How to Teach American Mahjong and What to Charge for Lessons (2026)

Most American Mahjong teachers charge per person. On the instructors' and venues' own pages we read on October 18, 2026, a single group class cost $50 to $90 per person and a multi-week beginner course $50 to $225, while a private lesson in a student's home was priced for the table, such as $300 for four people. Where you land depends on your area, how many hours you teach, and whether you supply the sets and the card.

If you play well, you can teach. If you have played through a couple of National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) cards and can explain why a hand is worth what it is, you have most of what a beginner needs. The hard part is often everything around the teaching: scheduling, sign-ups, payments, reminders and the small jobs that turn a kind favor into a real practice.

This guide covers what to charge (with prices real teachers post today), who teaches, where to find students, how to run a first lesson, and how the business side works. If you only want to publish a schedule and start taking sign-ups, go straight to the Teach page.

Who actually teaches American Mahjong

There is no official certification for American Mahjong, no licensing exam and no required credential. Anyone can teach. Most teachers come from one of three places.

Club veterans. Someone who has played in a regular game for years, has played through several annual NMJL cards, and ends up coaching new members at the table. This is the most common path. Going from "I help beginners during open play" to "I teach a six-week course on Wednesday nights" is a small step.

Community center and JCC teachers. Many Jewish Community Centers, senior centers, libraries and community colleges run mahjong classes, and they often find their teacher among the people who already play there. For many teachers, this is the first paid class.

Tournament players. A tournament record is a useful line on your page, and some students look for it. Strong tournament play does not make someone a good teacher on its own, but it tells students you know the game well.

The common thread: you have played through at least a couple of full card years, you can explain why a hand works rather than just which hands exist, and you have played regularly for about a year. If you are not there yet, co-teach with someone for a few months first.

Is there a market for mahjong lessons?

Yes, and the evidence is on the class pages themselves. When we read them on October 18, 2026, La Jolla Community Center in San Diego had marked its fall six-week beginner course and its intermediate class sold out. All three sections of District 214 Community Education's fall beginner course in Illinois were full with a waiting list. Two of the three sections of the University of Utah's Osher institute course were full, and the third had one seat left. And a Mississippi teacher's booking page tells people who find a class sold out that "cancellations are rare."

The National Mah Jongg League says the same thing in its own words: the game "is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, with millions of dedicated players around the world" (NMJL). Every one of those players had to learn from someone.

Search the Bam Good Time city pages for your area to see which clubs and classes already run near you, and where the gaps are.

How much should I charge for mahjong lessons?

Charge per person, and price a beginner course as one package. On teachers' and venues' own pages we read on October 18, 2026, a single group class cost $50 to $90 per person, a multi-week beginner course $50 to $225, and a private in-home lesson $300 for a table of four.

To set your own number, find what the community center or JCC nearest you charges for its beginner course. That is usually the low end, because the venue supplies the room. A small independent class, a private table in someone's home, or an intermediate class can charge more per hour, and the examples below do. Then decide what is in the price (sets, the card, handouts) and write it on your page.

Six ways to price lessons

1. Per person, per lesson. One price for one session, paid by each student. It is the simplest to explain and the easiest for a student to say yes to. It suits drop-in practice, refreshers, a strategy workshop and the lesson a student missed.

2. A multi-week beginner series, sold as a season or per session. Most teachers sell the beginner course as one package: four or six weekly sessions for one price, paid up front. A student who has paid for the whole course tends to come back for week three. If you also sell single sessions, price them so the package is the better deal. Some teachers run the same course on two schedules (say, a daytime and an evening group) and let each student pick one.

3. Private lessons for a group of four. A host gathers three friends, you come to her home or club with sets, and the four of you make one table. Teachers price this as a flat fee for the group or as a per-person price with a four-person minimum. Either way, write down what happens if only three show up.

4. Punch cards and class packs. A student pays once for a set number of sessions, such as five or ten, and uses one each time she comes. Packs reward regulars and get you paid before the season starts. Give them an expiry date so a pack bought in January is not still open next December.

5. A member price and a non-member price. Clubs, JCCs and community centers often charge members less. If you teach at a venue, ask whether its members should get a lower price, because it is a simple way to thank the people who give you the room.

6. Group pricing. A lower per-seat price when several people book together, for example four friends who want to learn as a table. It fills seats in fours, which is exactly how mahjong is played.

What real instructors charge in 2026

Every price below comes from the teacher's or venue's own page, read on October 18, 2026. Prices change, so treat these as a snapshot, not a quote.

