Official Rules and Code of Conduct

Format

An async ladder followed by a live Finals.

Through July you play ranked games on your own schedule. There are no fixed match times in the ladder, so you can log a game on a lunch break or a slow Sunday. Every completed ranked game adds to your points, and a live leaderboard updates so you can watch yourself climb.

At the end of the month the leaderboard locks and the top 16 players advance to a live Finals, resolved through a single-elimination bracket.

Scoring

Each finished game awards points by where you placed at the table:

• 1st3 pts
• 2nd2 pts
• 3rd1 pts
• 4th0 pts

• Best 15 count. Only your best 15 games go toward your standing, so one rough night will not sink you. Play more and keep your strongest results.
• Minimum 10 games to rank. You need at least 10 completed games before you appear on the leaderboard. This keeps the board honest and discourages grinding a handful of soft tables.
• Net 台 breaks ties. If two players finish on the same points, the higher cumulative net 台 (tai) across counted games ranks ahead.

Bots are kept out of ranked tables. Every ranked game is human-versus-human.

Eligibility

• You must be 18 or older to take part.
• One account per person. Multiple accounts, or playing on someone else's behalf, are not allowed.
• You register with a Planet Mahjong account and join ranked tables from there.

Schedule

• Ranked ladder games run throughout July, any time of day.
• The leaderboard locks at the end of July and the live Finals are played in late July.
• Finalists are notified directly with their Finals slot once the cut is set.

Prizes

Prizes are non-cash. No money, gambling, or wagering of any kind is involved.

• Trophy and merch. A trophy plus a championship merch pack go to the top eight finishers.
• Champion title and Hall of Fame. The winner takes the Monsoon Champion title and a permanent place in the Planet Mahjong Hall of Fame.
• Founding Champion perks. The champion earns Founding Champion status, which carries lasting subscription perks on Planet Mahjong.

Finals proctoring

The Finals are proctored on camera so the title is won fair and square. Every finalist joins the proctored session for their matches; if you cannot be proctored, you cannot play the Finals. A sample of live hands is reviewed by our Taiwanese-rules expert, with a 48 hours (recommended) turnaround target on any flagged hand.

Qualifier and Bracket Format

• Qualifier. You play solo against three bots, on Taiwanese rules. A qualifying game is 8 hands — East and South winds — though a dealer repeat (連莊, same as any live table) can push it past 8 if the dealer keeps winning or a hand draws.
• Up to 3 attempts. Play the qualifier inside the admin-set window, up to 3 times. Your best score locks in.
• Top 64 cut. The 64 highest qualifying scores advance to the bracket.
• 16 → 4 → 1. 16 tables of 4 players; the 16 winners form 4 tables of 4; those 4 winners meet at one final table of 4 for the championship.
• One round a day. Each bracket round is played live, on its own scheduled day.

Arrive at least 15 minutes before your round's start time. Tables start automatically at the scheduled time whether or not everyone has checked in — see No-Shows below for what happens if you're not there yet.

Attempts

You get 3 qualifier attempts, and only your best score counts.

An attempt is used the moment your tiles are dealt — not when you finish. If you quit or lose your connection mid-attempt, our bots take your seat and play the hand out to its natural end. Whatever score results is real: it counts, it doesn't vanish, and it can't be replayed for a better roll.

Only the organizers can void an attempt, and only for a confirmed system fault (a server error — not a slow connection or a bad hand). A voided attempt is struck from your record and the slot is refunded.

Cut Tie-Breaks

When two or more players are tied at the cut line for the top 64, we break the tie in order:

1. Best qualifying score (your single best attempt).
2. Second-best attempt score.
3. Fewer attempts used.
4. Earlier finish time on your best attempt.

Table Tie-Breaks

Inside a single knockout table, whoever holds the most chips when the table's games end wins that table and advances. If two players are tied on final chips, the tie-break is qualifying rank: the player who qualified with the better rank (the lower-numbered seed) advances.

Kitty at Game End

Inside every game, a drawn hand feeds points into the Draw kitty — you'll see it on your in-game ledger. Normally the next winner scoops it. But if the whole knockout game ends on a drawn hand — nobody wins the very last hand, the wall runs out — there's no next winner left to collect it. When that happens, the outstanding Draw kitty splits equally across all four seats. If it doesn't divide evenly, the leftover points go to whoever finished higher in the table's final placement, best placement first.

No-Shows and Alternates

• Check-in opens 15 minutes before your round's scheduled start.
• 5-minute grace after the round starts. If you haven't checked in by then, a bot takes your seat for that round and plays it for you.
• Alternates — the players ranked 65 through 72 — are on standby. They're invited the moment the cut is published, re-confirmed the day before each round, and called in rank order whenever a seat opens up.
• Fully empty table. If literally no human checks in for a table, the highest-ranked checked-in alternate is promoted into the seat by walkover, and the absent player is eliminated. Showing up is what breaks this tie — not seed.

Disconnects in the Knockout

Losing signal happens. Here's exactly what the table does about it:

1. 0–20 seconds: nothing happens. Reconnect and you're back in your seat as if nothing occurred.
2. Past 20 seconds: the table pauses for the other three players.
3. Up to about 3 minutes (the organizer can extend this once, live, if they can see you're actively trying to get back in).
4. Once the pause runs out, a bot takes your seat and plays the rest of the game. This is final — there is no reclaim, even if you reconnect a minute later.

No reclaim isn't a punishment — it's fairness to the other three players, who were also stuck waiting. Keep your phone unlocked and your screen awake during your matches; a locked screen is the single most common cause of a knockout disconnect.

One Account, One Human

One account per person, and you play it yourself. No coaching from someone next to you, no second device open on the same hand, no outside assistance of any kind while a match is live.

The final table is video-proctored — every player is on camera for every match at that table, no exceptions. If you can't be on camera, you can't play the final table.

Results and Disputes

Results are provisional the moment your game ends — the organizer confirms every round before it's final and the bracket moves on.

If something looks wrong — a scoring error, a mis-recorded seat, anything — email tournaments@planetmahjong.com before the organizer confirms that round. Once a round is confirmed, results lock.

Every game, qualifier or knockout, is fully replayable move-by-move by the organizers. A dispute is never just your word against ours — we can go back and look.

Schedule and Timezone

Every date and time for this event — fixtures, your status card, the match lobby — is published in IST (India Standard Time), with your local time shown right alongside it. You never have to convert it yourself.