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When automatic tables are used, the setup procedure can be amended to match automatic tables' features, when relevant.

Each player starts the session with 30,000 points.
The game continues when a player score goes below zero.

Mahjong is played by four players, each of which is associated with a wind, denoted the player’s seat wind. East is the starting player. South is sitting at East’s right, West is sitting across from East, and North is sitting at East’s left. Note that the counter-clockwise order east-south-west-north is not as could be expected from the compass directions. Between hands the seat winds will change, see the "dealer rotation" section. During a full game, each player is East at least twice.

When the game begins, east is the prevailing wind. When the player who started the game as East, becomes East again after all other players have played at least one hand as East, the south round begins, and south becomes the prevailing wind. A wind marker should be placed permanently by the player who begins as East, and when this player becomes East again after the first (east) round of the game, the marker is flipped to indicate the new prevailing wind, south.

The players’ positions at the table are determined by drawing lots if they are not predefined by a tournament schedule. For drawing lots one of each wind tile is used. The four tiles are shuffled face down and each player picks one of the tiles; the player who shuffled the tiles is the last to pick a tile. The player who picked the east tile will begin the game as East. The player who picked the south tile will begin the game as South. The player who picked the west tile will begin the game as West. The player who picked the north tile will begin the game as North.

The tiles are thoroughly mixed. Each player builds in front of himself a wall of face-down tiles, seventeen tiles long and two tiers high. The four walls are pushed together to form a square.

East rolls two dice and counts that number of players counter-clockwise, starting with himself. The player thus determined breaks the wall in front of him, by counting from the right the same number of stacks as indicated by the dice. After the last counted stack the wall is broken by pushing the two wall sections a bit apart. If East’s dice roll was 12, North breaks the wall as shown:

The seven tile stacks (14 tiles) to the right of the break make up the dead wall. The dead wall continues around the corner to the next wall, if the end of the wall is reached. The tiles in the dead wall are not used in the play, except for the providing of replacement tiles for kantsu.
After the seventh tile stack, the two sections of the wall are pushed a bit apart to set the dead wall apart from the end of the live wall. However, there is no need to do it immediately when breaking the wall; the dead wall can be visually pushed apart later in the game.
It is permissible for the player who has the dead wall in front of him to place the first replacement tile to the immediate left of the dead wall, so that the wall has first two single tiles and then six tile stacks. This is in order to decrease the risk of knocking down and revealing the first replacement tile.

Count three tile stacks into the dead wall from the original break in the wall, and turn the top tile face up to determine the dora indicator. This tile indicates which tile is dora.
If the dora indicator is a suit tile, the dora is the next tile in the same suit, e.g. seven bamboo is dora if six bamboo is the dora indicator. If the indicator is a nine, the dora is the one in the same suit. If the indicator is a dragon, the dora is also a dragon, and the following order applies: red points to white, white points to green and green points to red. For winds, likewise, the following order applies: east-south-west-north-east.

The player who is East takes the first four tiles in the wall after the original break in the wall. Tiles are taken clockwise in the wall, while the players’ turns proceed counter-clockwise, South takes the next four tiles, West the next four, North the next four and so on until all players have twelve tiles. East continues by taking two tiles: the top tiles in the first and third stacks in the wall. South, West and North each take one tile in order. (This corresponds to East taking one tile, waiting for the other players to take one tile each, and then East takes his fourteenth tile). East now has a starting hand of fourteen tiles, whereas the other players have thirteen tiles each. Each player arranges his tiles upright in front of himself, so only he can see the faces. The dice are placed at East’s right; in this way it is always clear to all players which player is East.