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Which tile should I discard first?

Work from the outside in. Winds and dragons you do not need go first, then ones and nines, then twos and eights, then threes and sevens, then fours and sixes, with fives last. The reason is joker economics: middle numbers turn up in exposures far more often, which makes them the tiles most likely to buy you a joker later.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-08-21.

The order, and the reason underneath it

Most players discard by feel, letting go of whatever looks least useful at that instant. That is not wrong so much as unplanned, and a plan does better. The sequence is outside in: the winds and dragons you have no use for, then the extremes of the number range, and inward from there, ones and nines, twos and eights, threes and sevens, fours and sixes, fives last of all.

It is not because middle tiles are worth more in your hand. It is because of where they end up. Middle numbers appear in exposures across the table far more often than ones and nines do, and a tile that matches somebody's exposure is a tile you can trade for a joker. Throwing your fives away in the first ten discards is spending next hour's currency on this minute's convenience.

Think of it as saving the expensive ones

Reframed that way the order stops being a list to memorize. Every tile you hold has two possible futures: it becomes part of your hand, or it becomes a joker later. Tiles with only the first future are cheap to release. Tiles with both are expensive.

Winds and dragons you are not using have the fewest futures of anything in your rack, which is why they go first. Fives have the most. Everything else falls in between in a fairly orderly way, and that order is the sequence above.

The wall is a clock, so read it

The wall has three phases and they want different things from you. The first handful of picks is the opening, where you are still finding out what you have. The long middle stretch is where hands are actually decided. The last stretch is the endgame, where the risk on every discard climbs steeply because everyone still playing is close.

Counting tiles out loud as you go, or at least glancing at how much wall is left, is what turns those phases from a vague feeling into something you can act on. Specific counts make good triggers: a number at which you start setting safe tiles aside, a number past which you stop pushing a weak wait.

Late in the wall, the question changes

Everything above is about which tile is least useful to you. In the endgame that stops being the question. What matters then is which tile is least dangerous to everyone else, and those are rarely the same tile.

Which is why safe tiles are gathered early rather than found late. Once the wall is running short, the safe tile you did not save is simply a safe tile you do not have, and you will be discarding out of a rack that no longer contains one.