The range we found. A single class ran from $50 (The Holland Center's two-hour strategy class) to $90 (La Jolla's intermediate class for non-members). A multi-week beginner course ran from $50 (Boulder JCC, three lessons) to $225 (La Jolla's six-week course for non-members). The one private in-home lesson was $300 for a table of four. Where a page gives both the price and the hours, the cost per student per hour ran from about $8.33 (Boulder JCC, $50 for six hours) to $30 (La Jolla's intermediate class, $90 for three hours). We have not averaged these, because a handful of pages is not a survey.

What the spread tells you. Courses at community centers, JCCs, school districts and universities were the cheapest per hour, often under $20, and most left the card for the student to buy. Single classes at an independent club, private tables in a home and intermediate classes sat at $21 to $30 per student per hour. Where a venue showed a member and a non-member price, the gap was $10 to $25.

What the price usually includes

Tiles and sets: usually the teacher's. Bird Bam Mahjong Club tells students "No equipment necessary" and supplies everything. Lexington Community Education says "Sets are provided." The University of Utah's Osher class says all materials come from the instructor, and The Holland Center provides "All other game materials." Many beginners do not own a set yet, so plan to bring them.

The card: usually the student's. Most of the class pages above asked students to bring or order the current card, including Marcus JCC of Atlanta, La Jolla Community Center, District 214, Boulder JCC, Lexington and The Holland Center. The National Mah Jongg League sells the 2026 card for $14 standard or $15 large print (NMJL store). Some teachers make it easy: The Holland Center's instructor sells it for $15 on the first day, and Ménage à Mahj offers it at checkout. Whatever you choose, say it on your page.

Handouts and small extras. La Jolla's beginner classes "include handouts and time for gameplay," The Holland Center's strategy class provides handouts, and Ménage à Mahj serves light refreshments. Austin Mahjong Collective rents a card table and four chairs for $15 if the host needs one.

Cancellation and no-show policy

Put your policy on the page before anyone signs up. Here are three real ones, from teachers' own pages:

• Austin Mahjong Collective (private lessons) takes a $100 deposit, fully refunded if you cancel at least 48 hours before the lesson and not refunded after that.
• The Holland Center refunds a cancellation made 14 or more days before the first class, minus a $10 processing fee. Later than that, nothing is refunded.
• Lexington Community Education gives full course credit, or a refund minus 5% ($10 minimum), if you withdraw at least 4 days before the start. Three days before, you get credit only, and after that, neither. If the program cancels the class, everyone gets a full refund.

A simple policy that covers most teachers:

• A cutoff. 24 or 48 hours before a single lesson, and a week or more before a course starts.
• No-shows lose the seat, but a student who tells you in time can move to a later class.
• A minimum to run. Say how many students you need, and that everyone gets a full refund if you cancel.
• A deposit for private lessons, because you have set aside the evening.
• Missed course sessions. Say whether you offer a make-up. La Jolla Community Center warns that its course "builds from the ground up," so a student who misses the first two classes may find it tricky to catch up.

On Bam Good Time, tick "Set a cancellation deadline" on an event's or a series' Payment step, then enter the hours before the start (1 to 168, with 24 filled in for you) and a late-cancel fee if you want one. It works on any plan, free classes included. On Starter and up, with Stripe connected, you can also tick "Automatically charge fee to card on file." On Free, the late cancel is marked on your roster. You collect the fee yourself, then press "Mark fee collected" on the roster on the web.

How to collect payment, and which plan each option needs

You can run all six pricing models on Bam Good Time. Here is what each one needs. Each option is chosen when you build the event, series or punch card on the web, and the same choices are in the Bam Good Time: Mahjong Club app on iPhone and Bam Good Time Desktop on Mac.

A few things worth knowing before you choose a plan:

• Free covers up to 5 events a month and 50 players. Each session of a series counts as one event in the month it happens, so a weekly class uses four or five of those on its own. Starter raises that to 12 events a month and 150 players.
• Bam Good Time takes no cut. On Starter and up, card payments go straight to your Stripe account and only Stripe's own processing fee applies.
• Refunds. The club owner refunds a card payment from the student's row on the roster. For a student who paid you by Venmo or cash, you pay her back directly.
• Extras at checkout. On Starter and up you can sell add-ons at checkout, such as the current NMJL card or a starter set, so students do not have to buy them separately.

Finding your first students

Five sources, roughly in order of what usually works. Many teachers lean on three of them.

1. Your own club's beginner night. If you already play in a club, ask the organizer if you can co-teach the next beginner group. Many organizers will be glad of the help. You get practice, the club gets a steady teacher, and you become "the teacher" to everyone the club knows.

2. JCCs, senior centers, libraries and community colleges. Call the person who plans programs. Say you teach American Mahjong and ask whether they run classes. Some already do and have a waitlist, some want to start one, and some will say no. A venue that hires you often handles the room and the publicity, and some pay a set fee per class.

