderboards, and club administration across web, Mac, and iPhone. The tradeoff is that it is a platform commitment rather than a simple standalone tool.

| Feature | Mahjong Tracker | Mahjong Scorer | AMR Authority | Bam Good Time + Mahjic.org | |---------|----------------|---------------|---------------|---------------------------| | Score tracking | Yes | No (calculator only) | Yes | Yes | | Rating system | No | No | Yes (rankings) | Yes (ELO + Verified Rating) | | Table reservations | No | No | No | Yes | | ID verification | No | No | No | Yes (Stripe Identity) | | Club management | No | No | No | Yes | | Multi-platform | Varies | Varies | iOS | Web, Mac, iPhone | | Free tier | Varies | Free | Varies | Yes |

The best way to track mahjong scores depends on what you need. If you want a quick personal scorecard, a simple tracker works. If you want to know where you rank, compare yourself across clubs, and reserve tables for your next game — the Mahjic ecosystem is purpose-built for that.

Getting Started

For clubs: Create your club for free at bamgoodtime.com/start. The setup takes about two minutes. Start adding members, creating events, and entering scores. Use promo code LAUNCH2026 for three months free on any paid plan, including Pro (which unlocks table reservations).

For players: Your club admin has probably already created your account. Log in at bamgoodtime.com/login with your email — no password needed, just a verification code. Once you are in, your scores, ratings, and reservations are all in one place.

For your rating: Check where you stand at mahjic.org. If you want to appear on the leaderboard and earn a Verified Rating, sign up for verified membership ($20/year) and complete the ID verification process.

Your American Mahjong scores deserve better than a napkin. Start tracking them properly, and you might be surprised what you learn about your game.