North Wind

Did you know

• In a four-player game North is the least useful wind. It is never the round wind (even an overtime game stops after the West round), so it is only ever a value tile for the North seat.
• In three-player mahjong there is no North seat, and North tiles are usually set aside as bonus dora (nukidora).¹
• Written in a cursive hand like this one, 北 looks a lot like 此, and some Taiwanese players call it 此風.²
• As the dora indicator it wraps around: face up on the dead wall it makes the East wind dora.

At the table

• Honors never make sequences. North wind can only be used in a pair, a triplet or a kan, so a lone one is often the first tile out of a hand.
• It is dora when is the dora indicator. Turned up as the indicator itself, it makes dora.

Yaku it can help

• Yakuhai a triplet of your seat or the round wind is 1 han
• Shousuushii three wind triplets and a wind pair
• Daisuushii all four wind triplets
• Honitsu one suit plus honors
• Tsuuiisou honors only
• Chanta a terminal or honor in every set
• Honroutou terminals and honors only
• Kokushi Musou one of the thirteen orphans

Where the winds come from

The four winds are the four points of the compass, and each player sits at one. East is the dealer; the seats run East, South, West, North in turn order, and the round wind moves from East to South as the game goes on. A triplet of your seat wind or the round wind is a yaku.

In Chinese the winds together are 四喜牌, the "four joyous tiles", which is where the yakuman names shousuushii (小四喜, little four joys) and daisuushii (大四喜, big four joys) come from. Japanese players read the winds the Chinese way: ton, nan, shaa, pei.³

Sources

1. ドラ (麻雀), Wikipedia (Japanese) Japanese
2. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Chinese) Chinese
3. Mahjong tiles, Wikipedia