3. Local Facebook groups. Search Facebook for American Mahjong [your city] and Mah Jongg [your state]. Post once a month with a real schedule, not a vague "lessons available." Specific dates and places get specific replies. "Beginner course, Tuesday nights, starting November 3, six weeks, $180" gives people something to say yes to, and "DM me for lessons" does not.

4. Shops that sell mahjong sets. Shops that stock mahjong sets hear "where do I learn?" from people buying their first set. Stop in, leave a card or a flyer, and ask whether they keep a list of teachers.

5. The Bam Good Time directories. Publish your classes on a free Bam Good Time club page and choose Lesson as the event type. On any plan, a public club with a published, public lesson is listed in the instructor directory, with a link to your page. The lesson also shows in the upcoming-events list on your city page on any plan. On Starter and up, it is also listed in the lesson directory and in the city page's lessons section, where people browse for classes near them. If your group already appears in the instructor directory as a listing compiled from public sources, you can claim it from there. You can also switch on a "Request a Lesson" button on your club's home page, so people can ask you for a private lesson. On Starter and up you can add your own questions to that form.

Meetup can bring the odd student too. It is worth a post, but most teachers find the five sources above do more.

The first lesson curriculum

The single biggest mistake new teachers make is teaching the card before the tiles. The card is overwhelming when you do not know what you are looking at. Spend the first part of the lesson on the tiles alone and the card starts to make sense.

A good first lesson takes about 90 minutes, in this order:

The tiles (15 minutes). Three suits (dots, bams and cracks) numbered 1 to 9. The four winds: North, East, South and West. Three dragons: red, green and white. Eight flowers and eight jokers in a standard American set. By the end of this part, the student should be able to name any tile within a few seconds.

The card (15 minutes). Hand each student a real, current NMJL card. Walk down one section line by line. Do not try to cover the whole card. Explain how the sections are organized (the year hands, 2468, Any Like Numbers, Singles and Pairs and so on), what the colors mean, and what the X and C next to each hand mean (exposed and concealed). Pick one hand to come back to in the practice round.

The Charleston (15 minutes). The tile passing at the start of every hand. The first Charleston is three passes of three tiles: right, across, then left. A second Charleston, in the reverse order, is optional, and any player can stop it. An optional courtesy pass across ends the exchange. Teach the steps now and leave strategy for later.

Open-hand round (30 minutes). This is where it clicks. Everyone plays with their tiles face up while you talk the table through it. Each student aims for the hand you picked from the card. They will make every kind of mistake: they will throw the tile they need, miss a joker exchange, and pass away their best tile. Let them, let the table see it, and coach gently.

Calling and winning (15 minutes). How to claim a discard, when you can and cannot, what declaring mahjong looks like, and what happens next. End by having each student name three things to work on before lesson two.

If a first lesson does not get through all five parts, the second one has to. Skipping the open-hand round is a common reason students drop out after lesson two. They leave feeling overwhelmed instead of feeling that they almost had it.

Lesson 2, 3 and the beginner arc

Getting from a first lesson to ready-for-open-play usually takes four to six sessions. A common shape:

Lesson 2: A normal hand. Now play with tiles hidden. Use the same target hand from lesson one if you can. The student will get lost, and that is the point. Coach during play and talk it over after.

Lesson 3: Why some hands are worth more. Walk through three hands of rising value. Explain why concealed hands are usually worth more than exposed ones, and why a hand scores what it does. Reason it out instead of memorizing.

Lesson 4: Charleston strategy. Now that they have played a few hands, they can see why a pass matters. Cover what to keep, what to pass, and when to break up a pair.

Lesson 5: Defense and reading the table. Discards tell a story. Show the student how to read the table and change course in the middle of a hand. This is the lesson that turns a beginner into a player.

Lesson 6: Jokers and finishing. Joker exchanges, when to expose, when to hold, and finishing from a strong or a weak position. End with a full game with no coaching.

After six lessons, most students can sit down at a club night without help. Some will want a refresher when the new card comes out each year. That is a separate product, a new-card class, that you can offer every spring (the League's mail-order form lists its current membership year as April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027).

How a multi-week course pays the bills

Here is the math on a sample course. Six weekly two-hour sessions with six students at $200 each (La Jolla Community Center's member price for its six-week course) brings in $1,200 for 12 hours of teaching, or $100 an hour before costs. Pick your own price from the range above, then run the same math.

Two choices matter more than the price.

Charge for the course up front, not per lesson. Paying per lesson leaks attendance. Every week each student decides whether to come, and life gets in the way. One payment up front gets the commitment, and refunds become one conversation instead of a weekly one.

