Four Winds Rule Collection – American Modern

6. Payments

Let us assume the following final scores for the players:

6.1 Payments to the winner

The losers pay the winner according to the final score of his hand, East receiving and paying the double. Accordingly, the winner is paid as follows:

6.2 Payments between the losers

In American rules the losers settle the payments according to the difference of their final scores. East receives/pays double. Assuming the scores given above, the losers pay each other as follows:

• East pays 80 points to South (40 – 0 = 40, doubled once)
• East pays 40 points to West (20 – 0 = 20, doubled once)
• South gets 80 points from East (40 – 0 = 40, doubled once)
• South gets 20 points from West (40 – 20 = 20)
• West gets 40 points from East (20 – 0 = 20, doubled once)
• West pays 20 points to South (40 – 20 = 20)

6.3 Totals

The final payments are added to/reduced from players' total points:

The total of all points stays always the same – in this case, 40,000 points.

Note that if penalties are used, they are always added/subtracted at the final stage of scoring. E.g., if the rules specify penalty for faulty declarations worth 10 points and East has made one faulty declaration of Pung, the total points would be 10 points less for East and 10 points more for the winner (penalties are not doubled for East).

Note: If the rules apply a limit for the total score a player can score for his hand, the limit is applied to the final score, not the payments. Accordingly, if the Limit is 500 points, the maximum payment an East winner can get for a hand is 3000 points (1000 points from each loser). As for losers, the limit is applied to the difference of losers' final scores (not directly to player's final score as in classical Chinese rules).

Related topics:
Introduction
Tiles
Preliminaries
Playing
Miscellaneous
Scoring