Cap the class at a number you can coach. Six is a good number for one teacher: one full table of four plus two who watch and rotate in, and the rotation becomes part of the lesson. With a helper, eight works as two tables. Use a waitlist for anyone past the cap.

Logistics: where the work actually is

New teachers tend to underestimate the admin. A six-week course with six students brings:

• 6 sign-ups
• 6 payments
• a reminder to every student before every session (36 across the course)
• 4 to 6 reschedule conversations
• 2 or 3 refund or transfer requests
• 1 or 2 people moving up from the waitlist
• 1 follow-up email after the last session

If you run that on group texts, a personal Venmo and a paper calendar, the admin can take more of your week than the teaching by week three. A free Bam Good Time club page handles sign-ups, waitlists, reminders and your roster from one place, and on Starter it adds card payments and refunds.

In practice:

• Publish the course as one Event Series of six weekly sessions.
• Students sign up once and pay, by Venmo or cash on Free or by card through Stripe on Starter, with the money going to your own account.
• Confirmations and reminders go out without you lifting a finger. You can also switch on, from Settings on the web, an automatic follow-up email that goes out after each class.
• When a seat opens in a single session, the next person on the waitlist moves up on her own. When a place opens in a course sold only as a whole, you press Promote and that student gets an email with a link to buy the course.
• If a student who paid by card needs to drop, the club owner presses Refund on her row and confirms.

This is less about software than about time. Every hour you do not spend in text messages is an hour for the next group, the next card or the next table.

Going virtual

Many teachers run at least some lessons over video. Three things are worth knowing.

What works on video: the rules, the tiles, reading the card, the Charleston, scoring and going over a game afterwards. Anything you can say or show without anyone holding tiles.

What does not work as well: pace, table manners, the feel of a real hand and meeting other players. "I just made my first mahjong" is a smaller moment over a webcam than across a real table.

A good pattern: two or three video sessions for the basics, then an in-person session where students play a real hand. Video lessons are easier to schedule and cost you less to run, but the teaching is the same work, so think twice before pricing them much lower.

Video also lets you teach students who live too far away to come to you, so an online beginner course open to anyone is a real product.

Becoming a full teaching practice

Going from "I sometimes coach beginners at club" to "this is my Tuesday and Thursday for years to come" often takes a year or more. Three stages:

First six months: get practice. Co-teach your club's beginner night. Help with community center classes if there are any. Teach friends for free. Do not chase paying students yet. By the end of this stage, you should know which part of a first lesson you teach best and which part you fumble.

Next six months: publish a real schedule. Run your own three- or four-session beginner course on a fixed schedule and charge for it. Publish it on a free Bam Good Time club page, at a community center and in one or two Facebook groups. Aim for at least three full groups. By the end of the year, you will know whether you enjoy teaching.

After that: add a drop-in night and private lessons. Run a six-week beginner course back to back instead of twice a year, add a weekly drop-in night, and say yes to private tables. Here is a sample: two six-week courses a quarter with six students at $200 each is $2,400 a quarter. Add a $10 drop-in night that averages 8 people a week for 13 weeks and you are at about $3,440 a quarter.

Teachers who stay with it often specialize. Some focus on tournament preparation, some on Charleston strategy, and some build a new-card class every spring. Once students trust you, a specialty is easy to sell.

Quick answers for new teachers

Do I need my own tile sets? Ideally, yes: at least one set you bring to every lesson. Many beginners do not own a set yet, and asking them to buy one before lesson one can lose them. Once a student is hooked, recommend a set; do not make it a condition of joining.

Do I need liability insurance? Ask the venue. Community centers and JCCs may cover classes held on their premises, but check before you assume. If you run a regular class in a shop, cafe or clubhouse, ask the owner and consider your own coverage.

Should I set up a business? Many teachers start informally. In the US, the IRS generally treats you as self-employed if you are in business for yourself, part-time included. Talk to an accountant once the income is steady, and before you form a company.

Can I teach in a coffee shop? Yes, but ask first. Some are happy to host a regular weekday group and some are not. Bring a mat so the tiles do not clatter, and buy something.

What if a student is not a good fit? It happens. Refund the rest of her course, point her to another teacher in the instructor directory, and move on. One bad fit takes more energy than ten good ones.

Where to publish your schedule today

If you have read this far, start a free Bam Good Time club page, publish your next lesson or course, and let students sign up from your page. It is free with Venmo or cash payments. Card payments and punch cards start on Starter at $19 a month, and Bam Good Time takes no cut of your lesson fees. See every plan on the pricing page.

The hardest part of teaching American Mahjong is starting. After the first paid group, it is practice and polish.

If you are on the other side, looking for a teacher rather than becoming one, read how to find a mahjong instructor near you or browse the lesson directory. The people on both sides of a mahjong table are usually glad to meet each other.